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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 12:41:35 GMT
While I share all my wisdom re: potatoes I need wisdom on the grain I was invariably deprived of . I can actually remember my mother serving up a rice dish for dinner one night and the look on my father's face. It was not even "real"rice but a packaged quick rice or somesuch. I think the only rice dishes I ever experienced were a rice pudding dessert. Naturally here in the south for umpteen years rice is a major staple food. But ,I associate rice with the more exotic dishes from books and movies. Please share your wisdom.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 8, 2009 13:09:50 GMT
Rice is grown in France in the Camargue and I treat that as if it were a risotto.
For Asian food we have Tilda basmati rice. There are lots of brands of basmati but they are all, in my experience, inferior. It was an Indian friend in Paris who took me in hand and said I must buy the Tilda brand. He is right. It requires no washing or soaking. It never clumps together when cooking. Put it into boiling water and it is perfectly cooked in 10 minutes.
You can buy Tilda basmati rice at Indian shops in Paris. We get people who are driving from England to bring us 10 kilos. You can buy it in the UK at Tesco and Sainsbury's as well as Asian food shops. It works out much cheaper in 10 kilo bags.
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Post by auntieannie on Mar 8, 2009 13:31:56 GMT
in northern Italy, they grow risotto rice, usually of the Arborio (from the town of the same name in the Po valley) or Carnaroli varieties.
When I was still in Switzerland, I bought different varieties of rice off the WWF shop. They were rice grown in Asia by small communities and the WWF was trying to allow them a market so they wouldn't start growing drugs for thugs.
I also enjoy brown basmati rice. It has such a wonderful flavour!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 15:16:17 GMT
I have always been the member of my family who liked rice the least. However, my love of Southeast Asian and Indo-Pakistani food has forced me to reconcile myself with it.
I buy Thai rice exclusively.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 8, 2009 16:24:09 GMT
Kerouac, try Tilda basmati. It is superior. I think it is Passage Brady that was Indian supermarkets that stock it - probably not far from Kerouac Towers.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 8, 2009 17:03:36 GMT
Because my mother is from Louisiana, I grew up eating rice and really love it. It's a good thing, too, as I have no access to even the least exotic of the exotic rices here. My choices are long grain brown or white or short grain white, period. (precooked is also sold, >shudder<, but I feel about that the way Casimira feels about potato flakes) There are a million ways to cook rice and I like all of them, but also harbor a great love for plain, perfectly steamed white rice:
1 cup white rice 1 1/2 cup water a couple of drops of oil or bit of butter a shake of salt
Bring the water, oil, & salt to a boil in a good heavy pot with a tightly fitting lid. Pour in the rice and stir it around a couple of times. Let it come back to the boil, then quickly lower the heat as far as it will go. Cover the pot and do NOT open it for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, open the pot & gently fluff the rice with a fork, then quickly cover it again & let it set for five or ten minutes. It will be perfect. You can double the recipe with the same results, but tripling it is a little problematic.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 17:16:32 GMT
Just to show how recalcitrant I am about rice, I have never eaten a risotto in my entire life. I have absolutely nothing against them, whatever they are, but it is not something that I would want to order in a restaurant, and nobody has ever served it to me when I was invited for a meal.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 8, 2009 17:19:43 GMT
How about a paella?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 17:24:16 GMT
I have had lots of those.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 8, 2009 18:39:51 GMT
Kerouac, try Risotto alla Milanese just once in your life. It ranks up there with macaroni and cheese as a comfort food, but one you could serve at a dinner party. Here are two recipes to show a little history and variation: www.cliffordawright.com/caw/recipes/display/recipe_id/727/ and recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/13114/risotto-alla-milanese.html. Unless you fear an irate mob from Milan breaking into your kitchen and angrily thowing pots to the floor, feel free to change the recipe as you wish. I've made it zillions of times without beef marrow or prosciutto, and substituted other rice for the arborio.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 8, 2009 18:45:59 GMT
Just to show how recalcitrant I am about rice, I have never eaten a risotto in my entire life. I have absolutely nothing against them, whatever they are, but it is not something that I would want to order in a restaurant, and nobody has ever served it to me when I was invited for a meal. Same here. A friend brought us a small bag of risotto rice over two years ago, and I haven't cooked it yet. Too much bother to cook it properly. I did have risotto as an ingredient in some crab cakes at Yia Yia's Euro Cafe in East Memphis, Tenn.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 8, 2009 18:50:32 GMT
I've had a few paellas, cooked by my Mom years ago, and probably in a Spanish/Portuguese restaurant in Newark NJ's Ironbound District. Not bad, but not memorable, either. During a nearly month-long visit to Spain in 2002, we didn't eat any paella. Most of the restaurants that we saw, eg, in Madrid, had those glossy sidewalk tent signs offering paella. I swear that the signs came from the same printer. Ergo, the paella must have come from the same factory. But we did have some great food while in Spain.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 8, 2009 21:17:27 GMT
Also, Don, I seem to remember you went to the north coast of Spain, which is not paella country. We have been several times to Spain (just 2 hours down the road) but never ordered paella. To be honest, it seems an expensive way to eat rice.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 0:33:55 GMT
I rarely if ever presume the quality of a restaurant's food by the signage. Some of my most memorable meals have been in restaurants if you could even call them that,with little to no emphasis on the outward appearance. The best Paella I ever had was in Playa del Carmen when 5th Avenue was a dirt road and the seafood served was being brought in right off the boat,I don't think there even was a sign. We had to wait longer than most people would be able to tolerate but after some cold beers we were duly rewarded !
