It has a flat surface, a bowl, a tare weight compensation, and is not expensive. 😉
I am contemplating a rice cooker. It is the ONLY thing that would give me the patience to cope with brown rice.
It has a flat surface, a bowl, a tare weight compensation, and is not expensive. 😉
I am contemplating a rice cooker. It is the ONLY thing that would give me the patience to cope with brown rice.
News flash. I committed rice cooker. A fuzzy-logic Japanese-built rice cooker is the ONLY sane way to cook micro-portions of brown rice for 2 people without ending up with soupy stuff with uncooked rice. We are getting serious about this. And I am a good Chinese cook, given a scales to keep track of portions, and a rice cooker to handle the part of the meal that is make-or-break and has to be done during the other cooking.
A good Japanese rice cooker is the way to go. I’ve never had trouble with any of the Japanese ones, but the only one I ever bought from Bed, Bath and Beyond was horrible! It overcooked constantly, and didn’t last as long as the Japanese counterparts.
I find brown rice much more satisfying than white rice — I hope your rice cooker helps in that regard. Also, when reading your previous post regarding the stuff you guys have in common, my one thought was okonomiyaki — basically a vegetable pancake using cabbage, carrots, and scallions (do those come under the category of Evil Onions for you guys?) with eggs and flour. The sauce is high salt — soy sauce, ketchup, mustard, sake, and Worcestershire, if I remember correctly — but you don’t need much of it. I was introduced to it during one of our Anime Nights and I really like it. It’s quick to make, too. The recipe I use is in the Moosewood Cookbook. The book also has a killer West African Peanut Soup using sweet potatoes, carrots, broth and peanut butter. If you want specific recipes, I’d be happy to send them. (I’ve been making a lot of Asian food. Echoing someone from the previous post, I love my wok too.) I don’t know if scallions are out of the question for you guys, but I know I can eat raw scallions whereas I cannot eat raw onions. I use scallions in place of regular onions in all sorts of things now. Good luck!
Yep, a scallion is an onion, ditto leeks. But A little spice can often substitute. If you can’t go oniony, go hot. Or use fresh garlic.
I’d love some recipes.
I’ll have to send these tomorrow — I’m at work right now. Sorry about the scallions. 🙁 (But I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a suitable substitute.)
I’ve been doing my brown rice in a simple rice steamer for lots of years now, and it seems to turn out OK – but I’m not too fussy when I’m hungry… How does the fuzzy logic work? What are the advantages?
The fuzzy logic machine can tell the state of the rice, and will keep it hot for you as long as need be while you finish cooking. Probably it uses the same sensor as the Panasonic microwave, which senses steam.
Your rice cooker should also be able to handle wild rice, which can make a huge difference in a dish, thereby stretching your options. There are also lots of different kinds of rice available, including black rice, which is supposedly not a glutinous rice and very high in fiber. When I lived in Seattle, you could get different rice varieties at several dozen Asian groceries, but alas, I never did grocery-shopping in Spokane so I don’t know what’s available.
we have a substantial Thai population, plus Japanese and Chinese. I’ll give it a look!
My wife and I love brown rice because it’s so toothsome – you feel like you’re really eating hearty, and it has a nice nutty flavor.
Good luck with the régime – I’m on one myself. My you be as lucky as my mother (13 lbs in a month) and not like me (4 lbs in 3 weeks – curse).
The rice cooker can cook any grains, or I suspect beans if you do them from scratch. Mine also came with a steamer rack for use with vegetables.
I use a pressure cooker when I do my beans as it takes so little time. The modern ones are terrific.
Do consider a nutritional workup, or at least apprise your thyroid expert what your diet has been. With so little caloric intake you could have built up all sorts of imbalances. Aging increases the need for things like calcium in the diet, and we also get less efficient in absorbing them. More calcium stopped my fathers muscle spasms.
Can you eat shallots? My spouse can’t eat onions unless fully blackened with all the acid converted to sugar and, as I come from a family/food culture which starts most dishes with “saute an onion”, we luckily found out that shallots substitute well for us and our marriage. Still, they are pretty darned close to onions… so they may be out for you too.
Trader Joe’s apparently does a very good microwavable brown rice in a bag, for when folks are desperate.
Yep, shallots are verboten. I tried leeks. No joy. The ONLY thing we get away with is garlic. Must be that slug of Italian ancestors I have in one itty-bitty branch. We love garlic; and that’s the only member of the lily family that doesn’t do immediate bad things to us; but we’re careful, for fear of developing an intolerance to that as well.
