rice is nice
...written on 2000-10-27, @ 23:30:56
Tue October 25, 2000
Oooh, I forgot to tell yuz...
The other day at Jusco, Ivan and I went in on a 2.2 lb bag of rice ($6). I cooked my first batch yesterday. Ivan kept the bag with the directions on it, not like I can read Japanese anyway, so I had to wing it.
I figured I'd start with the American rice ratio of 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water and see how that went.
I don't have a rice cooker and will not be getting one. They are at least $80 and I've always done my rice in a plain old pot anyway.
The new pot that I bought at Mega Mart the other day has little bitty holes in the lid. Making American rice is all about keeping the steam inside to cook the rice, right?
So I put it all together and was cooking it while I was accidentally turning my hair orange (see "Pumpkin Head").
Twenty minutes and 7 shrieks later, I checked on the rice and it was sticky just like Japanese rice should be! Ah so that's what the little holes in the lid are for.
Japanese rice by the way needs to be sticky so the Japanese can eat it easily with chopsticks. You'd have to eat American rice, grain by grain, but here you just shovel a boulder sized ball of rice in your mouth and chew . . . with your mouth open.
If you've heard that Japanese slurp their food, it is true and I have found there is very good reason for this. Hot food is served extrememly hot, take a bowl of noodles for example. That stuff is steamin' when it gets to the table. The Japanese (and now me) get a long string of noodles on their chopsticks and suck them in with a bunch of air to cool the noodles off somewhat. Adding this air into the mastication (chewing) process also seems to make the food taste better. Slurping and smacking noises are usually a sign to the host or hostess that you are really enjoying the food. So go ahead, try it . . .at home . . .alone.