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Post by hwinpp on Mar 9, 2009 1:52:31 GMT
Try the risotto is all I can say. I'd avoided it most of my life until I went to a party where it was served. Not bad at all but too much work for me. I try to keep a balance here between rice, noodles, potatoes and bread (called nom pang here, cake bread), K2 pang sounds familiar, doesn't it?
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 9, 2009 8:11:42 GMT
when 5th Avenue was a dirt road:-*! The only 5th Avenue I've heard of is in New York. I had no idea you were that old.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 11:39:03 GMT
I always found it funny and ironic too. The main drag in Playa Del Carmen,Yucatan is actually called 5th Avenue .Before it became 'discovered' it was a lovely,funky town. A stones throw from the Mayan ruins at Tuluum and southward Belize.It is unrecognizable now, a very expensive resort developed largely by European investors. It does not attract the college spring break crowd,they still go to Cozumel and Cancun.
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Post by tillystar on Mar 9, 2009 13:37:01 GMT
I must be a carb freak. After potatoes, rice is probably my next favorite food.
We eat risotto at least a couple of times a month - its not too much trouble to cook it once you have the hang of it it is second nature. I find the stirring very relaxing, especially with a glass of wine in hand.
We also have paella probably at least once a month. Not the seafood variation, thats reserved for outdoor cooking on a huge camping ring in the summer. I have mentioned probably 1 million times but my favorite is a chorizo and spinach version which changes a little each time I make it but its delicious. I also love the monkfish version which is really a catalan dish.
My MIL makes a snail and chicken paella which is lovely, FIL makes his own version of paella with offal and olives. Its sick.
Oh and for special occasions Arroz Negro is delicious.
For both risotto and paella I use risotto rice, its the way you cook it makes the difference and I never found much different using calasperra rice. If we have some we have brought back with us I use it.
We also eat a lot of basmati and like Baz, it has to be Tilda. I love it plain with curry dishes or different spicy rice versions. Rice and lentils go so well together. If I am feeling under the weather I love just a plain bowl of rice.
Very rarely I get a brown nutty rice I can't recall the name of from a local healthfood shop. It is delicious and the quickest meal ever cooked with a handful of peas, then a handful of seeds chucked in at the end and tamari sauce splashed over it.
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Post by tillystar on Mar 9, 2009 13:39:45 GMT
Oh and a few times I made this persian rice with a golden crust at the bottom. I really loved it but that was definately too much trouble for me to bother with in the end. I would love somebody else to cook it for me though.