We have been using a rice cooker ever since a Philippine nanny required we acquire one as a job condition. We do love it, but ours starts to get the bottom of the rice brown as soon as it switches from cook to warm. Some of us like the crispiness of the resulting product, but it isn’t nice mounds of soft jasmine rice at that point.
I haven’t done brown rice in it because my sprouts refuse to eat it, but there is no reason why it wouldn’t work. I think you would just add additional water.
We really like out little Black and Decker RC3303 cooker — makes about 2 cooked, perfect for 2. Amazon for $13. It’s really nice to not have to keep an eye on it, it just cooks and then stays warm.
And to cook, give Organic Forbidden Rice a try. Black rice (actually dark purple), with a wonderful chewy feel. Nice change from white or brown.
The Forbidden Rice makes a very interesting and tasty rice pudding, as well. A nice shade of lavender, with no artificial colors.
oops misread and see you have one already !
I just cook a bunch of rice ahead of time, take what I need for the first meal, then portion it out in half-cup portions into freezer bags. One half-cup is the serving size for steamed rice. I find it keeps pretty well, and even if it gets somewhat “frosted” inside the bag, by the time it’s reheated in the microwave, it’s not all that bad. Not necessarily as good as freshly cooked rice, but consider how long rice sits in a cooker at a Chinese restaurant or once they take it out of the cooker and put it into the little carton, how long it sits in a warmer. So, reheating it within a partially open freezer bag keeps moisture in, but also prevents the bag from exploding like an overinflated air pillow. Wild rice, being the seed of a water-grass found mostly in Minnesota, isn’t the same thing, and different varieties of rice, etc. I prefer the Thai Jasmine rice for every day cooking. I buy the 25 pound bags at the Air Force Commissary, and one lasts a long time for me.
Joe, I do the same as you do with rice. I cook up enough for 2-3 meals and keep it in the fridge for up to a week. A little zip in the microwave and fluffing with a fork and it’s ready to go. Brown rice really works well this way and you don’t have to plan for 45 minutes cooking time with 5 minutes standing to finish absorbing the liquid.
I do rice in a cast iron pan, usually twice as much as we need. If it is plain rice with nothing on it, it keeps for up to a week in the refrigerator.
We discovered tomatillos last night…. thinly sliced over pesto on pizza….then prosciutto, provolone, mushrooms, peppers and mozzarella….on my own very sturdy sourdough crust….cooked on the grill.
Does anyone use buckwheat noodles as a change from rice in eastern cooking? I find them a nice variant. 😉
Love buckwheat noodles – I make a mean udon soup with buckwheat noodles, some beef or shrimp or tofu, some bok choy, mushrooms, and sea salt, a little soy sauce, a touch of mirin, or other seasonings.
And talk about a dish that’s flexible! It’s like stew – you can throw just about anything in there!
Turns out the West African Peanut Soup has some forbidden ingredients, but since I mentioned it, I’ll send it along anyway. This is from the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook. Hopefully, they won’t come after me for posting this. 🙂
West African Peanut Soup
2 cps chopped onions
1 tbs peanut or vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cayenne or other ground dried chile (or to taste — being a wimp, I use 1/8 tsp)
1 tsp grated peeled fresh ginger root (I like ginger, so I use 1 tbs)
1 cp chopped carrots
2 cps chopped sweet potatoes
4 cp vegetable stock or water
2 cp tomato juice
1 cp smooth peanut butter
1 tbs sugar (optional)
1 cp chopped scallions or chives (there’s a note that this is integral to the recipe, not just a garnish)
1. Sauté onions in oil until just translucent. Stir in cayenne & fresh ginger. Add carrots & sauté couple more minutes. Mix in potatoes & stock, bring to boil, simmer 15 minutes until veggies tender.
2. In blender or food processor (or using one of those nifty blender sticks), purée veggies with cooking liquid and tomato juice. Return to soup pot. Stir in peanut butter until smooth.
3. Taste. Sweetness will depend on sweetness of veggies. If not there, add a little sugar. Reheat gently, add more water, stock or tomato juice for thinner soup.
4. Serve topped with plenty of chopped scallions or chives.
Sigh. I don’t know if one can sub in garlic for onions. Maybe. It’s probably very good, but I fear I would be two weeks recovering from one indiscretion.
I may try it, however, with roasted garlic.
I don’t know why garlic wouldn’t work. It certainly doesn’t have an oniony flavor. I’m just wondering what you can sub for the tomato juice (carrot juice? more broth?) and the scallions/chives. I rarely substitute stuff in recipes, so I’m not accustomed to thinking that way. (I usually wind up doubling the spices to alter it to my taste. Except for cayenne.) For some reason, I’m thinking a little tarragon sprinkled on top in place of the scallions might be good, but I’ve never tried it that way. The first bowl I had of this had me thinking “Woah, this is weird,” but I went back for seconds. And thirds. It might be worth the experiment. 🙂
To clarify — I meant the SOUP doesn’t have an oniony flavor.
