This week, the rest of the French Fridays crew will be serving duck, but I’ll have to leave that for another time. Instead, I’m going to write about a dish I missed posting about when it came up in the recipe rotation in May – Cardamom Rice Pilaf. It’s another of Dorie’s back-pocket recipes that are perfect for making weekday cooking a little more interesting. It’s simply rice cooked with onion, cardamom, and stock, then seasoned with a little lemon zest and pepper. It’s flavourful without overwhelming anything else on the plate, works as well with fancy food as it does plain, and is almost as easy as cooking plain rice.

I’ve made it a few times, now, without really having changed it. I like it as it is. The leftovers, though, make for inspiring fried rice or rice casseroles. The photos show one of my favourite meals for a busy weeknight. Salmon cakes (from an Ocean Wise approved producer), mixed greens, and this rice.

Sometimes, this cooking group isn’t about learning new techniques or using unfamiliar ingredients. Sometimes, it’s about remembering that the simplest foods can be made interesting, without difficulty and with great results.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Cardamom Rice Pilaf