Today is National Rice Salad Day: nine recipes for chefs to take away all the whims

Rice salad is the first cold dish par excellence of the summer . Combining the lightness of rice with fresh seasonal crisp vegetables, tomatoes, cheese, tuna, sausage or shrimp, you get a nutritionally complete dish that, because of its versatility, lends itself to being tasted even in a greedy version, both under the umbrella, both in a restaurant with seafood specialties.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The rice salad represents the meeting point of many culinary traditions of the Mediterranean basin. And each ingredient that composes it has its own story. In particular, rice was known to the peoples of the Mediterranean after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, before being cultivated in Egypt and Spain during the Arab colonization. For this reason, rice salad is probably its forerunner in the famous Catalan paella. Even today, rice, in its different types and qualities, is therefore the common "base" common to which are added the other local ingredients, added from time to time according to the many regional culinary traditions.

CITY OF SEA WHICH GOES, RICE SALAD YOU FIND

In Italy, a city of sailors, a rice salad that you find. To collect some particularly greedy examples, one finds the Polli Cooking Lab the observatory on the food trends of the Tuscan society Polli Polli.

GOURMET IDEAS

Let's see some ideas. The chef Salvatore Perrone of the restaurant of the lido Carillon di Parraggi in Santa Margherita Ligure prepares his gourmet rice salad by focusing on local products of the Ligurian culinary tradition and choosing to use different varieties of rice: "carnaroli and venere for their consistency and fragrance, fresh vegetables of the season of vegetable gardens and of course the raw shrimps of Santa Margherita which are the flower in the ligurian fishing hat. Each ingredient is then amalgamated with a burrata and garnished with tomatoes and basil by Pra ".

On the Riviera Romagnola, the chef Anacleto Cavina of "Bagno Holiday Village" of Milano Marittim instead offers the fresh summer dish in sweet and sour version . Reinforcing the properties of basmati rice that goes well with spices, Cavina prepares its gourmet version of rice salad in the name of taste refinement, selecting poppy leaves and combining "the taste delicate avocado to crisp vegetables curry shrimps

and berries ".

Going back down the coast on the Tyrrhenian side, to Castiglione della Pescaia, preparing his gastronomic version of the rice salad to taste on the beach, the head of Campania Giovanni Romano of the restaurant "Bagno Belmare" of Punta Ala can only begin by valuing the products of their native land. His "unusual rice" is, not only in a symbolic way, "the journey through Italy and Europe of this wonderful dish. In fact it is a fresella caprese which, after taking the red and yellow cherry tomatoes Piennolo on the slopes of Vesuvius, anchovies and their colatura to Cetara and provolone From Monaco to Nerano (Sorrento Peninsula), he goes to Maremma, where he meets Thaibonnet rice and falls in love with it. These ingredients together crown their dream of a trip across Europe, landing in Amsterdam, in the land of flowers: here is the presence of edible flowers in the pot! Everything wants to be a testimony to the communion of beauty and cultures, beyond geographical and ideological boundaries. "

Staying on the Tuscan Coast, Chief Cesare Lazzeri of Nikki Beach Versilia in Marina di Pietrasanta offers a rice salad with " rice, spelled, steamed mussels, yellow and red cherry tomatoes for a sweet and sour taste, peas, squid grilled and shrimp "sparnocchi" by Viareggio, crisp vegetables (carrots, radish and celery) flavored with ginger which showcases local ingredients with a international touch " (photo at the top of the article) .

Lo saw the chef Michelino Gioia of the restaurant " Il Pellicano "of Porto Ercole all & # 39; Argentario prepares its greedy version by privileging the clbadic ingredients of rice salad, but giving them a different consistency. Gioia mix in one cream of white rice boiled in cuttlefish ink and seasoned with "blanched zucchini, sliced ​​tomatoes, pickled red onions, carpaccio of tuna, mozzarella in tomato powder, basil, sprouts and a little oil Franci. The crispiness is given by the puffed rice and the corn waffle.

Lo Chief Deborah Corsi of "La Perla del Mare" in San Vincenzo a Livorno prepares instead a "19459004" rice salad " Under the umbrella " at the raw sea vegetables in oil and burrata in which" the cooked and refrigerated rice is amalgamated with stracciatella di burrata, very small cubes of vegetables in the l 39; oil and a little extra virgin olive oil and salt. These elements give the dish the right softness and acidity, as well as beautiful bright colors. This mixture is modeled in the dish in a low and wide disc on which are placed several raw fish and crustaceans cut into small pieces. The recipe is completed by a spoonful of mayonnaise with the mullet bottarga next to the disc and a grated lemon zest and bottarga on the plate.

