Rice

I’ve been trying to decide what my favorite starch is. It’s an odd question, I know. If I asked a friend their favorite starch, I don’t think they would know what I was talking about. What I mean is, between things like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, corn, and other grains, which is your favorite? I’m inclined to be a tool and say something like “Quinoa!” “Polenta!” But I think really it’s rice.

A number of considerations went in to the decision to call rice the favorite. The ultimate starch would have to be something that is recognizable as a plant product. Pasta is lovely, but homogenous mass and perfect little shapes always seem to be more “food product” than just “food”. This also rules out bread. Not that there is anything wrong with bread or pasta, but making a sandwich or pasta dish feels more like assembling than cooking. The Perfect Starch should not require mixing into dough, extruding from a machine, and then boiling in water. Potatoes take the lead in this respect- a starch that is literally dug up and ready to cook and eat. For this fact, and because the title includes the sweet potato (OMG I love sweet potatoes) potatoes are a close second to rice

I can’t think of any other ingredient that is so prevalent in so many very different cuisines. I mean, what other intersection is there between, say, South American food and Japanese? My favorite starch would have to be versatile as well. While pasta is always pasta, rice can be a creamy risotto, a sushi roll, paella or pilaf. It’s ideal for the most important use of starch- soaking up some delicious sauce. Hell, you can even make dessert out of it.

To be fair, white rice is not a nutritional powerhouse, or even equivalent to some more exotic whole grains. But brown rice is a perfectly fine substitute much of the time, and has a nice helping of nutrients and fiber. Don’t be put off by the longer cooking time. It’s not a race. And that stuff cooks itself, it’s as much work as ordering a pizza and waiting 40 minutes for it to be delivered. And please, please, never get this ready-rice crap. It cooks in 2 minutes in the microwave because it’s been stripped of every last bit of fiber or plant-like material. But rice, even the fluffy white kind, when combined with beans as a complete protein, like meat.

I’ve recently gotten really into the “pilaf” method of cooking rice where the rice is sautéed in some oil till it’s almost golden, and then cooked in something besides water, and then tossed with a vegetable or legume. This sauteeing slows the absorption of liquid, so the rice grains keep their shape. With the exception of the cilantro in the Green Rice, these all have the benefit of being "pantry dishes"- no fresh ingredients necessary

Red Rice

2 cloves garlic

½ white onion

2 Tbs olive oil

1 cup basmati rice

14 oz can whole tomatoes

Chili powder or hot sauce to taste

½ of a 1 lb bag of carrots, peas, and corn mixture

Puree canned tomatoes with garlic and onion, and add water to equal 2 cups of liquid. This is easiest with a stick blender. If you don’t have one, you should think about getting one, but in the meantime a blender or food processor is fine. If, like me, you have a stick blender but not a dishwasher, you can blend the tomatoes in the can. You’re welcome. Heat oil in saucepan with a good lid. Nonstick is good. When oil is hot (hot as in water sizzles when it’s dropped in, not hot like shimmering like when you pan sear fish) add the rice and saute, stirring, about 3-5 minutes. This cooks the outer shell of the grain so that it doesn’t absorb liquid as quickly later on. The bubbling sound will be different after you’ve done this long enough. Less hissy, more snap-crackle-pop.

Add the tomato mixture. (If you’re using the in-the-can method of blending, you can add half the tomato stuff, then blend the other half with the garlic, onion, and ¼ cup of water and chili powder or hot sauce.) Cook, with the lid on, till the liquid is almost all absorbed. If all the liquid is absorbed and you taste a grain and it could stand to cook for longer, add more water.

Turn off heat and stir in as much of the veggie mix as you’d like. I like about 1/3 of the 1 lb bag. Let it sit for a few minutes so the frozen veggies are heated through. Ooh look how pretty.

You can use just peas if you want. I’d like to try it with corn and lima beans sometime. Adding shredded chicken makes in a meal, or you could add beans.

Green Rice

2 cloves garlic

½ small white onion

½ lb package frozen spinach, thawed

¼ cup cilantro, loosely packed

1 ½ cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 Tbs oil

1 cup basmati rice

Puree garlic, onion, spinach, cilantro and chicken broth in food processor. Heat oil in saucepan that has a good lid. Nonstick is good. When oil is hot (hot as in water sizzles when it’s dropped in, not hot like shimmering like when you pan sear fish) add the rice and saute till golden, stirring, about 3-5 minutes. Add spinach mixture and cook, covered, until liquid is absorbed, checking to make sure rice is cooked though.

Yellow Rice

½ teaspoon turmeric

1 tsp cumin

2 Tbs oil

1 cup rice

2 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock or water

Any combination of peas, black beans, diced roasted red peppers

Heat oil and spices till oil is hot. Add rice and sauté. Add stock or water and cover, cooking on medium heat till liquid is absorbed. Toss with peas, black beans and/or red pepper.

