This is an extremely tasty rice and fish dish with a little kick of spice. I had never made this recipe before and was really surprised by it, I thought Mexican rice with basa would surely be a flavourless gluggy mess but it wasn’t. It was great!

This dish is a wonderful way to use inexpensive basa and incorporate more fish into your diet. This is one of the easiest, tastiest dishes to prepare because it all cooks in the one saucepan so cleaning up afterwards is a breeze too.

This dish handles substitutions well, if you have no vegetable stock you can use chicken instead. If you have no tomato paste, use tomato sauce instead. I also think a diced carrot would be nice added to this dish.

Prep: 10

Cook: 20

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients

• 1 onion, sliced thinly
• 1 red or green capsicum, deseeded and sliced thinly
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbs oil
• 1 cup corn and/or peas
• 1 1/2 cups white rice
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/3 cup tomato paste
• 3 1/2 cups vegetable stock
• 500 g basa, cut into bite sized pieces
• salt and pepper, to season

Method

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil to a medium heat. Add the onion and capsicum and cook until the onion has softened.
2. Add the corn/peas, rice, paprika and cumin and stir to combine.
3. Add the stock and tomato paste and bring to the boil.
4. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 12 minutes until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is cooked.
5. Stir in the basa and replace the cover. Cook for 3 minutes until the basa is cooked through.
6. Season with salt and pepper then serve.