Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Despite my fears, Seema has not been squished by the Red Line during her visit to Boston. She’s alive and well and wandering the mean streets of Central Square. Planning With Seema involves a lot of wandering. I tried unsuccessfully to involve the decisive Dr. Deb, but without her we were doomed to the fate of laid-back people: strolling around Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, trying to resist the allure of used bookstores and candy shops with bins.

In the midst of our laid-back fun, Seema did get to Meet the Mac, experience the Joy of Newsreaders, and try out the rice pie. If anyone else wants to try the rice pie, here’s the recipe:

Italian Rice Pie

Filling (makes 2 large pies):

• 1/2 cup raw rice
• 8 eggs
• 2 lbs ricotta
• 2 cups sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon (1+1/2 tbsp)
• grated rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange (optional)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Cook, drain, and cool the rice.
2. Beat eggs light and fluffy.
3. Mix other ingredients into the eggs.
4. Pour carefully into unbaked pie shell.
5. Bake at 350°F for 1 hour.

Pie crust:

• 2 cups sifted flour
• 7 tbsp softened butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg (plus 1 yolk)
• pinch salt
• pinch grated lemon peel

1. Mix ingredients to form a soft dough.
2. Press half of dough into 9″ square pan or 10″ pie pan.
3. Use other half for a criss-cross top or a second pie.

You can’t actually criss-cross the top for this recipe because the filling is too liquid. The crust is from another rice pie recipe that’s more solid before cooking, but involves scary pineapple. And I have a third recipe from my grandmother - both require milk and more rice.

I stole the yolk for the crust from the filling. I put some allspice in the filling because I like it, and skipped the grated peels because I had none to grate. I used Arborio rice, though that’s not necessary (and perhaps even counterindicated). I also used a 10″ quiche pan, and refrigerated the second half of the crust and filling until the first pie had been consumed and the quiche pan was free again. The filling is very liquid, but it won’t boil over - the main danger is sloshing on the way into the oven. It should be solid enough to turn (carefully) after half an hour.

Besides the milk and scary pineapple linked above, I’ve seen recipes with
cream or raisins (which is getting a little too far into rice pudding territory for my tastes). The rum and citron version sounds interesting, though the jimmies are a bit much IMHO.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2004 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.