ORZO: THE IDEAL CROSS BETWEEN PASTA AND RICE

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: orzo, the ideal cross between pasta and rice.

Can't decide between pasta and rice? Orzo is the way to go. The dried pasta in the shape of rice is the perfect middle ground and this is how you prepare it.

Orzo is mainly eaten in countries around the middle and east of the Mediterranean. In Italian, it is called risoni, in Turkish it is called arpa şehriye, and the Greeks call it kritharaki. The pasta is shaped like rice, but slightly larger. It is delicious in pasta salads or as a side dish with meat, or in Turkish pilav, as a friend of Emma often makes it.

Pilav
Emma toasts a few tablespoons of orzo for a few minutes in a dry frying pan until it smells nutty. Then you add the orzo with rice, butter, and homemade chicken broth to a pot and let it cook with the lid on. The richness of the butter, the nuttiness and bite of the orzo, the flavor of homemade chicken broth, and then also rice? It seems too good to be true. This is typically a dish where I can't stop eating.

What do you eat it with?
Not in the mood for Turkish pilav? Orzo is also the ideal pasta to add to your soup or to make pasta salad. For example, stay in the Greek vibes with this saffron orzo with grilled artichokes. Or do as the Italians do and make this orzo ‘carbonara’ with creamy burrata. Orzo also goes very well as a side dish with stews, such as kleftiko (slow-cooked lamb).

Where to buy?
At the supermarket, they often don't know what you're talking about when you ask for orzo, but pasta brands De Cecco and Barilla both have risoni in their assortment. It should be available at really large supermarkets. Most organic supermarkets will have it anyway, but I always get mine at the Turkish or Moroccan supermarket and I immediately grab bunches of herbs to dive into the kitchen at home.