This is also from the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook. Their sake-braised potatoes are extremely yummy too.
Okonomiyaki (4 six-inch pancakes)
1 sheet nori — toast carefully over heat, crumble into small pieces & set aside (I toast it by holding it in tongs over the rangetop set at high heat — it curls, so be careful — it also burns easily)
sauce:
1/4 cp ketchup
1+1/2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbs sake
1 tsp tamari soy sauce
Combine all sauce ingredients in small saucepan and simmer 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Remove from heat & cool to room temp. (This keeps well in the fridge if you have leftovers.)
okonomiyaki:
2 eggs
1 cp white flour
1 cp water
2 tbs sake
pinch of salt (optional)
2 cps shredded cabbage (1+1/2 inch strips — I use Napa cabbage)
1/4 cp shredded carrot
4 whole scallions, cut into 1 inch strips (I chop them much smaller) about 1 cp
vegetable oil
1/2 cp cooked shrimp, cut in 1/2-inch pieces (or cooked crabmeat or seitan (whatever that is) thinly sliced) — I think this is optional. I almost never put it in because I like having leftovers and leftover shrimp is just gross.
1. Beat eggs in large bowl. Add flour & water & beat until have batter consistency of pancake batter. And sake & salt. Fold in cabbage, carrots & scallions. Be sure to mix batter & veggies together evenly. Each okonomiyaki uses 1/4 of this mixture.
2. Heat 1 tbs oil in standard 10-inch skillet. Spoon 1/4 of batter onto hot skillet (like a pancake), making sure veggies are evenly distributed. Sprinkle 1/4 of shrimp, crabmeat or seitan on top. Cook each side on medium heat for 2 minutes, until lightly browned. Reduce heat to low & cook, covered for another 5 min, occasionally turning & gently pressing with a spatula. (I find the covering thing is unnecessary — I just cook it like any other pancake — eyeballing it until it’s done.) I also use two skillets so I can do it faster.
3. Serve hot with sauce smeared on top, and a sprinkling of nori.
Interesting! Never tried Japanese cuisine…but it looks both edible (except crab, which is potentially lethal, no kidding: but I can have shrimp, no problem. And except the scallions: lily family. Sheesh!)
But seriously, thank you for both these recipes, and I’m sure there are readers who will love to try them; I think I can modify them to work for us. The ingredients sound generally good…and I’m good at figuring out substitutes.
You’re welcome! I hope you can make them work.
Some friends and I have Anime Night, where we make Japanese food and watch, yes, anime. I’ve learned how to make sushi, daikon pickles, okonomiyaki, and a couple different soups. My problem with Japanese food is the high salt, so I can’t eat as much of it as I would like, but if you aren’t disposed toward hypertension, it might be worth picking up a cookbook or two. (I have loads of cookbooks. I LOVE cookbooks.) Right now I have Japanese Cooking for the American Table, and Easy and Healthy Japanese Cooking for the American Kitchen. These books don’t have quite so many unidentifiable (and unobtainable) Asian veggies in the recipes. The cooking time is also negligible — all the time comes in the prep.
The okonomiyaki is billed as “the pizza of Japan” in the Moosewood cookbook — just because of its popularity. If you watch anime and wonder what in the heck those round pancakes are being cooked in the food stalls, where someone’s flipping them in the air with two spatulas — chances are they’re cooking okonomiyaki.
I hope you can come up with a good sub for the scallions! Enjoy!
😆 you will probably appreciate our koi: Ichigo, Ikkaku, Ishida, Renji, and Kenpachi.
No Rukia? 🙂
Alas, poor Rukia, smallest, didn’t go properly into hibernation and we lost her due to an off-again on-again winter and my inexperience. We have spoken for a young black-and-white once our local pond place starts selling the fish they now have in quarantine.
On your most recent post, CJ-ji, I suggested wasabi or horseradish instead of onion.
Oh hey, daikon might make a good substitute, if your supermarket has it. Good call, smartcat!
Both good suggestions.
You might enjoy (as long as we’re on the subject of Japanese cooking) something called, variously, either ‘Monks’ Food’, ‘Buddha’s Delight’, or ‘Food for the Forty Minor Gods’. Cellophane noodles, lotus root, optional bamboo shoots, seaweed, shredded cabbage and carrots, miso paste, and several varieties of mushrooms simmered together. I was introduced to it at an all-night kiln firing at a Zen temple, and made a pig of myself when I wasn’t throwing in chunks of wood.