The story goes that when my husband Oscar was a boy, the family would pack a carload of towels, sun shades, chairs, cousins, food and drink and head off to the beach for the whole day. Iaia would always take along a whole, tea-towel-wrapped, ceramic dish of Summer Baked Rice, especially for her eldest son, and he would come rushing out of the sea to demolish the whole lot by himself, washing it down with chocolate milk. It is still one of his favourite lunches!
The amounts here feed between three and four people. If you don’t have a ceramic dish, use a metal baking tray, but increase the amount of water slightly so that it is exactly double the amount of rice.
The black pudding sausage is optional!
What you need:
2 glasses (roughly 400g) Spanish rice
1/2 glass of olive oil
a whole head of garlic
three or four ripe tomatoes
a handful of flat green beans
a good-sized potato
150g white beans
a black-pudding sausage (botifarra)
parsley
1 tsp sweet paprika
saffron/orange food colouring
water
What you do:
Pop the oven on at 200ºC and prep by measuring out your rice and oil, grating one of your tomatoes, slicing the potatoes, breaking the beans into pieces and putting your water on to boil. The amount of water is directly dependent on the amount of rice you use and the type of dish you cook in. If using a metal tray, use two glasses of water for every glass of rice. For ceramic dishes, hold back half a glass or so of liquid. For this particular recipe, I used 750ml of water for 400g of rice.
You will also need to make what we call a “picadillo”, which is a bashed-up clove of garlic with a small bunch of parsley and a bit of oil added. I use a mortar and pestle, but finely chopping is good too. Set this aside for a moment while you get on with the frying and assembling.
Place the rice into the bottom of your ceramic (or metal) dish and gently shake it so it settles evenly over the base.
Now pour the half-glass of oil into a frying pan and get the heat on. Place the whole garlic head in the oil for a quick, oil-flavouring fry. Once it has been on for a few minutes, drop it into the saucepan with your water and let it simmer gently while you prepare everything else, this will help ensure that the cloves are all cooked through by the time you come to eat them.
In the same oil, lightly fry your sliced potatoes. Remove and place over the rice, distributing the pieces evenly. Gently fry your green beans and when they look bright green and slick, add the grated tomato and white beans. Fry for a minute or two longer, then in goes the paprika for a quick swirl. Remove from the heat and pour over the potatoes and rice, spreading things evenly over the whole dish. Slice the remaining tomatoes thickly and place them on top of the other ingredients. Nestle the head of garlic in the middle and (optionally) place the sausage right next to it. Spoon your “picadillo” over everything. Sprinkle a bit of food colouring on top to get the Spanish yellow that people here prefer to white when it comes to rice.
Now, hopefully, you will still have the right amount of water in your saucepan, and it will be boiling hot. If it looks as though some of it has evaporated, add a little. It’s important that the water be boiling when you add it to the dish so that the rice starts cooking immediately; otherwise, you might get a gluggy mess. So, carefully pour the hot water over your rice and slip it straight into your oven. Bake until the water has all been absorbed; depending on how hot your oven really is, this should take between 25 – 40 minutes.
Let the rice cool for a few minutes before tucking in, or I promise you will burn the bejesus out of your mouth.
Serve with: sweet raw onion slices go beautifully on top, cold chocolate milk is a must for beach-goers, while at-homers could try a fresh young red.
Iaia's kitchen 