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Curried Rice Salad with Mango Chutney Dressing

Serves 6–8

Rice and beans are always perfect together. Here the combination includes not only rice and beans but also apples, carrots, and almonds. Mango chutney forms a light and flavorful base for the salad dressing. If you happen to have any fresh cilantro or mint, toss in a handful for extra color and flavor.

SALAD

2 cups basmati or long-grain white rice

2 tablespoons sunflower or canola oil

1 shallot, minced

1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced

2 garlic cloves, minced

4 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste

3½ cups water

2 red-skinned apples

2 tablespoons lime juice

3 carrots, peeled and shredded

1½ cups cooked chickpeas, or 1 (15-ounce) can, rinsed and drained

1 cup whole roasted almonds

DRESSING

2/3 cup mango or peach chutney

¼ cup lime juice

3 tablespoons sunflower or canola oil

1 teaspoon Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 Wash the rice in several changes of water until the water runs clear. Drain well. (This keeps the rice from clumping together, but it is an optional step.)

2 Heat the oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add the shallot, ginger, garlic, curry powder, garam masala, and rice. Sauté until the rice appears dry, about 4 minutes. Add the salt and water, then reduce the heat and cook at a gentle boil, covered, until the rice is tender and the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and let cool.

3 Grate the unpeeled apple into a large salad bowl and toss with the lime juice. Add the cooled rice, carrots, chickpeas, and almonds, and toss to mix.

4 To make the dressing, combine the chutney, lime juice, oil, and Tabasco in a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss to coat, and serve.

Kitchen Note: Major Grey’s, made by Crosse & Blackwell, is the most popular brand of chutney in the United States. It is a lovely, well-balanced, light-colored chutney made with mangoes. Feel free to substitute another chutney, preferably one made with light-colored fruit.

Sunflower Oil

A recent addition to the locavore’s pantry is organic cold-pressed sunflower oil. This light oil is slightly nutty in flavor and has a combination of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats with low saturated-fat levels, which makes it a healthful oil for cooking. When I need a neutral-tasting oil, I turn to sunflower oil where I used to turn to canola oil, in part because I love the idea of fields of sunflowers waving in the wind. There is one such field near me, and it never fails to bring me delight.

Sunflower was a common crop among American Indian tribes throughout North America. It may even have been domesticated before corn. The seed was cracked and eaten as a snack or ground or pounded into flour.

Spanish explorers brought this exotic North American plant to Europe in the 1500s, and it was widely planted, mainly as an ornamental. Then, in 1716, an English inventor was granted a patent for squeezing oil from sunflower seed. By 1830, the manufacture of sunflower oil was done on a commercial scale. Its popularity was greatly boosted when the Russian Orthodox Church failed to list sunflower oil as a forbidden oil during Lent. By the early nineteenth century, Russian farmers were growing more than 2 million acres of sunflower.

In the United States, sunflower seeds were commercially grown for poultry feed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1926, the Missouri Sunflower Growers’ Association participated in what is likely the first processing of sunflower seed into oil. Since then, with modern technology and improved seed, acreage devoted to sunflowers has steadily increased.

The newest development in the history of the age-old crop has been the growing of organic seeds for small-scale cold-pressed oil production. Look for some at your local farmers’ market.

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