The tomatoes are ripening beautifully and developing their full flavor in the hot August sun, and are wonderfully complemented by the sweet aroma of basil. Pomodori al riso (Tomatoes with rice) is a very simple dish, but one that perfectly recreates the taste of summer: ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, a hint of garlic, and olive oil. Pomodori al riso are originally from Roma, where you can find them in any rosticceria (the Italian Take-away). Here is the recipe for four people:
| Ingredienti: |
Ingredients: |
| Otto pomodori maturi di grandezza media |
Eight ripe, medium size tomatoes |
| Sedici cucchiai di riso tipo Arborio |
Sixteen tablespoons of Arborio rice |
| Uno spicchio d’aglio |
One clove of garlic |
| Due cucchiai di basilico fresco |
Two tablespoons of fresh basil |
| Olio extra vergine d’oliva |
Extra virgin olive oil |
| Sale e pepe |
Salt and pepper |
Preparation:
Wash and dry the tomatoes. Carefully slice off their tops like small lids, and put them aside. Empty the tomatoes of their seeds and flesh, reserving it, and put the tomatoes upside-down to drain out any remaining water. Blend the reserved tomato flesh together with the basil and garlic. Put the mixture in a mixing bowl and add the rice, salt and pepper, and about 200 ml of extra virgin olive oil. Mix well, cover with cling film, and put in the fridge for a couple of hours to rest.
Lightly oil a large baking tray, and stand the tomatoes in it. Fill the tomatoes with the rice mixture without pressing down too hard, then put their lids back on (cover them with the tops which you had put aside). Drizzle a little olive oil over the tomatoes, and bake them in a hot oven (200C degrees, 400F degrees) for about forty minutes, or until the tops of the tomatoes look wrinkled and begin turning brown at the edges. Leave them to cool, and enjoy your Pomodori al riso either warm or cold with fresh mozzarella cheese and chilled white wine.
Buon Appetito!
Comments:
Nathan:
Looks like a great recipe. One question, though, should the rice be cooked before being added to the reserved tomato skins, or should it be added uncooked?
Grazie!
serena:
@Nathan Salve Nathan!
No, the rice is not cooked first, is added directly to the tomato flesh and left to soak up the juice for a couple of hours.
Buon Appetito!
Serena
Nathan:
Tried these last night and they were fantastic! Thanks.
W.P. Cirino:
I also blog about Italian Food and Culture
Do you have software that will allow me post my Blogs
in English and Italian, in side by side translation.
blog.cirinopublishing.com
Cordiali Saluti,
W.P.
serena:
@W.P. Cirino Salve W.P. Cirino, transparent.com use wordpress for publishing our blogs, but I found it so clumsy and illogical that I downloaded (free) Windows Live Writer. Live Writer is pretty easy to use and gives me a lot of flexibility to be creative, including easily inserting side by side translations. This I do by creating tables, all it takes is a click of the mouse, and you can choose the table properties such as size, number of rows, columns etc. I then type my text with the appropriate translation in the adjoining column, or sometimes in the next row down. I usually select the option to not show the table borders, therefore, looking at my published blog you wouldn’t realise that the translation was in a table.
I’ve also set up live writer to publish directly to my transparent.com blog page, effectively bypassing wordpress, which has made life a lot easier. Live writer is also great for embedding photos, videos and so on, and you can easily switch between the normal view and the preview mode which downloads your blog template so that what you see is what you get.
Spero di essere stata di aiuto, saluti da Serena