Rice Salad with Carrots & Chive Flowers
It's been a long time since I last dedicated a dish to my one-year old. Since she weaned herself a long time ago from baby food, I didn't find the necessity to cook special dishes for her. She drops everything for rice these days. It's not really something I would gladly give her because she literally drops a lot of them on the floor, on her clothes and on her chair. It's exasperating to clean up after one of her enjoyable meals but once you see a big smile of satisfaction on her face, you just forget all the backbreaking labor of taking away the rice from everywhere except the ceiling. After all, we all went through this phase before reaching full dexterity of handling our eating utensils.
She loves plain boiled rice with loads of parmigiano reggiano & oil. If we don't convince her that there is enough cheese in her rice, she would insist in spooning an endless amount of parmigiano in her rice bowl. She won't eat unless we mix the cheese & oil in her rice in front of her. So the condiments are for her approval. I chopped a carrot in the electric chopper to attain a very fine consistency that would make it impossible to segregate from the rice. It went well.
So this dish is just simply boiled rice mixed with an uncooked finely chopped carrot, parmigiano reggiano and extra virgin olive oil. It's simple, fast and very healthy. Since the carrot is raw, all the nutrients are still intact. The chive flowers can be an option to add to the rice salad because not all toddlers would find it pleasing. However, on the nutritional level, it has a lot of nutrients too like the carrot so if there's no complaint, keep them there.
Irrelevant to this recipe, I think I have to mention that I had been having problems in receiving comments. A couple of friends told me that they left comments but I didn't receive either of the two. I tried to remedy it and now it seems to be working again. So if you left a comment, and didn't see it appear, it must have been one of the comments I lost. I value comments so much because they make me feel that I am not blogging to an empty audience. If you like something (or don't like something, gosh, I hope not!), give me a shout. I would love to hear it.
Rice Salad with Carrots & Chive Flowers
Ingredients:
Serves 2
- 1/2 cup rice
- 1 carrot, chopped very finely
- 2 chive flowers, florets picked from clusters
- salt
- extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano, grated
- Boil rice in salted water until al dente. When cooked, turn off fire immediately and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
- Add carrot, parmigiano reggiano, chive florets, salt (if you still need it) & extra virgin olive oil.
- Serve warm or cold.