I come from a culture where rice is the basis of the three squares a day. And by rice, I mean the white, sticky stuff, not any of this fancy wild/brown/yellow and loose alternates. We'd gotten out of making rice at home because I grew to loathe cleaning the rice cooker pan afterwards. It always needed to soak because the rice had crusted and burnt to it. The lid would be covered in white, hard to scrub froth. The pain had not been worth it since I would just get my rice fix when we ate out. It's especially not worth it when an impatient toddler will not wait until I am done with the dishes and will physically try to push me away from the sink so I can play with her.
But we discovered that she's a fan of brown rice. We try to feed her healthier than I feed myself so I looked into what it takes to make brown rice. Apparently, it's more finicky and harder to cook than white rice, which didn't recommend itself to me. Enter Zojirushi
We were at some friends' house for a barbecue where they served up some brown rice. Their daughter is the same age and I figured that if they could manage making the stuff, maybe I could learn some tips and tricks. It was simple enough - she pointed to a squat, bubble-shaped appliance on the table and declared that it was easy to make brown rice with it. The bubble shaped thing was apparently a rice cooker. I had enough time to note the name emblazoned on its side before my daughter decided she wanted to tackle the steps on the deck by herself and I had to go supervise.
Later that week, I went to look up Zojirushi and see what they had to offer. They have a bewildering array of rice cooker choices, boasting bells and whistles I never knew one needed for a simple pot of rice. But they're a Japanese company and they should know about rice and I was determined to wade through the choices to see if they had a rice cooker that would work for us. Of course, they had the simple standard rice cookers I recognized, but what if I actually needed some of those extra features and I never knew it before? Their comparison chart only sort of helped. I zeroed in on the ones that listed brown rice as a menu option. Ooh, the same rice cookers could also do sweet rice. Mango sticky rice, here we come! Oh and there's a timer function so we can have our rice ready at our preset time? Score! And it also does porridge (read: it can do the good oatmeal that takes half an hour)? With a timer so it can start breakfast before we get up on a weekday morning? Score another point! I don't really need my rice cooker to make cake or use it as a slow cooker. I also wasn't sold on induction heating element or the pressurized system, especially as it added another $100-$150 to the cost. So we ended up with the NS-YAC10 model.
I certainly wasn't expecting to spend over $200 for a rice cooker. I'm a victim of my own self-imposed feature creep and besides I put in all that effort to research the cooker and it was recommended by some friends. Darn it, I deserve that rice cooker now! To get back to my roots! And feed my girl some tasty, healthy rice!
The rice hit the pan last week, and I'm still plotting the list of rice/oatmeal we need to try with it. White rice? Delicious, chewy, better than the restaurant rice! Brown rice? Well, it's not my preferred and we ended up eating it the day after because it took about an hour longer than we anticipated. Definitely a candidate for that timer feature. But still tasty and The Girl shoveled it into her face by the handful (to be fair, it's how she eats most things that she's willing to eat). I need to find some sweet rice and then we try the good oatmeal one morning. The best part? It's a breeze to clean.
Our household has joined the 21st century of rice cooking.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Back in the Rice Habit
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Addicted to... Oatmeal?
I have apparently never had real oatmeal. Sure, I've had the little flavored packets I add water to. I was once partial to the cinnamon or maple flavors. But no more!
This weekend, I was too lazy to head out to a brunch place and I didn't want to have 2 pancake breakfasts in a row. So I tried the old-fashioned oatmeal recipe - the kind that takes half an hour to make. Nothing instant about it. I had oats (for granola) and milk (for yogurt) lying around and of course some butter and salt. I let things simmer, waited about half and hour and voila! The fluffiest, creamiest, toothsome oatmeal I have ever tasted. I sprinkled brown sugar over the first bowl. And when I went back for seconds, I tried honey drizzled over it. I would have tried maple syrup next, but my stomach ran out of room. It even reheats well in the microwave.
Guess what I'm having for breakfast this week?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
America's Test Kitchen Bread Rescue
Having gotten a good start on bread weapons, I thought it would be nice to learn how to make edible bread so I know what NOT to do for bread weapons making.
I turned to The New Best Recipe cookbook for some help. Otherwise known as the "engineer's cookbook", The New Best Recipe is made by the folks at America's Test Kitchen who also edit Cook's Illustrated magazine. Luckily for me they had a section on making baguettes.
I knew I had bitten off more than I can chew at first when the opening paragraph of the baguette section included, "Where we parted ways was on the question of whether you could actually create an outstanding baguette at home in a regular oven." Uh oh.
I spent a weekday evening reading through their thorough research. From visual cues how to tell that the sponge was ready, to when the dough is kneaded enough all the way to when the bread is done baking, they outlined it all. They had some nice pictures of the aforementioned sponge (the sponge is the first mixture of yeast, flour and water, I call it yeast appetizer, before the rest of the flour is added) which I found very helpful as an end condition to watch for. My sponge actually wasn't ready in the cookbook's estimated duration of 8 hours, but took the rest of the night into the next morning.
I already knew that I enjoy the kneading process - it's very relaxing squishing around a ball over and over again - but the new process made it even more fun. The reason I didn't reach the windowpane condition of the dough the last time was because I was adding the wrong ingredient to address the issue: flour instead of water. Adding water on top of the dough only made it feel slippery and hard to grip, but by "crashing" the dough, picking it up and throwing it down on the work surface repeatedly, it would not only splash bits of water at the counter, but incorporate the water into the dough. Best of all, when I pinched off a tiny bit of dough and stretched it, it didn't break and became translucent - the elusive, yet promised windowpane.
The baking process was also fun and much more active. I used my pizza stone to bake on rather than a regular cookie sheet. But on the rack beneath the pizza stone was a pan of water to keep the humidity of the oven air up as the bread baked and prevent the crust from drying out, hardening and preventing the bread from expanding. The bread was done when the inside reached a temperature of 205-210F, so I was having to spear hot bread with my thermometer through the blazing heat of the oven to see if it was done.
Then it was time to see the results. Before the taste test, I was able to actually cut the bread with a bread knife. The crust was slightly crunchy and the crumb inside looked relatively uniform. It tasted like bread! I thought it was on the chewy side, but not the kind of chewy I remember store bought baguettes being like. But it tasted like bread! Victory dance!
Next up, sourdough.
PS: Believe it or not, the photo in this post is actually my bread.