Brown Rice Salad

Brown Rice Salad

This is a recipe from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course.

Delia Smiths Brown Rice Salad
Simple, healthy and very tasty – and containing a lot more than just brown rice.

A very unassuming name for a lovely salad. It’s a mix of brown rice, cucumber, tomato, red pepper, spring onion, apple, currants and chopped walnuts mixed together with vinaigrette and seasoned with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

delia-smith
This is a recipe from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course.

It’s filling, nutritious and simple to make. Also with the cold weather we’re having you can quickly cool the rice, within 5 – 10 minutes, just by leaving it out in the open air and fluffing it up with a fork every couple of minutes.

Because there’s fruit in the salad I didn’t add any garlic to the vinaigrette. To be honest I never add garlic to a vinaigrette. It tastes great when other people make it or when it’s in some shop bought vinaigrette, but for some reason whenever I add it to a vinaigrette it tastes way too sharp. But because brown rice and garlic go so well together I added a couple of whole garlic cloves, peeled and gently bruised, to the pot and then removed them when the rice was cooked.

ingredients
Ingredients for Brown Rice Salad

Brown Rice Salad

Serves 4 - 6

Brown Rice Salad

Ingredients

  • Brown rice measured to 275ml in a glass measuring jug
  • 1 pint of boiling water (570ml)
  • 2 whole garlic cloves, peeled and bruised (optional)
  • 1 dessertspoon oil
  • 4 - 6 tablespoons vinaigrette (cider vinegar, oil, mustard powder, salt & pepper)
  • 3 spring onions, chopped finely
  • 2 inches cucumber, finely chopped
  • 2 large tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped
  • 1/2 red or green bell pepper, seeded and finely choped
  • 1 dessert red apple, cored and chopped with the skin left on
  • 25g currants
  • 25g walnuts, chopped
  • salt & freshly milled black pepper
  • parley for garnish (optional)

Instructions

  1. Rinse the rice thoroughly in a sieve. Heat some oil in a saucepan, stir in the rice, pour in the boiling water, a good pinch of salt and the garlic cloves (if using). Bring to the boil, leave it boil for a couple of minutes, then cover the pan, reduce the heat to a low setting and leave to cook until done - the water will all be gone.
  2. To make the vinaigrette add 1 level teaspoon of salt, 1 rounded teaspoon of mustard powder, 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar, 6 tablespoons of regular olive oil or sunflower oil, and a sprinkling of pepper to a jar, seal it and shake it till it's emulsified.
  3. When the rice is cooked remove from the heat put in a suitable container. Pour in the dressing and mix around with a fork. Let the rice cool - fluffing it up every so often helps the heat escape.
  4. When the rice is cool, taste and add more vinaigrette if necessary. Then combine with the rest of the ingredients. Season with salt and pepper according to taste.
  5. You can serve immediately or place in the fridge until ready to serve. If you like parsley, sprinkle a little over when serving.
http://twimii.com/recipes/brown-rice-salad/

ingredients ready
Everything chopped up or cooked and ready to assemble. Except for the tomatoes which are still, with slits in their skin, submerged in hot water to make them easier to peel.
brown-rice-salad
The recipe doesn’t call for it but here I cored the cucumber and seeded the tomatoes as well. It works both ways.
brown rice salad
A bowl of brown rice salad.