Brown Basmati Rice is the best food to be found on Earth. It provides protein and carbohydrates as well as B-vitamins which aid digestion. Sadly most Westerners eat white rice (and white bread and white pasta), which has had all the goodness (the husks) removed, leaving just the energy, but without the vitamins to digest it. This causes constipation and eventually the cancers and heart disease we are all dying from. Apparently brown things were thought unclean to the white colonials who invaded the East. Basmati rice was traditionally used for special occasions and parties, because of its fragrant aroma, but I reckon that every meal should be special. It is said that the smell of basmati rice cooking will help to sell a house or create a convivial atmosphere. Maybe try also Jasmine Rice, but again, make sure it is brown, not white.
Preparation time: 30 minutes, serves 5 - 6.
Rinse the rice and place it in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Add the water and salt, and bring to the boil (the salt raises the temperature). Put on the lid and turn down the heat to very low. Cook for 20 minutes or so, until all the water has been absorbed (this time will depend on your cooking equipment, so experimentation is necessary at first). Turn off the heat and allow the pan to stand for another 10 minutes, letting the rice finish cooking in its own steam.
My theory with rice is that it can never be overcooked; what tends to happen is that either there is still water left (in which case bring it back to the boil and then leave it to cook in its own steam), or the bottom layer becomes toasted, but this tastes good! If it is too sticky, cook for longer with the lid removed, so as to let out excess steam. So don't worry about overdoing it. Rice was designed to be easy to cook so that humans could evolve quicker ;-)
Serve hot or cold.
Copyright ©2002 Malcolm Smith. These recipes are free software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. DISCLAIMER: All these recipes are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.