RICE SALAD WITH GRILLED NECTARINES

Ever since I made the chicken salad with grilled peaches, I've been wanting to use their cousins, nectarines, in a salad and this is what I came up with today:

First, prepare your rice.  I've got about 500 gr salad rice in here but obviously you can adjust the quantity.  Cook the rice according to the instructions on the pack, drain it in a sieve and run cold water over it quickly.  Put it in a large serving bowl and, as soon as it is cool enough, put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

Next, prepare a cucumber in the time-honoured Jennifer Paterson way:  peel and deseed it, then chop it finely and leave in a dish with a little fine seasalt sprinkled over it for about an hour, preferably in the fridge.  

Now slice 4 nectarines - no need to peel them - and grill them in a little oil on a griddle pan.  If they are very juicy, you won't get many griddle marks but you will get enough to make things look smart.  Be sure to stand well back to avoid getting splashed.  Lift the slices out with a fish slice and let them drain on kitchen paper.  Put these in the fridge when cool enough, too.

I decided I wanted to add some mushrooms and you can either toss some sliced ones in a pan with a little olive oil with oregano or use antipasto ones as I did today.  You also need to finely chop a red pepper and a celery stalk or two.  Sicilian celery has very slender stalks but you don't need much of it!

Chop 6 - 8 black olives, too.

When you are ready to assemble the salad, make a dressing from 6 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar, 1 tablesp your favourite honey [as a homage to the nectarines] plus seasalt and freshly ground black pepper.  Drain and rinse the cucumber, dry the pieces on kitchen paper and add them to the rice along with all the other vegetables and the nectarines.  Stir well, then pour over the dressing and mix well.  Scatter over a few basil leaves if you like.

This doesn't really need any accompaniment but, influenced by a television advert, I put some salame slices on some of those very thin slices of Galbanino cheese.  My touch was to tie the "parcels" with blanched chives.  Yes, some of the cheese cracked a little and I couldn't do perfect bows but that's life!