love drowns out hate

[glass_icarus]

Talk to me about rice- the magic of it, the wholeness of it, the surprising sweetness that blooms on your tongue in a slow, lingering mouthful, the flavors that vary between different grains. Talk to me about congee and biryani and onigiri and fan tuan and zhong zi and the crisped scrapings from the bottom of the pot that you can eat with peanut sugar or pour tea over to loosen the grains. Talk to me about mochi and guo ba and the addictive nature of rice crackers. Talk to me about rice.

Comments

[inkstone]

Sweet rice, wrapped in banana leaves, eaten with ripened Cebuano mango for breakfast.

[littlebutfierce]

My grandpa made the best fried rice ever. No one in my family can get the rice crispy-perfect like he did.

[glass_icarus]

(... from zero to drooling in less than 20 words, ahahahahah! &hearts)

Rice cooked in coconut milk (made me grateful I bought a liter that time :P)!

[glass_icarus]

Fried rice! &hearts I love how it's an adventure every time. :3

[meloukhia]

It was raining and I was sick, hadn't been able to keep anything down in days, lying on the floor staring at the wall because moving or thinking, really, anything, made my stomach heave even though there was nothing left, and she brought me congee and cloud ears and a little dish of pickled vegetables. And at first the very thought of food made me quiver inside but 'here try a bite' she said and suddenly I was hungry, actually hungry, for the first time in days, and she laughed and laughed and put the tea kettle on and it hummed in the background while I ate and remembered that sweet, perfect taste of food and felt it reaching deep into my body.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't realize how much I ate rice until I went to college and had a meal plan freshman year. The dining halls didn't have any rice, of course. Maybe once a week, they would, but it was subpar rice, in my opinion -- large grains that were chewier than I liked and just didn't taste right.

(I was not alone in this. Almost any other Asian American student on the same meal plan that I talked to also vocalized how much they missed and craved rice.)

I like rice when I make it, whether in a rice cooker or in a pot, because I can control how much water goes in and what the texture of my rice is. I like my rice with extra water, just a little softer than most people make it.

I don't know much about different kinds of rice because I usually buy whatever is cheapest or closest or most convenient. I do know that there is the rice I usually end up with, and then the longer, thinner rice that my parents buy on occasion whose smell reminds of restaurants when it's cooked, and then there's the sticky rice that I associate with zhong zi -- and I associate zhong zi specifically with the kinds with dates inside (had to look up what the word was in English just now, so used to calling them 枣子) which of course must be eaten with sugar, ergo my immediate instinct with sticky rice is to add sugar.

I love rice, most especially the way it soaks up flavor so it can taste amazing, or the way I need to have it at every meal, or the way it can be a meal in and of itself if I'm too lazy to cook -- rice and seaweed, or rice and pickled radishes, or rice and anything can be filling if not particularly healthy.

I didn't know I had this many things to say about rice ...

[glass_icarus]

Congee is such a wonderful food, I especially love it when I'm sick.

I've recently been craving the lovely sticky rice wrapped in leaves and steamed with sectioned crab from this one place in Flushing that does it perfectly.

[onehundredmoons.livejournal.com]

College rice was a dismal affair. Wow, I don't think I've thought of that in about 15 years, but it's completely true. *nods*

[glass_icarus]

Oh, dining hall rice. I've never understood why USian university school cafeterias don't invest in a freaking pressure cooker, it's not THAT hard to make properly! *g*

[(Anonymous)]

Risotto... short-grained Arborio rice, toasted in melted butter with chopped onions and pancetta. Add the chicken broth in small batches, stirring as you go. It gets soupy and wonderful, and you can make is as sticky/dry as you want. Finish with copious amounts of freshly grated parmegiano reggiano and I'm in my happy place just typing that.

[glass_icarus]

I brought my own rice cooker (AND rice) as soon as I could get away with it, trufax!

[onehundredmoons.livejournal.com]

That was me.

[glass_icarus]

It took me AGES to get the appeal of risotto, and the time it finally clicked was the time a family friend and I made it ourselves, hee! Texture control is vital. ;)

[vass]

Music is an ingredient in risotto. I can't make risotto without music playing while I stir, stir, stir, slowly adding the liquid over a whole hour of cooking, never moving away from the saucepan. And in the end it is so shockingly creamy considering that I didn't add any dairy, just olive oil, vegetable stock, onions, garlic, and tomato passata.

Rice in a tofu skin, with sesame seeds, so perfect it doesn't even need soy sauce. I think that was a form of onigiri, but it's been a while since I had it, and I can't remember.

Turkish buttered rice.

Jollof rice, which I've never tried, but very much want to, because rice with tomato paste and chilis sounds like something I need in my life.

[meloukhia]

(Icon solidarity)

Dang you're making me hungry!

[meloukhia]

Oh, EGADS. One of my undergraduate institutions had a 'stir fry station' with a substance that I resolutely refuse to recognise as 'rice.' It was an insult to all the myriad and delicious ways in which rice can present itself.

[ciderpress]

RICE! NOMMY. I would say something profound but er, I have no profundity. My favourite rice is the 전복죽 my mother makes me when I'm happy or sad or good or bad. I am going to be eleven forever and ever and ever.

I also had the world's laziest omuraisu for dinner tonight, took a picture to oblige you, bb.

[trinker]

Really? pressure cooker? I loved using a pressure cooker when I was living on the boat, but I've never used one for rice.
`

[trinker]

OMG Rice.

25 years ago, at boarding school, there was no microwaveable shelf-stable rice. Just boil-in-the-bag vacuum packs. And I would hoard those, along with boil-in-the-bag Japanese-style curry, for those days when I just couldn't take the dining hall's offerings anymore. My mother used to send them in care packages.

I have introduced a long string of partners to the joys of good Japanese rice, and every single one of them became more of a partisan than I ever have been myself.

The one woman I know who claimed an inability to eat rice is one of the few that I had *that* level of conflict with offline...

I could talk about rice all day, and may come back later to do just that!`

[glass_icarus]

... crap, do I mean pressure cooker?? @__@ Maybe not! I was thinking about my old-school rice cooker, which has nesting pots and can also double as a steamer (and toaster, if you just slap bread on the dry bottom and hit the switch).

[suaine]

My family are potato people to the bone, but I've always had a deep love for rice, despite the cheap, cultureless kind my mother used to buy. Now our cupboard is stocked with rice for sushi, wild rice, basmati and thai and once I can convince my mother that a rice cooker is essential, I think I shall be perfectly happy :)

[glass_icarus]

Oh!! The rice in tofu skin pockets are called... inarizushi, I think? I can't remember what my parents called it, ahaha, I always thought of them as pockets. Onigiri is wrapped in seaweed.

Oh man, ever since eccentricyoruba posted about jollof rice I have been SO CURIOUS. *____* Must try it someday!

[glass_icarus]

EEEEE, THOSE PICTURES!!! &hearts &hearts &hearts Nom nom nomuraisu! :3

[glass_icarus]

Riiiiiiice. &hearts Also :O, I've never cooked rice in the microwave! I used to run to my friends who had rice cookers in college instead (when I was in housing that didn't allow for me to have my own), but I think I mostly suffered BAD RICE in freshman year, except for the times I went home or my mom swung by to visit.

[glass_icarus]

Rice cookers! &hearts I mean, it is obviously possible to cook rice without one, but I for one have never done it- I've never been without a rice cooker. (Except for college, as noted above, when Things Were Sad. *g*)