Rainbow Rice

The other day I discovered chicken chorizo in the supermarket, imported from Sri Lanka. The round sausages looked plump, orange and appetizing. I felt my stomach grumble. Remember: If you want to lose weight or shop on a budget, don’t go shopping with an empty stomach.

On an impulse, I bought the vacuum-sealed, frozen packet and deposited it in my freezer.

There it remained for a few weeks while I pondered the question: What do I do with chicken chorizo?

Originally, I had planned to turn them into a condiment for pasta, fried with spring onions and garlic.

A few days ago however, I felt more like combining them with rice. I had just bought some beautiful, red rice from Goa. In my fridge I had some wonderfully crisp bell peppers and carrots. I added some fresh prawns to counteract the chemically treated chorizo with some healthy proteins and omega-3 fatty acids.

So I set out to prepare my rainbow rice, a hearty, spicy dinner that delivers a wealth of nutrition and some not so healthy stuff – but then: We live only once!

If you want to prepare a vegetarian version of this dish, just omit the chorizo and the prawns and add some vegetables and/or cheese of your choice.

Wishing you happy cooking, always!

Kornelia Santoro with family

Rainbow Rice

Ingredients:
(for 4 servings)

• 2 cups uncooked rice
• 2 chorizo sausages
• 500 grams peeled prawns
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 spring onions
• 4 big garlic cloves
• 3 cm ginger root
• 3 carrots
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 2 tablespoons soya sauce

Method:

At first you have to boil the rice. Rinse the Goan red rice well under flowing water. Then drain it and place it with double the amount of water and a teaspoon of salt into a pressure cooker. I boil the rice for 15 minutes after the first whistle and open the pressure cooker as soon as possible, to let all the steam escape. 
Devein the prawns and blanch them: Bring about half a litre of water with a teaspoon of salt to a rolling boil and throw the prawns into the salt water. When it starts boiling again, leave the prawns for 10 seconds, then drain them and keep them aside. If you want to make sure they are not overcooked, place the drained prawns into a bowl of ice water. Honestly, I just drain them.

Boiling the prawns for 10 seconds ensures that you kill Salmonella and other harmful bacteria. I always blanch prawns for fried rice to be sure that they are properly cooked.
Now it is time to clean the vegetables. Prepare all the vegetables before starting to stir fry the rice. Clean and crush the garlic cloves. Clean and grate the ginger root. Wash the spring onions and chop them. Peel the carrots and grate them roughly. Wash the bell peppers and cut them into small pieces. Halve the chorizo sausages lengthwise and then slice them.
You can start to stir-fry, when all the ingredients are prepped. Heat the olive oil in a wok. While stirring constantly, add the spring onions, the garlic and the ginger. After one minute incorporate the chorizo. Fry these ingredients for three minutes while stirring constantly. The chorizo should start to melt its fatty bits and pieces.

Now add the carrots and then the rice in several batches. Make sure, you mix everything well. Season the rice with the different sauces and try. Adjust the seasoning according to your taste. If you like your dishes spicy, you might want to add some chopped chillies together with the spring onions at the beginning of the stir frying.
In the end combine the chopped bell peppers and the prawns and serve immediately. I do not fry the bell peppers because I want to preserve their high content of vitamin C and their crispiness.

