This red rice salad is a recipe made without much thought, using what was in the fridge, and photographed at the last moment on the super-sunny terrace on a day when you realize that maybe summer has really arrived. 🤩
A red rice salad, made with red rice because it was at that moment the only variety of rice I had left in the pantry (as always! Remember it happened to me before? 😃). But since I really wanted to have lunch on the terrace and I really wanted to make a rice salad that had the color and flavor of summer, I bent over backwards to succeed 😃 and used the red rice which I had never tried in salad form before (but if Venere rice worked… why wouldn’t the red one? 😁).
As for the dressing, when it comes to summer salads, I never worry, there’s always something in the fridge!, even when I think I’ve run out of everything, somehow those two-three miraculous ingredients – like cherry tomatoes and red onion – once again made me repeat the famous phrase: “even for today we managed to have lunch”.
But I could also say: “when there are two tomatoes and an onion you always eat like a king”.
No, this is not a true quote, it’s just a phrase my partner and I often repeat, since in summer we would eat like this twice a day every day, maybe alternating between rice and pasta, but keeping the two main indispensable elements unchanged: onion and tomatoes.
And so, when I saw that today’s Light and Tasty outing called for a cold main dish, I had no doubts, even if the photos aren’t magazine-worthy, even if I didn’t take photos of the steps (also because there aren’t that many steps in this recipe!), I chose it, a very simple red rice salad (but you can use whatever rice you want) with cherry tomatoes, red onion, a piece of quartirolo, a pinch of oregano and a few other summer scents.
Summer has just begun, but I already know that until September I will have a dish like this on the table every day. Hurrah for summer oh yeah! 😀
〰〰〰
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Cheap
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Spring, Summer
Ingredients for 2 people
- 7 oz red rice
- 8 cherry tomatoes
- 1.75 oz quartirolo cheese
- 1 red onion (small)
- 1 bunch arugula
- 1 pickled gherkin
- 1 slice bell pepper
- a few capers
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- to taste oregano
Tools
- Pot
- Salad Bowl
Steps
Cook the rice by boiling it in water.
To be precise, I boiled it for about 10 minutes and then turned off the heat to finish cooking by absorption (with the lid on for the remaining 20 minutes).
Meanwhile:
Soak the onion in cold water for about 10 minutes.
Wash and cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
Wash and chop the slice of bell pepper.
Wash and coarsely chop the arugula.
Rinse the quartirolo, capers, and gherkin with water to wash away the excess salt.
Slice the gherkin.
Cut the quartirolo into pieces.
Put everything in a salad bowl and season with oil and oregano.
When the rice is cooked, drain it and pour it into the salad bowl.
Mix everything well and let it cool, then put it in the fridge for about an hour (but you can serve it immediately if you prefer it at room temperature).
Enjoy your meal!!
Salt-Free Tips
A couple of hours of rest allow the dressing to better flavor the rice. In any case, an infallible method to flavor rice salads without using salt is to enrich them with fresh onion (as in today’s recipe) or with a small clove of finely chopped garlic. 😉
If you are interested in reducing or eliminating salt, always remember to:
▫ Gradually reduce salt, the palate must slowly get used to it and should not notice the progressive reduction.
▫ Use spices. Chili, pepper, curry, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cumin…
▫ Use aromatic herbs. Basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, mint…
▫ Use seeds. Sesame, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts…
▫ Use spicy vegetables or fruit. Garlic, onion, lemon, orange…
▫ Use my salt-free vegetable granular and gomasio.
▫ Prefer fresh foods.
▫ Avoid cooking in water, prefer cooking methods that do not disperse flavors (griddle, parchment, steam, microwave)
▫ Avoid bringing the salt shaker to the table!
▫ Occasionally break the rule. It’s good for the mood and helps to persevere.
If you don’t want, or can’t, give up salt:
▫ You can still try my recipes by salting according to your habits.
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Light and Tasty:
What have my colleagues from the Light and Tasty Team decided to cook for this cold dish feature?
Carla Emilia: Couscous with black lentils, almonds and za’atar
Cinzia: Couscous with vegetables and chickpeas
Claudia: Venere rice with vegetables and eggs
Daniela: Barley salad with cherry tomatoes, feta and olives
Elena: Basmati rice salad with stuffed cherry tomatoes and peppers
Milena: Venere rice domes with colorful chard and robiola heart
