Black Rice Salad with Pineapple and Cilantro.

I was meandering through the organic, gluten free section of my grocery store yesterday and stumbled up on this little treasure.  Black rice.  Hmmm… looks interesting enough.  Gluten free.  Good nutritional profile. I was sold!  Plus I thought my family would be intrigued as well and they were.  Especially when they all tried identifying what they thought it was… black quinoa?  No.  It’s too big.  No one guessed black rice but everyone loved it.

Ingredients:

I cooked one cup of the black rice according to package directions.  Cooled and fluffed.
1 cup of diced fresh pineapple
1 handful of fresh cilantro leaves, torn up
1/2 jalapeño, seeds in for more heat or removed for less – finely sliced
3 spring onions, sliced

Dressing~

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of balsamic dijon mustard (I used Maille) or you can use regular dijon (again I recommend Maille)
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
1 tablespoon of good quality balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

 

Directions:

For the rice salad add all of the ingredients together and give a good toss.

For the dressing:

Whisk all of the ingredients together and pour over the salad 30 minutes prior to eating.  Give another toss before serving.

I served this at room temperature.  Refrigerate leftovers.

— Knead to Cook