The majestic rice timbale from Naples

They call this magnificent dish a triumph of rice, the pride and glory of high-end Neapolitan cooking. It looks like something out of a medieval painting, but in fact it is more modern. The legend goes that the queen of Naples and Sicily in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Queen Maria Carolina of Austria, was not a huge fan of Neapolitan cuisine, so she hired French cooks, who created this dish as a way to make rice appealing to the court.

Rice came to Italy with th