And take away special fried rice for breakfast the next morning is a favorite breakfast of mine.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 9, 2009 18:22:30 GMT
I rarely if ever presume the quality of a restaurant's food by the signage. Some of my most memorable meals have been in restaurants if you could even call them that,with little to no emphasis on the outward appearance. The best Paella I ever had was in Playa del Carmen when 5th Avenue was a dirt road and the seafood served was being brought in right off the boat,I don't think there even was a sign. We had to wait longer than most people would be able to tolerate but after some cold beers we were duly rewarded ! Casimira, you may have misunderstood me. I agree that some of the best food is found at places that look like a dump from the outside and have no fancy signage. What I was attempting to say was that the cafes and restaurantes in Madrid had signs out on the sidewalk advertising paella all seeming to be the same, glossy, photographic type. Thus, they were a clue that the restaurants had possibly bought a "paella heat 'n serve kit" from their provisioner. Baz; although we did spend 95% of our visit in el norte de España, we also finished up with 3 days in Murcia. Our friend took us to a rather posh restaurant in a tourist area. The meal was fine until we got to the arroz a banda, which was poorly made and seriously disappointing. True, it wasn't paella, but a cousin to it. Maybe we'll try paella at the Casino Español next time we're in Mexico City.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 9, 2009 18:42:26 GMT
I simply cannot imagine being in Spain & not at least trying paella once. It is such a part of the food canon there it's unlikely that restaurants wouldn't make their own.
Tilly, I know that you are very busy, but please, please, please start a thread on Spanish regional food! You could start with just one recipe & add to it whenever you have time.
Pretty please?
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 9, 2009 19:30:13 GMT
Bixa wrote: "I simply cannot imagine being in Spain & not at least trying paella once. It is such a part of the food canon there it's unlikely that restaurants wouldn't make their own."
I'm just a natural born skeptic, Bixa. I really think that restaurants catering to the tourist trade, at least in Madrid, don't make their own paella. Maybe in Valencia, in the right place, one might luck out.
Well, no paella for us. But we did try Callos a la Madrileña. Never again. But I became a big fan of Fabada Asturiana and Caldo Gallego, northern food. We also ate tapas until they came out our ears. Loved 'em.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 19:42:24 GMT
I would have to add that the German chain "Metro" is very present all over Europe and in much of the world. When I was a café associate, that's where a lot of the food came from, and I went on shopping expeditions there more than once. It was truly amazing to see all of the dishes that were readymade for restaurants and brasseries. That's where I learned how menus can be so long when the kitchen is so small. All a place has to do is add a few final flourishes (chopped parsley or grilled cheese on top and voilà!).
At the same time, I saw that the quality of these dishes was extremely high, and I never felt the slightest guilt about the café using them. This is France after all, and people would stop going out very fast if they didn't like the food.
Therefore, if Spanish paella comes from Metro in Spain, that is fine with me.
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Post by hwinpp on Mar 10, 2009 4:43:55 GMT
... But I became a big fan of Fabada Asturiana and Caldo Gallego, northern food. We also ate tapas until they came out our ears. Loved 'em. Is that the same as cocido gallego? A huge steaming plate of pork, smoked meats, sausages, boiled chick- peas, potatoes and cabbage? I used to love going to a Galician restaurant and ordering that in Winter. Oh, re paella, I like it and eat it when I know where the the cook comes from.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 10, 2009 14:09:34 GMT
... But I became a big fan of Fabada Asturiana and Caldo Gallego, northern food. We also ate tapas until they came out our ears. Loved 'em. Is that the same as cocido gallego? A huge steaming plate of pork, smoked meats, sausages, boiled chick- peas, potatoes and cabbage? I used to love going to a Galician restaurant and ordering that in Winter. Oh, re paella, I like it and eat it when I know where the the cook comes from. As far as I know, Caldo Gallego is a cocido, so I guess that's accurate. Fabada is not all that different. There's an Asturian version which to me is essentially the same as Caldo Gallego. The problem with the paellas I have had (en los Estados Unidos), was that the wonderful seafood gets overcooked and becomes mealy; all resulting in a rather pointless hodge podge. If I would find myself near Valencia, I would probably seek out a top drawer version of paella. (Note: much paella has no seafood. A popular version has snails and rabbit.) This looks good! And this: They appear to have been prepared with care, especially the one in the lower photo with the langostinos.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 10, 2009 14:23:45 GMT
Paella for a crowd.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2009 15:17:46 GMT
Don,is Spanish your first language? I'm just curious.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 10, 2009 15:37:29 GMT
They sell paella in the markets here (we are 2 hours from thr Spanish border). I see them bubbling away at 9.30. What will the prawns and mussels be like by midday?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2009 15:46:41 GMT
All of the hypermarket deli stands throughout France have a paella day as well.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 10, 2009 20:41:58 GMT
Don,is Spanish your first language? I'm just curious. No, soy gringo y nací en Nueva York. English is my native idiom.
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