Rice
A lot of the dishes I make include rice — it’s cheap, easy, and filling. But kind of boring by itself if you’ve eaten it a million times. So I tend to throw in things to give it a bit of tang or zing. I mention them in passing in the main dishes (“rice with raisins and nuts works great with this”) and really, there’s no need to elaborate more than that, usually. So here’s some ideas. For all suggestions assume the basic rice recipe is 1 cup of rice and 2 cups of water (or whatever size you want, as long as the rice:water proportions are 1:2) and the cooking part is “heat in a pan or rice cooker or microwave until the water is absorbed and the rice is soft”.
- half a cup of almond slivers and half a cup of raisins (golden or not, doesn’t matter). The cooking will plump them up nicely.
- cranberries (cf above about plumping)
- cashews — the cooking will make them quite soft and they add a mellow flavor.
- chopped mint leaves; this works particularly well with jasmine aromatic rice and thai/indian dishes.
- minced garlic and butter; about a clove or two and about a tablespoon’s worth of butter added about 10 minutes into the cooking process will be great. mind you don’t burn the garlic, that smells horrible and tastes worse.
- minced onions, cooked. this is a bit of a pain because you have to cook the onions ahead of time, but it works great in combination with:
- bacon, finely chopped. fry the bacon and while you wait for it to cool for chopping, sauté the onion in the bacon drippings.
Really, anything that goes well with your dish will do well incorporated into the rice as long as it’s texturally like the rice (ie, avoid silken tofu) and is given time to meld it’s flavors with the rice. Delicate flavors you may want to leave until after cooking, lemon zest being a good example.
