Espresso has a special entry point to interact with AdapterViews, onData(), however, RecyclerViews work differently than AdapterViews.
In order to interact with RecyclerViews using Espresso, the espresso-contrib package has a collection of RecyclerViewActions that can be used to scroll to positions or perform actions on items.
In this example you'll find a basic Activity that shows a list and an example of how to scroll through it, perform some ViewActions and check ViewAssertions using Espresso.