Thanks for a chuckle (and me too, at least for one of them lol)
If I might ask a perhaps silly question regarding the liquid that’s on the greens plates – is it meant to be poured over the rice, or left on the plate and you just pick off the greens?
Come to think of it, the greens juice would be tasty and enhance the rice if a small amount is poured over.
To me, rice is a white canvas to paint with the flavors of the mains. Rice balances and adjusts flavors and saltiness to one’s taste.
I rarely pick up a morsel from a serving dish and pop directly into mouth. Said morsel is usually dabbed into and season the rice, or paired with a bit of rice for a bite.
Soup over the last of the rice in your bowl is good. Some liquid from the greens would also work, not usually done though.
I hope I don’t wake up and read this in the morning and go: huh?!?!
I asked bec in indian food, any gravy is always enjoyed with rice (or bread), but in chinese food I find rice is often a neutral foil for the other dishes and not meant to be mixed up the way the saucy things are in indian cuisine.
And I’ve never seen a spoon provided with such dishes, whether greens or steamed fish, so I figured spooning the liquid was probably a no-no. (Also when I’ve made steamed fish at home, the recipe says to discard the liquid after steaming, and before pouring on more aromatics in oil.)
For fish, that’s because the liquid can be a bit fishy, and not the best tasting. For the greens, the flavors are mostly in the greens itself so the liquid is almost an after thought.
But, there are some dishes where the sauce can be the star, especially in Soy-sauce-western dishes in Hong Kong, where I will happily mix the sauce with the rice.
Plain rice can take some getting used to. Some people shove a bit of rice and a bit dish and mix together in the mouth. Some just alternate between rice and dish. Some premix sauce into rice.
I once asked a Taiwanese coworker why their porridge didn’t have any taste (the porridge equivalent of plain rice), and what the attraction was, because porridge in e.g. Hong Kong has the flavor of the stock, the e.g. fish, peanuts, etc. and his answer was that the porridge was meant to be eaten with other flavorful dishes, not on its own.
But of course, plain rice is not really plain. Good rice has the subtle fragrance that its a joy to eat, even on its own. Bad rice is just a vehicle for starch. Good basmati from India is great to eat. Basmati from Lundberg, as much as I like their conviction of trying to do the right thing and grow organic, tastes like cardboard.
I was just thinking that we actually train our palates the other way – to not enjoy plain rice.
My nephew when he was little (and actually even now, left to his own devices) always wanted his rice in a separate bowl, and savored it last. This is very abnormal in Indian cuisine, because rice (and chapatis - he did the same with them) are a vehicle, and meant to be combined with the other components on the plate: vegetables, lentils, etc. Various grandparents tried to “teach” him otherwise, but he held firm. He still loves to eat some of his rice plain, and will take a couple of chapatis at the end of the meal to savor them plain as well.
Of late, as I have been exploring different Indian regional rice varieties, I am astounded by the aroma, flavor, and texture differences across them. Not that I don’t combine them eventually, but the pure flavor of the rice itself is both a delight and a foil.
Agree. Thing is that in most restaurants you’ll get cheap and or old rice. At home, not much beats a bowl of just boiled rice, good quality from a recent harvest, and then something simple with a nice sauce. For example, I can think of pork ribs in black bean sauce, or pork belly stewed in dark and light soy sauce and rice wine.
Aging the rice enhances the aroma though. I never really quite figured out why e.g. jasmine and basmati grown in the US don’t have the same fragrance as the ones grown in their origin countries. But, besides terroir and industrial fertilization techniques, I suspect some of it has to do with aging.
The aroma and flavor intensify, and the grains cook up separate and fluffy. Huge price difference (locally that is – only aged stuff is exported, and the price differential compresses).
As I was thinking about it, there are some prized regional varieties may not be aged – elders in the family talk about some types that need to be stocked up once a year when they are available, but I have yet to taste them (or I don’t remember).
You really can tell even from the dry grains. The really expensive aged basmati my mom used to buy annually for biryanis and pulaos had a yellowish tinge and you could smell the fragrance of the grains cupped in your palm.
Nowadays there’s a lot of cheap “everyday” basmati available that you wouldn’t be able to tell was basmati if it wasn’t labeled as such.
If you’re interested to try something new, there’s a small grain Indian variety called ambemohar that’s my current favorite – available at any Indian store near you.
Ambe = mangoes and mohar = blossoms, so it translates to rice with the fragrance of mango blossoms. Lovely frangrance, soft bite, delicious flavor.
I can only buy what I can get here in Europe. And I really like the Thai, produced in Thailand, AAA jasmine rice. If it’s a new harvest, the package will have a big sticker advertising it. I prefer this over eg Tilda basmati which we can get for around the same price, and which my parents like. The Thai rice is fragrant and soft, and sticks a little bit, which I love when eating with a sauce. Whereas the basmati can be dry-ish where each grain is separate. Can also be really nice, don’t get me wrong, but I prefer it with Indian food.
Kamod is the one I was thinking of with cult status in Gujarat. Others like Kolam can be bought from current harvest or aged (texture difference as @damiano described with jasmine, but the price goes the other way - aged is more expensive).
Came across this article on conservation of heirloom varieties that was quite interesting.
(The cult rice from Bengal is Gobindobhog, but I was unimpressed when I tried it last year – the Ambemohar from Maharashtra blew it away.)
Newly harvested rice in Japan is highly touted. For years I believed it was overhyped until I tried some when I was living in Shizuoka where I could buy it by the kilo at a local farmers’ cooperative (normally the smallest bags of rice sold are 2 kg and much more expensive per kg than the 5 or 10 kg bags.) I was blown away by the difference in fragrance and texture of new crop rice because to me, standard Japanese rice has no fragrance at all…though it may have some aroma while it’s cooking. It also cooks MUCH faster…something which was something I hadn’t considered…though it makes sense!
Japan also celebrates new crop onions and potatoes. Both are much sweeter and the skin on the potatoes is extremely thin. Unfortunately, new crop onions spoil VERY quickly and I was never able to buy more than 1 or 2 before they began to rot.
My wife had always been more about noodles than rice, being from Shanghainese root stock.
Until her first meal on our very first trip to Tokyo together. We walked into a restaurant specializing in Beef Tongue and ordered two sets. I’m a rice eater and usually graciously help her with her portion.
She took one first bite and that all changed. She Loved that Japanese rice!!! I grew up on AAA Texas long grain. We still keep long grain and jasmine in house, Japanese short grain has become our de facto house rice of choice.
But I didn’t know that about basmati, why is that, what happens with the taste if it gets older?
