I haven’t really been cooking (or keeping up with the blog) the way I want to, and this is partly because spring hasn’t been kind to me. I’ve been dealing with bouts of seasonal allergies all season long, actually. I started having breathing issues back in April and developed allergy induced asthma (my doctor tells me this is a real thing) which thankfully lasted for just a few days, but then I spent the month of May trying not to scratch my eyes out. So yeah, I haven’t made anything special in a while.

Luckily we almost always have a jar of hummus tucked away somewhere in the fridge begging to be used up, and I appreciate that so much during these stretches when I’m not cooking.
Hummus is versatile and we’ve tried it in a lot of things, but this rice, hummus, peas and lettuce combo has become an easy favourite.

You could swap rice for pasta in this recipe, or use quinoa, farro, barley or couscous; we recently tried it with riced cauliflower – it turned out spectacularly delicious. I use this brown basmati rice that I have to tell you about. I bought a kilo of the Tilda brand brown basmati at Waitrose last October, I took it on the train ride back to Paris and schlepped it on a plane all the way back home, only to realize that Superstore carries it. I call it my special London rice now.

Nutty brown rice flavour pairs well with the creamy rich savoury notes in hummus. I particularly like it with this smoky harissa number. I incorporated some torn lettuce for crunch but you can use cabbage or whatever leafy green you prefer (kale, spinach, Swiss chard, etc.). There are some fresh spring peas as well because it’s spring and rice, peas and hummus is plain delicious. Depending on how lucky you get at the market this season, you could toss in some broad beans as well.

One other thing I wanted to mention, which is boring actually, but has also managed to take up quite a bit of my time is this whole GDPR compliance business. If you have no clue what GDPR is, you’re lucky. I’m still not sure I know what I’m doing but this little space is now GDPR compliant (Hurrah!); we have an updated (and written) privacy policy and a cookie consent notice – unfortunately you don’t get an actual cookie but I promise to protect your data and not to use it for nefarious purposes.

This is all to say that things have been a little off lately, but this tasty and vibrant melange of rice, hummus and peas has been saving dinner, it’s effortless, cozy and delicious. Enjoy!

[Tweet “Jazz up #dinner with this spring inspired rice and #hummus combo… it’s delicious and easy to make. #vegan and #glutenfree”]