My friend, Ricky Moore, is always cooking up something extraordinary and with a smile.

He's known for a delicious faire at his saltbox seafood joint.

Today, Ricky goes full comfort food, what he likes to call church lady goodness, with a rice dish that will make everyone happy.

Friend, it's so good to be here today.

Thank you for inviting me over.

We're gonna make a rice dish, right?

- Sheri, it is so good to see you and so good to cook with you.

Absolutely, we gonna make rice today.

- I love how you are doing this rice, because it's like cooking pasta.

- Exactly.

- So what kind of rice are we using here today?

- This is a Basmati rice.

It's light and fluffy and aromatic.

And then also we are cooking it now, and then we're gonna cook it again.

So I feel like the characteristics of this rice is very appropriate for it.

So that's why I chose it.

- So what we got going over here?

- [Ricky] Squash, summer squash.

- [Sheri] Squash.

So this is just looks like zucchini and yellow squash.

- [Ricky] Yes it is, okay.

- [Sheri] We're gonna put this here, and we're gonna put a little salt.

- [Ricky] Perfect Sheri.

- And then we're gonna do another handful, maybe two big handfuls, and a little bit more salt.

And I'm gonna toss this around.

- [Ricky] That's right.

- So everything in my sive, and then it just hangs, right?

It just sits.

- It hangs out because what's gonna happen is that salt's gonna draw up moisture.

- [Sheri] Yeah.

- And we gonna collect that and save that for the final part of the dish.

Right now what we are doing is cooking some onions until they're nice and soft.

Okay, so still sweating these out.

Now, I might go ahead and add a little garlic.

- [Sheri] I love this 'cause I think a lot of people don't realize that 'cause so many recipes say do your onions and garlic at the same time.

- [Ricky] Right.

- No, you want that garlic to just be, it needs just a few seconds to release its aroma, right?

- Absolutely, absolutely, Sheri.

- [Sheri] Oh, look at that.

You can see it coming out.

- Yeah, look at that, this is right here.

Okay, now what I wanna do is kind of use my hands and we're gonna kind of squeeze it out.

It won't escape.

We never throw away flavor, Sheri, never throw away flavor.

- Never throw away flavor.

Is this good in here or should I put this on a towel for a few minutes?

- You should put it on a towel please 'cause we do want it dry.

- [Sheri] All right.

- So we got our zucchini juice and the goal is to have two cups of zucchini juice.

And so we need about two, two cups of liquid all day.

So we're gonna need a little bit of rice water in a few.

- We are using things that people might pour down the drain and we're building our dish with it.

Look at me multitask here.

I'm gonna hand you this so it can be doing its thing while I finished doing my thing.

- [Ricky] Beautiful, okay, this looks beautiful.

That looks beautiful.

So now I'm going to add the zucchini here.

- [Sheri] And that's gonna cook down.

- [Ricky] Yes.

- [Sheri] That's gonna, yeah.

- Right, exactly, exactly.

So we can put as much, because this is a rice is a rice dish with zucchini.

- [Sheri] Right.

- Not zucchini with rice.

- You know what amazes me about this is that because we did that draining step and got all that flavor, we captured it, but we don't have any of that swampiness in here.

All right, so I'm going to use the same strainer since you had the zucchini in it.

- It makes sense.

- And just drain this off.

- And see Sherry, while you doing that, which is fantastically awesome, here's the thing, I also, at this point now I feel confident in caramelizing these onions, this garlic, and the zucchini now.

- [Sheri] Every time you scrape with that, it's coming loose.

- Exactly.

- But you're getting that little bit of brown, that little bit of delicious flavor and stuff.

So when you get that just right, what comes next?

- So now I'm gonna add our beautiful collected zucchini juice and rice broth.

Okay.

- Ooh, look, and that's gonna loosen up that last little bit of that zucchini glaze.

- Right, and now I'm gonna sprinkle in a little bit of flour and by the tablespoon, you know.

'Cause what we want to do is just create a little, a little thickness, sort of like onion zucchini gravy like thing.

I'm turn this heat up and we are gonna cook this down.

Okay, and the goal here is that, you know, you want it to be like I said, sort of a gravy like.

You know, the flour, this binds everything together.

- You can tell that zucchini stuff, we still got our color, but this is transformed this.

We really, this is, I mean you could eat, this is almost good enough to eat as it is.

- Oh, this can go on toast, on buttered toast right now.

Okay, so Sheri, that rice is looking good.

- [Sheri] Yep.

- And I think it's time to incorporate that rice.

Let me turn this heat down just a bit.

Okay, so this is a rice dish.

- [Sheri] Yes.

- So just be clear about this.

- [Sheri] Yep.

- When we add the rice here, we want, we are gonna add it gradually.

I'm gonna slowly incorporate it.

And I think that we have enough rice right now.

- You got it.

- So I'm gonna just kind of fold everything in.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask you to add a little bit more of the liquid because the reason why is because now we are gonna cook it again in the oven.

I'm just gonna turn this on a bit more.

- Okay.

- Just bring it to a good boil.

But yeah, that's, that's sort of like my standard.

Anytime you make a a baked casserole, vegetable, rice, meat, macaroni and cheese, it needs to start prior to going in custard like.

I'm gonna turn this off a little, turn it down a bit.

This is critical, okay.

Gotta taste it, and then you're tasting for flavor.

- Texture.

- Texture, balance.

That's delicious.

I'm gonna add a little cheese, chop some parsley.

- Are those Ritz crackers?

- These are Ritz crackers.

- Oh, everything sits better on a Ritz.

- Let me tell you why.

I'm gonna break these up in my hand, okay, just like we do in the house.

Okay, and it's gonna sprinkle on top.

That's right, now we gonna put a little lemon zest on because I think we should, okay.

But no, this brightens up the dish.

A little bit of olive oil on top.

- That's beautiful.

- Okay, now we're just gonna bake this in the oven.

[upbeat music] Oh, Sheri, look at that.

- Friend, you did a good job.

I can tell already.

- We're good, let's eat, you know.

- Look at that, it comes out in one beautiful piece.

- And I am so particular, but that is beautiful.

I think, and then obviously from a vegetarian standpoint, this is like superb.

- This is perfect.

Mm, it's sophisticated without being fancy.

- [Ricky] That's right.

- It's about the rice.

You've got the aroma, you've got that lemon.

This is amazing.

- Thank you so much, Sheri.

I had a joy cooking with you.

- Let's do this more often, all right?

- Absolutely.

- All right, here's to rice.

- Here's to rice, something something.