Seafood Risotto

Dear all,   We love Seafood Risotto. Few dishes combine healthy ingredients in such a fabulous way. Although preparing it requires quite a bit of vegetable chopping and cleaning, I don’t mind. It also needs regular stirring but this can turn into a meditative experience. While I am standing at the stove cooking the risotto I am looking forward to a meal that leaves me satisfied on many levels. First of all it tastes great. Then it gives us a hefty amount of the precious omega 3 oils, not to mention all the vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients from the vegetables. To keep it simple, I restrain my use of seafood to squids and prawns. A traditional Seafood Risotto however, sports any kind of mussels, shellfish and fish. If you feel adventurous, add what you like. You just have to know the cooking time or method of your seafood. If you want to include mussels, for example, clean them and fry them in a pan with a little bit of oil. Toss the opened mussels into the risotto at the end of the cooking time (discard the mussels which stay closed). If you wish to incorporate fish, clean it and cut it into bite sized pieces. Add them to the risotto about five minutes before the rice is cooked. There is one setback about preparing this dish though: You absolutely need Italian rice to cook a proper risotto. No other rice will give you the creamy texture of Arborio, Carnaroli or Vialone Nano rice. Seafood Risotto   Ingredients (for 4 servings): 300 grams prawns 1 cup rice 1 red bell pepper 1 yellow bell pepper 1 green bell pepper 2 stalks celery (about 1 cup when chopped) 1 bundle spring onions 3 garlic cloves 1 packet tomato puree (200 ml) 4 tablespoons olive oil salt pepper 2 ½ cups cooking liquid Method: Skin and clean the squids from their insides. You can get this done by your fishmonger. You can also use frozen squids, just give them time to defrost. Cut them into bite-sized pieces. Clean the prawns. Make sure to remove their intestines by cutting along their spine and pulling out the dark strings. You can also use frozen prawns. Just thaw them before cooking and make sure they are properly deveined. Clean all the vegetables and cut them into cubes. Crush the garlic cloves. Remember that onions and garlic need about ten minutes of fresh air to fully develop their healthy properties. When everything is prepped, you can start cooking. Italian rice for risotto needs about 18 minutes to be done. Keep this in mind, when you want to incorporate different kinds of seafood. Pour the olive oil into a medium sized pot with a heavy bottom. The bottom is important because you need the heat to be distributed evenly. When the oil is hot, add the spring onions and the celery. Let them sizzle for around two minutes, and then add the squids and the garlic. Give it a good stir, and adjoin the rice. Mix everything together, then add one cup of water. You could also use fish stock if you have any good one, or chicken stock. Wait until the liquid bubbles and the rice has soaked up some. Then add another cup of liquid. When this has bubbled away for some minutes, incorporate the tomato puree. Again, wait that the risotto reaches bubbling temperature again. You don’t want the cooking temperature drop too much by adding all the liquid at once. However, you don’t need a ferocious bubbling in your pot. A gentle simmering is all that is required to cook the rice nicely. Then add the last half-cup of liquid. About seven to eight minutes before the rice is done incorporate the bell peppers. You don’t want to soften them completely. They should have a little crunch left. At the end of the cooking time, add the prawns. Now season the risotto with salt and pepper according to your taste. Stir the risotto until the prawns have changed colour and turned opaque. Be careful not to overcook the risotto. It should not turn into a stiff cream, but flow gently onto the plate. If you want some zing in your risotto, add some fresh chopped chillies at the beginning of the cooking time. Risotto – a gift of colonialism The veil of times gone by covers a big part of the history of riziculture in Italy, but some facts are known. The Romans knew rice, but they cultivated it for medicinal purposes only, not as a food grain. The Arabian invasion of parts of Europe established rice fields early on in Spain and Sicily. They were exporting rice from the fertile island Sicily already in the tenth century. During following centuries the popularity of rice grew among the wealthy owing to the exorbitant prices of the product. In the 15th century, clever merchants invested heavily into the clearing of the Lombardy plains in northern Italy to grow rice there. The flat lands, abundance of water and humidity, especially in the Po Valley, provided the perfect environment for this crop. The growing towns of Venice, Milan and Ferrara made huge profits. Unfortunately, only the investors profited from this development. The workers, many of them children, were kept as slaves. During the centuries, rice became a staple in this part of Italy. The cooking technique of risotto was invented some time along the way. The most famous of all the risotto recipes is undoubtedly the Risotto alla Milanese. This recipe goes back to the year 1574. The magnificent Gothic cathedral, the Duomo of Milano, was being built. A young apprentice named Valerius was responsible for colouring the glass windows. Because he had obtained a brilliant yellow colour, everybody joked that he had used saffron for the glass. Tired of the teasing, he added saffron to the risotto, which was served at his master’s wedding. The rice tasted so good that saffron remains the essential ingredient of risotto alla Milanese. Even today the fields flooded for rice characterise the countryside only a few minutes away from downtown Milan. Growing rice relied heavily on cheap labour until the 1960s when machines took over the harvesting. Before, thousands of women called mondine left their homes in Emilia and Veneto to work in the rice fields. They became a legendary sight in northern Italy. For eight hours, they worked barefoot in the water, protected from the sun by large straw hats. Dressed in short pants and long sleeves, they slowly walked backward, bending toward the ground to pick up weeds that infested the rice fields. Famous are the melodies they sang—about their tough days and about love and their homes far away. The dramatic Neo-Realistic movie “Riso Amaro” (“Bitter Rice”), produced by Dino De Laurentiis in 1950, revolves around the lives of the mondine, starring his later wife, the actress Silvana Mangano. More recipes at Kornelia's Kitchen Sign up for my monthly newsletter