Seafood rice salad
( Tris di Cereali al Sapore di Mare )

Seafood rice salad recipe

Preparation and cooking

• - Prepare sea asparagus. Sea asparagus can be cleaned quickly enough.
  Just remove the end point often leathery or otherwise remove the twigs from the harder stem.
  It is easy to feel the stem when harder under the fingers.
• - Then wash sea asparagus thoroughly.
• - Boil sea asparagus in unsalted water (sea-asparagus is already salted), about 4 minutes .
• - Drain sea asparagus very well and set aside.
• - Bring a plenty of salt water to the boil and cook rice "al dente stage".
  Drain well, run under cold water and drain again, very well.
  Remember: don't let boiled rice in the colander without any dressing!
  If you are not yet ready with other ingredients, transfer your rice into a bowl and dress with a tablespoon olive oil. Stir and set aside.
• - Meanwhile place prawns in a non-stick frying pan with 2 tablespoons olive oil and fry slightly to flavor the oil, a minute .
• - Turn off the stove and remove all prawns with a skimmer.
• - At this point put swordfish steaks in the pan, season to taste with salt and cook on both sides very well until golden. It's enough few minutes for every side.
• - Turn off the stove and transfer fish on a flat plate.
• - Clean prawns. Remove their head, legs and shell.
  Let a couple of whole prawns apart to garnish. Cut every prawn into 2 to 3 pieces.
• - Remove the skin from the swordfish steaks. Dice them but put apart some bigger pieces to garnish.
• - Transfer rice, prawns, sea asparagus, swordfish and aromatic herbs in a bowl.
  Add remaining olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
  Stir with delicacy not to crumble swordfish pieces. Season to taste with salt only if necessary.
• - Garnish as you can see in the photo or according to your fancy.

Just before serving

• - Let your rice salad rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Note

Tips

• - You can also use dried aromatic herbs but your rice salad will have a less intense flavor.
• - Use the amount of balsamic vinegar that you prefer according to your own personal taste but remember if you use too much balsamic vinegar you could cover the flavor of the other ingredients.
• - Cooking time of sea asparagus depends on their thickness. Usually they cook in very few minutes.
• - You have to eat this rice salad within the day in which you prepare it. In fact this dish loses much of its flavor the next day and the fish is heavy to digest.
• - If you have enough time and want to make your rice salad full of aroma you could use the boiling water of the sea asparagus to cook the rice. You have only to dilute it. In this case be careful because the sea asparagus grow in brackish areas and their water could already be quite salty. Or you might prepare a fish stock using the heads and shells of the prawns you've cleaned and, after filtering it, add to the sea asparagus water.

Menu planning

• - This rice salad is a tasty one-plate meal in summer. It's ideal for your important occasion too: alfresco dinner, BBQ menu ... It may be a buffet dish too. In every case it serves more people (6 to 8).

Healthy eating

• - I created this rice salad for all people who like seafood. The amount of prawns and swordfish isn't very high. That's why calories and fat are normal.
  If you like the combination of its ingredients and are single use the following amounts per head in order to maintain the same calories and total fat: 80g (2.8 ounces - 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon) rice, 60g (2.1 ounces) prawns, 60g (2.1 ounces) swordfish, a handful of sea asparagus, aromatic herbs according to your own taste, 2 teaspoons olive oil and 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar.
  Complete your meal with fresh seasonal fruit.
• - A tip for browsing our website. Look at green bar at the top of the page carefully. Here you'll be able to find all the sections about food, new and traditional Italian recipes.

Loretta

What's the right wine for " Seafood rice salad "?

Our tip is to match this seafood rice salad with a good-quality Pinot Grigio of Lison Pramaggiore DOC. Our favorite Pinot Grigio is produced by Le Carline an organic agricultural company in Veneto we knew by chance spending our summer holidays in Caorle last year (2010). If you visit the Venetian land do not miss the opportunity to visit the farm Le Carline. The owners are very friendly and you'll be able to taste the wines they produce. Not to be missed!