Sweet mini tarts filled with a rice pudding sharpened with citrus zest
The first scene in Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 film Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) is at Turin train station. Waves of women, of all ages, make their way across the tracks to board a train for Vercelli and 40 days of work as seasonal rice paddy workers known as mondine. Also in the throng is petty thief Walter (Vittorio Gassman) and his accomplice, Francesca (Doris Dowling), who are on the run from the police after stealing a necklace. Having tracked the waves of women, the camera chases the couple as they try to escape and infiltrate the mondine, then glides through the packed train before focusing back on the platform and a young mondina called Silvana (played by the magnificent and indolent Silvana Mangano), who is dancing.
The film goes on to chart the intrigue between Silvana, Walter, Francesca and a soldier (played by Raf Vallone and featuring his hairy chest). However, the most arresting aspect of the film is the wider setting: the rice paddies that have existed in the Po valley (and in Emilia and parts of Tuscany) since the 15th century, and the world of the mondine in the 1940s, a time of rice evolution and profusion of varieties – bertone, vialone, Chinese originario, roma and bologna, when arborio and carnaroli were being developed.
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