Rice Bowl!

For the past two weeks or so, I have been eating a different kind of rice at home without even realizing it! All along, we were eating rice from Thailand – thick, a bit hard and rather aromatic. As an Asian, I grow up eating rice as a staple food. My parents are still open to adventures, if we go for different cuisines, but to my grandmother, rice is a must for every meal. She would frown if we eat steak or whatnot as our main course instead of rice, as to her, she can never fathom how anyone can be full without eating any rice!

I have tried different kinds of rice – polished, unpolished, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Australian. Rice can be cooked into porridge (for coarse grains) or congee (for fine grains). Chicken congee mixed with shredded chicken and fried onion, with fried dough fritters and sesame oil is the best! Japanese rice seems finer, as do Korean rice. Australian rice is pretty fine, and best to be used in making porridge.

When I was in lower secondary, we had to do a science investigative project and I chose to investigate the cooking times, temperatures and texture of the various kinds of rice. I discovered that Thai rice still takes the shortest time to cook and turns out the coarsest and most aromatic. There were times when I had unpolished rice, cooked as porridge. The porridge looks reddish brown, and tastes better than normal white porridge (which essentially is rather bland if it is just plain porridge). When I was young, whenever I had to take porridge, I would add it with Bovril or Marmite to sweeten it.

However, for the past couple of weeks, I did not even know I had been eating a different kind of rice! The price of Thai rice is getting rather exorbitant lately, and in order to buy enough to feed a family at the same price, my mum switched to Vietnamese rice. It was only after my dad commented the rice is a bit harder that I realize it was a different kind of rice!

The texture of Vietnamese rice is a bit coarser than Thai rice, thus harder. But the difference is very insignificant, in fact, hardly noticeable until my dad made the remark! It does not matter to me actually, whether the rice is hard or soft. It is just a staple food and I have gotten rather immune to eating it that I do not notice the taste anymore!

In these trying times, it is best to cut whatever we can cut. My family is not that fussy over what we eat as long as we do not starve. Even electricity bills have increased, so we have been told to cut down on that as well! Which means no more sleeping with the lights on!