Tiny bowls of sticky, nutty rice topped with crunchy ginger and garlic coated cucumber.
This is such a solid starter recipe and naturally free of animal products too.

Ingredients (feeds 4 as a starter)
175g of thai black rice (Sainsbury’s)
1 tablespoon of almond butter
juice of a lime
1 tablespoon of Kikkoman tamari (gluten-free, GM-free soy sauce)
1 tablespoon of maple syrup

1 cucumber
2” piece of ginger, grated
1 tablespoon of sushi ginger (I used Yutaka from Sainsbury’s), roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
sea salt

rocket to serve

Method:
Cook the rice according to packet instructions (around 30 minutes).
Allow it to cool completely.
Whisk together the almond butter, tamari, lime juice and maple syrup. Add enough water to thin it out a little, around 2 tablespoons. Mix this into the rice.
Peel the cucumber, cut it in half length-ways and cut out most of the seeds by making a triangular incision through the middle. This may be easier to do in sections.
Slice the cucumber into thick chunks and put them in a bowl. Add the crushed garlic, two pinches of salt, olive oil, roughly chopped sushi ginger and squeeze in the juice from the grated ginger (virtually just pick up the grated ginger and squeeze it so the juice pours onto the cucumber).
Put your hand in the mixture and squeeze some of the cucumber pieces, almost squashing them. This will help the flavour mix into the cucumber much better.
To serve, add two generous tablespoons of the black rice mix into a bowl, top with two tablespoons of the cucumber mixture and spoon over some of the juice from the cucumber that may have collected on the bottom of the bowl. Top with a small handful of rocket.