Curried Rice

From Joy of Cooking, Rombauer and Becker, 1995 edition, p. 208. The following words, correspondingly, are not mine.

3 Servings. An unusual and delicious rice dish. Its popularity is undoubtedly due to the restraint with which the spice is used.

Pour:

• 2 cups hot water over:
• 1/2 cup rice

  Place the rice where it will remain hot, but will not cook, about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add to the rice:

• 1/2 cup drained, chopped tomatoes
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup finely sliced onion
• 1/4 cup sliced green peppers
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 3/4 teaspoon curry powder

  Bake these ingredients in a baking dish 1 1/2 hours or until done. Stir them from time to time. At first, there will be a great preponderance of liquid, but gradually the rice will absorb it. Remove the dish from the oven while the rice is still moist. Good served with beer.

• 1 1/2 hours is a bit too long; try 70 minutes. Or a little less, even, depending on how you like your vegetables (extremely smooshy or just very smooshy.)
• This tends to need just a little bit more salt than they recommend. I haven't experimented with changing the salt content before baking it, but sprinkling a little on your own serving is probably a good solution if you want to bring the flavor out a little more, which I usually do.
• What you want to interpret "where it will remain hot, but will not cook" to mean is totally up to you. I happen to have, in my house, a double-layer warming oven which is cleverly disguised as a cabinet. Someone seems to keep trying to use it as a cabinet, as things like broken clock radios, cardboard boxes full of dead batteries, and bags of cat food always end up in it. But once it is cleared out, it does just the trick.
• Of course you will want to make something during the meanwhile, as this does take a long while to cook, and MTV seems to have this policy that they will not play good videos for very long at night. I have found that East India Chicken Curry, or at least my variation on it, goes well with this rice. I really haven't ever had the opportunity to try the actual recipe, never having had what is obliquely referred to as a "fryer" dans le réfrigérateur. Of course, your mileage may vary. :-)

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