Tiella with Rice: Raffadi, Barista at Lot Sixty One, Home Chef 👩‍🍳

A fresh dish that combines the flavours of Italy and Malta - Home Cook Raffaella, Barista at Lot Sixty One shares a rice dish recipe featuring mussels and potatoes. Packed with fresh accents from local produce and cooked with fine Italian technique, this dish could serve as a side dish or 4 main portions.

These are the ingredients needed for your tiella.

Ingredients

• 2½kg of cleaned mussels
• 200g Arborio or Parboiled rice, rinsed thoroughly 
• 1kg potatoes
• 40g Pecorino Romano, grated
• Maltese breadcrumbs 
• 250g white Maltese onion
• 400g cherry tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Parsley
• Salt
• Pepper
• Extra virgin olive oil 

Method

1. Put the rice in a bowl with cold water and rinse it to remove some of the starch. 

First layer of the tiella.

2. Clean the mussels externally with a metal brush and wash them under running water. To open the mussels when raw, lightly crush them, slide one of the 2 halves forward until you hear the typical “click”. By inserting a knife between them and making it slide until you open the mollusc; move the mussel on one valve and eliminate the other, using a bowl to collect the liquid that will come out. Proceed with the rest of the mussels and place them in a container. Do not clean your mussels in your pan, this could result in small shell fragments in your dish. 🥘

3. Filter the water with a fine sieve or a cotton cloth, so as to remove all impurities and keep it aside. 

4. Sprinkle the base of the pan with a good extra virgin olive oil and add onions cut into rounds. Traditionally, the best pans to use are terracotta or aluminium.

5. Peel the potatoes and cut into even slices of no more than ½ centimetre thick, for uniform cooking. Create your first layer with potatoes, a few tomatoes, some parsley and onion. Sprinkle with cheese, a bit of pepper and again oil. 🥔

Final layer completed.

6. Make the final layer with the remaining potatoes and be sure to cover it completely. Complete with the remaining cherry tomatoes, sprinkle with cheese again, add breadcrumbs and parsley and a little more oil. 🧀

7. At this point thetiella is composed, but you have to add the liquids. Insert the filtered liquid from the mussels that you saved earlier and complete with lightly salted water (about 7g of salt per litre) up to the brim of the last layer, without exceeding it. To make sure you’ve added the right amount of liquid; lightly pressing the surface of the last layer, the water should seep onto the surface. 

Right out of the oven.

8. Bake at 200°C in a static oven for 45-60 minutes, remove and heat on the stove until the potatoes are cooked and an appetizing golden crust is formed. Thetiella is best served warm to maximise on all the complimenting flavours.

Plate your dish and take in all the flavours, one layer at a time.