Fish

I love fish. I think it's ideal for living by yourself- it's easy to cook just one fillet or take as many shrimp as you like, and it's got all those lovely omega 3's and it's so versitile.

Last night I made dinner for some friends- I made some beautiful fresh Summer Rolls with shrimp, soy braised kabocha squash and salmon in crispy rice paper with a spicy mirin glaze. It would have been one of my favorite meals I've ever made, if I hadn't overcooked the salmon (leaving them in a warm oven for 20 minutes was, obviously, a bad choice. Champagne will do that.)

I need to branch out from salmon and tuna. Halibut and Chilean Sea Bass are wonderful, but not so easy for me to find. Those flat, pale slabs of tilapia never look that exciting next to thick pink fillets but at $4 a pound for tilapia and $10 for salmon, diversifying the fish menu might be a good idea.

The nice thing about those broad, flat pieces is that the high surface area : volume means that a spice rub, marinade, herbed crust, breading or any other coating does a lot. Also means that they cook quickly, which means I can eat them sooner. To go with some Indian spinach (saag), I rubbed a filet with curry powder and corriander, and sauteed in oil. (about 1.5-2 minutes per side) With a mexican chopped salad, I had a tilapia filet coated with a corn meal-cummin-chili powder coating. Tonight I had it with chopped parsely and mint pressed on the surface and dredged in flour, sauteed in butter and oil.

The light flour coating is really perfect- it makes this monolayer of a crisp shell, but not as rich as actually breading. You could use any combination of herbs- I bet chives, tarragon or cilantro would be excellent. And even cooked in some oil, with a little flour, it's very healthy- tilapia is about 220 calories in an 8 oz filet, while the same amount of salmon is 480 calories.

So, I think I was wrong to overlook tilapia for size-ist reasons. Next to try- cod, snapper, sole, haddock...

Rotisserie Chicken

There are a few things I keep hearing on TV that make me want to throw something at it. Carrie Bradshaw's monologues, Blayne on Project Runway's use and abuse of the suffix "-licious," those ads that try to argue that high fructose corn syrup is good for you because it's made from corn, any mention of or statement by Sarah Palin...

But the commercials that make me feel like I'm taking crazy pills are the fast food ones that present the idea that their chicken whatevers are healthy because they use all white meat chicken. There's always a pretty young mom, who is a Good Mom, because she would only feed her children white meat chicken. McDonalds, sure, but it's white meat. What is this? Who decided that breast meat was the only part it was ok to eat? Ok, sure, white meat has less fat, but that shit is deep fried! It just absorbs all of that fat, so instead of the normal chicken fat that you're meant to eat, you have lean chicken soaked in partially hydrogenated soybean oil. And if this was actual chicken breast that was breaded and fried I could maybe tolerate this claim, but it's about 10 steps removed from a chicken- it's been cooked, ground to a paste, bleached (all white!) and extruded through a tube and pressed into a patty-shaped mold. To meet the demand for chicken breast, the chickens are castrated and feed piles of estrogen so they grow enormous breast muscles, which they certainly can't use because they're stuffed in boxes, which is good because actually using those muscles tends to make them not quite as white a pristine. And as long as only 1/5 of the meat is useable, of course 5 times as many chickens need to be produced. So, kids, enjoy those chicken patties, and enjoy getting your period when you're 7, girls. "Mmm all white meat patties! Thanks mom!"

It's probably more upsetting that this enormous distance from where the meat comes from (the animal) and what people want to see when they eat is considered so normal. I've met too many people who say that they love eating meat but they won't eat anything on a bone, or anything that has a shape suggesting it was once a body part. How is this remotely ethical?

I'm not a vegetarian, it's jsut not going to happen. But I'd like to think I have an appreciation for where meat comes from. But I'm still a student, and when I stand in the grocerey store comparing prices on organic and store brand chicken, the wallet often wins.

But I can at least feel like I've gotten as much out of a chicken as I can. This morning I bought a rotisserie chicken, without any real plans for it. I stripped of all of the dark meat first and made a chili from a Fine Cooking recipe with white beans, chipotles, and canned tomatoes. I shredded the rest of the white meat, mixed it with some scallions and tomatoes and mayo, and made a chicken salad vastly superior to the crap I had for lunch from Wawa last week. The rest I threw in a pot with a few sprigs of parsely, bay leaves, the stumpy end of a small head of romaine. I've been planning on making tomatillo soup, from Kalyn's Kitchen, and this will save me having to buy the stock. I've never made chicken stock before; for some reason, I thought it would be hard. I think I'll be doing it a lot more, if only for the way it has made my apartment smell.

So, I've got an amazing chili, 2 cups of chicken salad, and soon, a quart of soup, 6-8 meals. Everything that went into all three probably cost between $10 and $15.