"I confess that rice is the type of cereal I prefer." With these words Marco Pirino chef of the Beach Club & Restaurant of the Grand Hotel of Porto Cervo justifies its two gourmet versions of rice salad for the holiday makers of the famous VIP resort of Sardinia. The first is "a" clbadic rice salad with crisp vegetables and saffron pistils "which incorporates rice parboleid, due to its ability to allow longer cooking and season the main seasonal vegetables , seasoning it with red turnips, peppers, zucchini, eggplant and pumpkin flowers . This salad then receives its aroma and its yellow color of saffron pistils, the typical flower of the center-west of Sardinia.

The other version is rather "a" salad of Venus rice and fresh tuna flavored with myrtle and grapefruit . The secret of the taste of this salad is onion "finely chopped with myrtle then caramelized with a drop of myrtle liqueur, and in fennel, left to macerate a few minutes in grapefruit juice where the fresh tuna is seasoned with soy sauce. "

RECIPES AND INGREDIENTS

Rice salad with fantasy of summer vegetables

(Star chef Pietro D & Agostino, restaurant "La Capinera" of Taormina)

] Ingredients

(for 4 people)

200 g of wild rice

50 g of carrots

50 g of potatoes

50 g of peas

50 g of zucchini

100 g of cherry tomatoes [19659017] 50 gr of beta

50 climbing peppers

5 leaves of mint

3 grams of lemon and orange peel

12 grams of eggs white snail

1 cl Evo oil, salt and pepper

Boil wild rice from cold water for 20 minutes. Cut all vegetables into cubes, ie Carrots, potatoes, peas, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, chard and peppers. Boil the chopped vegetables in boiling salted water for 2 minutes, then pbad them in a saucepan with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, mint and lemon peel and d & # 39; 39; orange. Season with salt, pepper and white snail eggs, to give a particular flavor and minerality to the dish.

Presentation

Lay the rice with vegetables and mint in a round circular mold of 10 cm, decorate with a snail caviar to obtain a two-color effect and finally decorate with aromatic herb leaves.

If you want to bring it to the beach, it is advisable to put the rice salad in an airtight container, possibly refrigerated. However, rice can be eaten both hot and cold.

Rice salad with crisp vegetables with saffron and orange

(Chef Marco Pirino, Beach Club Hotel of Porto Cervo)

Ingredients

(for 4 persons):

220 gr of rice

2 gr of saffron pistils

25 gr of eggplants

25 gr of courgette

25 gr of peppers

25 g of turnip red

8 pumpkin flowers

evo, salt and pepper

Preparation

Wash and chop the vegetables separately to fry them in a pan with a little of oil, salt and pepper. Cook the Sardinian parabola rice or the whole carnaroli and let cool with air (to speed up, you can dip the container in ice water). Divide the amount of rice in two portions and pour in the saffron pistils, so as to have a two-tone rice. Spend half of the pumpkin flowers in the pan, while the others keep them raw. Mix everything with the other vegetables and compose the dish, adding an orange flavored mayonnaise rose to a flat edge with saffron pistils.

Presentation

Put the rice in circles with zucchini, aubergines and turnips, taking care that the peppers are on top. Place half of the raw pumpkin flowers on the inside, while cooked on the outside. Finally garnish the pie with a round of orange for the perfume and a mayonnaise loop.

Venus rice salad with fresh tuna flavored with myrtle and pink grapefruit

(chef Marco Pirino, Hotel beach club Porto Cervo)

Ingredients

(Serves 4 people):

250 gr of venerated rice

80 gr of fennel

pink grapefruit (one spoon)

30 gr of myrtle leaves

50 gr onion

150 gr of fresh tuna

Soy Sauce, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper

Preparation

Cook the rice veal and let it cool to room temperature. Clean the fresh tuna and put it in the soy sauce for a few minutes. Cut and chop the fennel and sprinkle with grapefruit juice, oil and pepper. Chop the onion and myrtle leaves and cook on low heat with a little oil and a pinch of sugar to caramelize.

Presentation

Lay the grapefruit-flavored fennel layer and then the raw marinated tuna layer on the deer rice base, garnishing the dish with the caramelized myrtle onion.

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