Week 36: Stuffed Rice Salad

The book: My green recipe folder 

The recipe: no. 13, "Stuffed Rice Salad"

My green folder, previously untapped by the Random Kitchen project, contains recipes that have been given to me by (or procured from) friends and family. These range from my one-time Mainz-mate Kate's concoction known only as "Rice Monstrosity", via the Sick Children's Trust's booklet of Big Chocolate Tea recipes, through to the handful of regular recipes my Mum armed me with when I first moved to Germany after graduation.

This week's recipe also comes from my Mum's collection - but indirectly. I'd asked her to give me the recipe for a really nice carrot and courgette flan that I often roll out when we have people over. The easiest way for her to do this was simply to photocopy the entire page of patchwork cuttings snipped out of local newspapers and women's magazines dating back to the 1980s, if not earlier.

You get the idea

(Yes, that is a Swedish recipe for potato waffles in the top-right.)

Having left the page intact in my happy green folder, it's only right that the entire contents are fair game for Random Kitchen purposes, including recipes that my Mum has probably never actually made herself.

Which brings us to "Stuffed Rice Salad". That's the one at the top of the page, under the wildly optimistic heading "The pride of any buffet!". (Full marks to the Evening Chronicle sub-editors for that one.) Quite aside from the linguistic improbability of "stuffed rice", everything about this recipe screams DECADES OUT OF TIME, from the ingredients to the ring mould I'm supposed to use to shape it into its glorious three-dimensional presentation. We're talking Delia in a beige kitchen on BBC1 and then some.

My thoughts are immediately drawn to that amazing old website of Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974, and I find myself anticipating something akin to a hybrid of these wonders:

Appetising

All of which is my way of saying this sounds potentially amazing. And certainly very random. So let's get to it!

The prep: Earlier in the year, I wouldn't have owned the ring mould required for this dish, but the need for experimentation back in Week 22 prompted me to pick up a very fetching little aluminium bundt pan that's tailor-made for this week's adventure in 1980s buffet cookery. Hurrah!

Most of the vegetables for the "salad" part of the dish need to be bought, as does the long-grain rice (missing from our cupboards thanks to a recent propensity to wimp out and just use microwave rice pouches, because frankly why not). Needless to say, though, nothing from this 1980s recipe is difficult to find at a London supermarket in 2016, which actually makes something of a pleasant change.

The making: Rice is cooked in chicken stock until tender, then chopped celery and onion is stirred into the rice along with some mayonnaise. Diced red and green pepper is scattered in the base of the bundt pan, then the rice mixture is transferred and packed down firmly in the hope that it'll tip out of the mould in one piece.

Appetising

This would ideally be chilled in the fridge overnight, but "at least 3 hours" is the lower end of the scale offered, and we've got about 6 hours to spare. That should hopefully do the trick, and so...

Moment of truth time

Amazingly, it actually works - the rice/celery/onion mix slides out of the mould, neatly topped by the slightly embedded peppers. Chalk one up for the olden days!

Next it's time to deal with the "stuffed" part of the recipe. As you might have gathered from the fact that we're using a bundt pan or ring mould here, the idea is that the "stuffing" goes into the hole in the middle of the rice stack. So I chop a couple of avocados, mix them with "lemon juice or wine vinegar" (not entirely similar substances, so I hedge my bets and use a bit of both), then try my best to follow the instruction to cut blue cheese "into tiny dice".

Squidgy cheese is not especially cooperative

The idea is for the avocado to be piled into the centre of the rice ring before being sprinkled with the diced cheese. With my bundt pan being at the smaller end of the scale, my ring evidently isn't wide enough, because there's plenty of avocado (and cheese) to spare - but never mind, no one's going to complain about it being served on the side, because avocado and cheese are both awesome.

A cautionary scrunch of the pepper mill and we're ready to serve. I call Sam into the kitchen; he laughs out loud. Readers, I have created the 1980s on a plate:

The pride of any buffet!

I mean, that is frankly heroic. It looks less awful than the Weight Watchers examples above, but it definitely looks ridiculous. And yet I kind of want to have a house party right now so I can serve it to everyone I know. But how does it taste?

The eating: My mistake, I think, is trying to pass this off as our main meal rather than... well, part of a buffet (proud or otherwise). After all, it is just some vegetables and rice with a bit of cheese on top. Having sat in the fridge for a whole afternoon and then some, the celery flavour has infused the rice, making it something of a matter of taste (it's more to mine than Sam's). The avocado and blue cheese is an odd combination that would never really have occurred to me, and while it doesn't not work, I wouldn't rush to repeat it.

And yet it's actually quite an enjoyable eat, all told, with a freshness and crunch that's pleasingly offset by the more extravagant ingredients. Sam disagrees somewhat (or at least he ends up microwaving a Pieminister pie pot for his actual dinner, so read into that what you will), but I have to remind myself that I was actually eating this kind of thing in 1985, while he was busy being born and stuff. That's definitely the kind of thing that can colour your judgement (not to mention terrify you slightly).

As such, I think my main takeaways from this week's Random Kitchen experience are the knowledge that recipes calling for a construction to be poured into and then out of a ring mould don't necessarily have to end in disaster - plus a healthy dose of nostalgia for those get-togethers of my parents' friends at our house in Woodbine Avenue, complete with sideburns, big glasses, and most likely a whole lot of pipe-smoking. Those were the days. Well, those were days, at any rate.

I made the 1980s on a plate! I might just have to add that to my CV.

One-word verdict: Retro.

If you think I need to get my head out of the past and focus on the immediate future instead, you may have a point - I'm currently in training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which I'll be running in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK. If you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!