Original Ilalian name: Tiella Alla Barese

Place of origin: Puglia, Sourthern Italy

Coming back to the Italian blog,  I wish to share today one of the recently cooked main dishes. I would estimate this dish to the First course dishes category or Primi like said in Italy. However, this meal is slightly unusual for this group. Firstly, because it doesn’t include pasta as one of the main ingredients. Instead of pasta, here are rice and potatoes and even mussels. To be honest, I am not a fan of rice, and can’t eat it every day like pasta, but the result of my first experiment was a good-looking and good-tasting meal.

Tiella alla Barese recipe was born in Apulia, where the oven is essential to the rustic cuisine. Italian people used stone ovens to cook sweet to savory dishes in a tiella, an earthenware pot with a tin lid, and to bake a wide variety of breads. But the good, old, wood-fired oven is also essential for preparation of Apulian meat specialties until today.

Ingredients:

1 cup/200 g rice

800g mussels

300-400 g potatoes

1 onion, finely sliced onto rings

1 clove or garlic

1/2 cup Pecorino cheese

extra virgin olive oil

chopped parsley

Salt and freshly milled pepper

Method:

Cook the rice in water until almost cooked.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Prepare the mussels. Cook them in a pan with the clove or garlic for a few minutes. When the shells are open, strain the juice through a fine sieve or cloth and reserve. Remove the mussels flesh from the shells and set aside.

Peel and finely slice the potatoes.

Grease a ovenproof dish with a olive oil, then add a layer of potatoes. After that add layers of cooked rice, onion rings, Pecorino cheese, parsley and mussels. Repeat the process until all the ingredients have been used. The final layer should be potato.

Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, pour over the mussel juice, and bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 45 minutes.