Rice Is Nice, Especially Loaded with Vegetables

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Boil rice, then while it is warm, sprinkle with rice vinegar (seasoned or not), dribble in some olive oil, and consider the result as you might a canvas stretched and gessoed and ready for painting.

It is fun to try different combinations of grains, beans, lentils with whatever summer vegetables come to hand, plus dried fruits like currants, raisins, or dried cranberries. These salads have enough heft to serve as a light supper by themselves or the accompaniment to, or even mixed with, meat or seafood for a more substantial meal. Lately, I have been working with rice because, mixed with colorful ingredients, it is downright pretty.

I prefer to load the rice up with celery; shallots; or red, green, red, or yellow peppers; cherry tomatoes; cucumber; chopped up green beans; shredded carrots; or cooked peas. It is different every time, and depends on what is in the vegetable drawer calling out to be used quickly—two florets of cauliflower, a few desperate broccoli stalks. Then I add golden raisins, or a few chopped up dried cranberries, or plain raisins or currants plumped up with a dash of hot water. Then we eat it.

The trick to this recipe if there is any is to make sure you put the oil and vinegar on it while it is warm; then the rice will stay soft rate it, even if you have to refrigerate it, though I recommend keeping it at room temperature before serving it.

The recipe is incredibly elastic: you can use more rice than veggies or vice versa. The oil and vinegar ought to be added to taste; or you can use your favorite vinaigrette. Before adding them, I have always preferred to blanch vegetables like green beans, cauliflower, or broccoli to improve their flavor and brighten them. I’d be less inclined to use summer squash than the other vegetables I’ve mentioned because they don’t have pronounced flavor and are a bit soft, though if diced would be okay to use.

Aim for half a cup of cooked rice per person or a quarter cup of raw. Sometimes I dump in a little cooked red quinoa because it is pretty. Suiting yourself is the rule of thumb.

Rice Salad with Vegetables
 
Ingredients
  • ½ cup cooked rice per person
  • oil and vinegar or vinaigrette to taste
  • Handful of raisins and/or currants to taste
  • Hot water
  • Assorted vegetables to taste:
  • Shallots or red onion finely diced
  • Chopped peppers
  • Blanched green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peas
  • Shredded carrots
  • Diced cucumber
  • Diced tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes
  • Coarsely chopped dried cranberries
  • Salt and pepper
Instructions
  1. Put the cooked rice in a large bowl.
  2. While the rice is still warm, dribble the oil and vinegar or vinaigrette over it.
  3. In a separate bowl, put the raisins or currants, and cover with hot water to plump them.
  4. Chop the rest of the vegetables and add them to the rice
  5. Drain the raisins and/or currants and add them to the rice.
  6. Add the cranberries.
  7. Toss everything together until they are evenly mixed, taste, add salt and pepper, and more dressing if needed.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.