Italian · Dessert
Torta di Riso Bolognese
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 1 litre whole milk
- 200 g originario or arborio rice
- 200 g caster sugar
- 1 wide strip lemon peel
- 2 g fine salt
- 4 eggs
- 120 g blanched almonds, chopped
- 60 g candied citron, finely diced
- 40 ml almond liqueur
- 20 g unsalted butter, for the tin
- 25 g dry breadcrumbs, for the tin
The skills inside
Blanching & shockingThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · nuts · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the rice in the milk with the lemon peel, sugar and salt, stirring often, for 30 minutes to 35 minutes until the grains are soft and the mixture is still loose and creamy. 30 min
- Spread it out to cool below 40C (105F), then lift out the lemon peel.
- Beat the eggs and stir them in with the almonds, citron and liqueur: the mixture should pour thickly rather than hold a shape.
- Butter a 24 cm tin, dust it with breadcrumbs, pour the mixture in and bake at 170C (340F) for 50 minutes to 55 minutes until set with a faint wobble and browned in patches. 50 min
- Cool completely, cut into diamonds, and leave it a day before eating.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.