The sartù di riso is one of Naples’ traditional dishes for Christmas: it’s a deliciously rich mix of rice, meat, cheeses and peas, baked and served in slices. As it often happens in our cuisine, the sartù has an interesting history and even its name needs to be explained. The word sartù is the distortion of the French “sour tout” or “on everything,” in reference to the breadcrumbs covering the entire dish. The recipe itself was created to … make rice more palatable to the Neapolitan court. Let’s see why!
We are in the 18th century, when Ferdinand I of Bourbon is king. His wife, the Austrian Maria Carolina, wasn’t too fond of Neapolitan cuisine, so she hired a bunch of French chefs — called monsieurs at court and, mockingly, monsù in Naples’ streets — to work in the kitchens of the palace. One of the queen’s favorite ingredients was rice, but the relationship between Naples and the cereal wasn’t good: arrived in the 14th century from Spain, it was known at court as sciacquapanza, that is, bland and uninteresting: a food for the poor and for the sick. In fact, it was mostly administered by doctors when people suffered from intestinal or gastric diseases, including cholera.
The monsù, therefore, had the difficult duty to ensure the queen could eat her rice, but also that her husband would not complain about it. This is how they came out with the sartù: they mixed the rice with Neapolitan staples like meatballs, ragù and fiordilatte, with the precise aim of masking the taste of rice, so that Ferdinand would eat it. Needless to say, it was a success.
The traditional recipe for sartù is the one below, but many versions exists, with a variety of fillings being allowed. The most famous alternative is the one for sartù bianco, without the tomato sauce: to make it, the rice is flavored with sugna (lard) and the filling is made with meatballs only.
Ingredients (for a 8x5in baking mold)
- 2 1/2 cups of Carnaroli rice (500 grams)
- 5 1/2 oz fiordilatte
- 2 cups of peas (fresh or frozen)
- 2 hard boiled eggs
- 4 1/2 oz of egg (this roughly equals 2 large or 3 small to medium eggs)
- A pinch of salt
- Pepper to taste
- 4 tbsp grated parmigiano
For the ragù Napoletano
- 12 oz of pork ribs (320 gr)
- 1 1/2 lb of beef ribs (700 gr)
- 12 oz of sausage (320 gr)
- 10.5 oz of yellow onions
- 4 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 3 cups of tomato passata sauce
- 4 1/2 tbsp of red wine
- 1 1/3 cup of water
For the meatballs
- 7 oz of ground beef
- 6 tbsp of grated parmigiano
- 1 tsp of chopped parsley
- 2.7 oz bread without crust (75 gr)
- A pinch of salt
- Frying oil
- 1 egg
- Black pepper to taste
To garnish:
- breadcrumbs
- butter
- Let’s start with the ragù, the most laborious of our preparations. In a frying pan, sauté the finely chopped onion and all the meats on low heat for a few minutes, adding the wine. When it has fully evaporated, add the tomato passata, the water and a pinch of salt. Let the meat and sauce cook on a low heat for at least 4 hours, adding water when necessary. Once it’s done, separate the meat from the sauce and set aside.
- For the meatballs, soak the bread in cold water for about 10 minutes. After, place the ground meat in a large bowl and add the slightly beaten egg, the parmigiano and the bread, ensuring you have squeezed all the water out first. Add salt, pepper and the parsley, then mix well until you obtain a nice, smooth mixture. Now, make your meatballs rolling small amounts of meat in your palms and remembering they shouldn’t be too big. Heat up some frying oil in a pan and fry the meatballs for about 3 minutes. Once they are ready, let them drain in a plate covered with kitchen paper, to absorb the excess oil.
- We now need to take care of the eggs and the rice!
- Take a pan, fill it with cold water and place the eggs to boil in it. When the water begins to boil, cook the eggs for 9 minutes, then drain them and cool them under cold water, peel them and then slice them as thinly as you can.
- Take again the meat sauce, result of your ragù, add 200 ml of water (about a cup), add the rice and let it cook on medium-low heat: the rice must absorb all the sauce, a bit like when you make risotto. Once it’s ready, set aside and let cool.
- In a bowl, beat together the eggs, salt , pepper, grated parmigiano and mix well. Then pour the mix on the cooled rice and keep on mixing.
- Take your baking mold, butter it and dust generously with the breadcrumbs: they have to stick quite homogeneously to the buttered surface.
- Pour some of the rice and egg mixture in the mold and press around the walls with the back of a spoon to form a “casing” about 1/2 inch thick.
- Slice the sausage you cooked for the ragù and dice the fiordilatte. Add a first layer of the sliced eggs and mozzarella, then the peas, meatballs and sliced sausage, repeating every layer until you finish the ingredients. Finish up with a layer of egg and top it with the remaining rice.
- Cover with breadcrumbs and some butter.
- Cook the sartù in a pre-heated oven at 180C (360F) for 1 hour.
- Let it cool for about 10 minutes, and serve.
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