Seafood Rice Salad

Summer is here and  there is nothing better than a delicious fresh rice salad. This is our favourite combination of ingredients. It tastes so fresh! We serve it with plain old fashioned salad cream!! You can use mayonnaise, more olive oil or even a vinaigrette. Give it a go...you can prepare this salad in advance and share it with your family and friends to a BBQ or party or even a picnic at the park or at the beach. It is very easy to prepare as the only cooking needed is cooking the rice. So, for 6-8 servings, you will need...

• 3 cups cold cooked rice [about 900g]
• 1 red or green pepper, diced
• 1 large tomato, deseeded and diced
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 4 tbsp pitted green olives
• 120g smoked salmon, cut into small pieces
• 200g cooked prawns 
• 16 surimi sticks, sliced
• 175g cooked fresh mussels, without shell
• 1 tin (60g) anchovies, chopped (optional)
• Chopped fresh mint
• Chopped fresh coriander
• Half teaspoon dried marjoram
• Half teaspoon dried dill
• Some extra virgin olive oil
• Salad cream or mayonnaise, to serve
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

How to...

1. This has to be the easiest method ever.  Just put all the ingredients (apart from the salad cream or mayo) in a bowl.
2. Mix slowly with a plastic spoon.
3. Dress with the salad cream or mayonnaise.

Enjoy!!
R&A

Sugo ai Frutti di Mare e Tonno - Mixed Seafood & Tuna Pasta Sauce

There is nothing better for a food lover than to go to the market and see what is freshly available. The other day I was having a word with one of the fishmongers at the market and we agreed on how, unfortunately, the British people in general do not appreciate all the abundance of fish and seafood available all year round. The United Kingdom is an island surrounded by a sea and an ocean, namely the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and the amount of fish and seafood that is caught daily from them is quite abundant so there are myriad of ways in how one can cook them. But, again the British people mostly sides with the USA when it comes to food and prefers microwave meals and junk food...obviously not everyone!! :) 

We also came across whelks [scungilli] for the first time, these are large sea snails which when we had one to see what they where they did taste like the sea...wonderful...quite rubbery but taste good!! The missus was not that convinced but we bought some anyway to add them to our own seafood sauce. 

Usually seafood sauces are not prepared using tomatoes but they are cooked in bianco, that is, garlic, olive oil, white wine and obviously the seafood. But Amanda loves her sauce when it comes to pasta so we do use tomatoes, fresh or tinned!! So here is our Sugo Ai Frutti Di Mare [Pasta Sauce with Mixed Seafood]...feel free to use it with any pasta shape you like!! You will need...

• 300g Mixed Seafood [We used a mixture of cockles, prawns and mussels]
• 4-6 Whelks (Sea snails)
• 1 can good quality Tuna chunks
• 1 or 2 cans chopped tomatoes [depends on how much tomato sauce you want]
• 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 large cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• 2 or 3 small dried chillies, chopped [optional but it does add a kick]
• 150ml White Lambrusco (or other white wine)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

How to...

1. Put the oil, chillies and garlic in a shallow pan and fry until garlic is golden.
2. Add the seafood and whelks, and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add the Lambrusco and simmer until the liquid evaporates.
4. Add the tuna, tomatoes, marjoram and pepper and simmer for about 15 minutes on a medium heat.
5. Serve with pasta of your choice-Linguine will be the best so you can mop up the sauce from the plate :)

Enjoy!!

R&A