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Tomato Rice
Put on your rice to boil. Make a tomato sauce by stewing them gently, and then rubbing them through a sieve; this makes a puree, which you must put back to heat with pepper and salt and a small quantity of made mustard. Then grate some parmesan, or failing that, some Gruyere cheese. Take off the rice, drain it, keeping it hot, put it on a dish and pour over it your puree. Then sprinkle the grated chees thickly on top of all.
A four-ingredient dish with no quantities at all, which is typical of this book. The one thing that decides whether it works is how far you reduce the tomato purée.
- Reduce the puréeSieved stewed tomatoes are watery, and poured over drained rice they turn it to slop. Simmer the purée down until it coats a spoon before it goes on the rice.
- Quantities to work fromFor four people, 1 1/2 cups long-grain rice and about 2 lb ripe tomatoes, or one 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes. Roughly 3 oz cheese, grated fine.
- "Made mustard"Prepared mustard from a jar, as opposed to dry mustard powder. A Belgian or Dijon-style mustard suits this better than a sweet yellow one; a teaspoon is enough to sharpen the tomato without announcing itself.
- Sieving fresh tomatoesStew them gently in their own juice with no added water, then press through a fine sieve to leave skins and seeds behind. A food mill does the same job faster; a blender does not, since it purées the skins in.
- Parmesan or GruyèreParmesan or Gruyere -- The two behave differently. Parmesan stays dry and salty on top; Gruyere, being a melting cheese, may soften a little in the heat of the rice and sauce, though it will not properly melt without more heat. Either is correct here, but salt the puree more lightly if using Parmesan.
- Keeping the rice hotDrain it and return it to the dry hot pan off the heat with the lid on, or set it over a pan of hot water. Cold rice under hot sauce will not melt the cheese.
- ServingSubstantial enough to stand as a light supper or meatless dish, though the recipe itself does not say how it was served. It is worth bringing it to the table before the cheese sinks in.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and it was published in aid of Belgian relief. That origin explains the shape of this recipe: no weights, no timings, no oven, and nothing in it that could not be found cheaply in wartime Britain. Rice, tinned or garden tomatoes and a scrap of hard cheese make a full dish, and the small spoonful of mustard is the sort of trick a cook uses when there is no meat stock or butter to give a sauce depth. The plain style throughout the book suggests the recipes were dictated by cooks describing what they did at home rather than written out for publication.