the Blackthorn Orphans
  • B L O G
  • The Blackthorn Orphans: read it onsite
  • The Blackthorn Orphans TRANSLATIONS PAGE
  • Lovely R BLOG
  • PHOTOESSAYS
  • SELECTED RAVINGS: essays & opinion
  • RUBYHUE Lipstick Review
  • blackthorn ROSE REVIEW
  • KITCHEN BITCH: Recipes etc.
  • verse
  • Hostile Witness FILM REVIEW
  • ALOES & SUCCULENTS
  • Blackthorn Perfume Review
  • B I O
  • C O N T A C T

Kitchen Bitch:  Hey hey, let's cook Black Rice

8/12/2015

 
Picture
While I grew up cooking both Indian specifically and Asian food in general, I'd never done black rice at home.  Perhaps because I've tried almost every other variety known to man and found they generally don't live up to the hype, because they're all just... rice, really; Oryza sativa, that ancient friend.  An exception to this blanket dictum is a good montane basmati, which is truly distinct in both flavour and texture from your long/medium-grain standard commercial varieties.  

Today I'm using an organic Thai black rice.  Some black rice is glutinous but I did not find this one particularly sticky even though I overcooked it, so I'm assuming it was one of the less gluggy varieties.  I don't personally consume much cereal any more; when we do, w
e eat wholegrain (non-hulled or brown) out of a (probably half-superstitious) belief that less processed = better.  According to Wikipedia, black rice is fucking loaded with anthocyanin, iron and vitamin E, however the page sort of reads like something issued by the Black Rice Hurrah Ambitious Growers Association, so my critical faculties are toning that shit down by half.  Whatever.  If you're going to eat rice, black wholegrain is probably the way to go.

Whole rice of all persuasions is the shitty and distracted cook's friend, retaining an acceptable texture waaaay beyond the point when white rice collapses into blown-out pasty mush because you forgot about it in your narcissistic self-absorption.  I soaked this rice overnight as per recommendations and found it fast-cooking and tender, to the point where a wholegrainphobe would possibly overlook the fact that they were
actually consuming fibre and nutrients.  It's also very beautiful, retaining all those inky ochre copper eggplant tones through the cooking process and lending even boring bumfuck not-again dishes its undisputed aesthetic advantages.

I can report that all that rhapsodical flavour hyperbole around black rice is exactly that- confabulated hipster bullshit.  It's not going to take your tongue on a magic carpet ride as-is so forget any notions of lingual psychedelia.  It just tastes like a mild high-quality brown, with maybe a five-percent swing toward bland, slightly smoky sweetness á la basmati, rather than hitting you with those hard, grassy notes sometimes present in coarser wholegrain varieties.  But this laid-back, neither/nor aspect is what makes it such an eminent vehicle for other flavours; it really did come out swinging as a fantastic absorber and projector of condiments and sauces.
Picture
Okay!  Let's cook this shit.  R's making toasties in the background but I want to do it now so just ignore him.  I bought half a kilo of organic black rice and that cost me $6-something NZ dollars, which is stupidly expensive.  

​What are you going to do- grow it yourself?
Picture
Here's what the raw grains look like- phoenix food is the first thing that came to mind.  I'm going to soak a standard cup of the dry grain in cold water overnight, which I'll put in the fridge because it's summer, I'm not making beer and food poisoning's bad, mmmokay?
Soaking isn't absolutely necessary.  I have a dodgy gut for grains and find it improves digestibility.  I add about triple the dry volume's worth of water to anything I'm soaking and that's always worked well across the board.
Picture
Picture
​Halfway through the next day I yoink it out of the fridge.  It's swelled a wee bit but not as impressively as something like chickpeas.  Rinsed, into a pan with the obligatory three xs cold water, no salt (salt can make some rices swell and burst so I generally abstain), covered and brought to the boil.  Five minutes of this + another twenty or so of quiet simmering got me cloudy purple water and a very slightly overcooked result.  Compare the cooked grains to the raw ones in my palm below right.
Picture
The rice blew up to around triple the original 1 cup volume; this impressed me and took some of the sting out of the price per kilo.  It also drained and dried out well in the sieve without glueing itself into a hard lump.  I put it back in the fridge for tomorrow.
Picture
Picture
Lunch is a free range peppered pork steak, asparagus and my patented WTF fried rice which is a shredded Chinese omelette and whatever vegetables and sauces haunt the fridge (today cauliflower, mushrooms, spring onion, and fucking tomato which is not a match for Hoisin sauce so don't ever do that). 
Picture
The original one cup made enough for four people in the context of this meal, but R eats for two and I held some back for another dish so it worked out well.  The black rice stayed structurally intact, didn't stick to the frying pan and certainly broadcast all those flavours nicely; it did amplify the sweetness of the sauce so perhaps keep that in mind.  You can make a shitload of different sweet dishes and puddings with this lovely grain so have a look for them online.  I know I will be.  

*   More Kitchen Bitch- cooking decent food at home from scratch  *   Selected Ravings   *



Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Independent Creativity
    Hi-Fi Introversion

    ORIGINAL CONTENT
    HONEST REVIEWS
    VELVETEEN VERBIAGE
    VISUAL LUXURY
    MORBID IDLING
    THE NATURAL WORLD
     
    ​photography  
    film
    flora  fauna  culinary
    ethnography  objet
    ​

    modest living
    ​vintage shit

    A U T H O R
    Picture
    K ✂︎ l l y
    congenital delinquent
    Human Durian
    celebrating
    glorious deviation in the land of
     the long white cloud

    -  New Zealand  -


    - T h e   B o o k -

    Picture
    T H E  
    B L A C K T H O R N
    O R P H A N S


    What is freedom, when it is
    all that remains to you?
    In exile two brothers pursue an anarchist's trajectory,  from an old world into the new, from East to West, subject always to the pleasures & horrors of an enduring flesh, to the ironies of karma & impunity. Love bears thorns, the lost return & the dead are haunted by the living. 
    ​

    E P I C   D A R K   F I C T I O N
    *   R E A D   *
    T H E
    B L A C K T H O R N 
    O R P H A N S
     O N S I T E  

    H e r e



    Picture

    Selected
    ​Ravings

    opinion essays observation private regret public 
    exaltation semicoherent speculation 

    Picture

    Photoessay​

    epic undertakings
    documented

    ​
    Picture

    Hostile Witness FilmReview

    Cruel but fair

    Picture

    RubyHue 
    ​
    Lipstick Review

    Lipstick: love it
    ​

    Picture

    Our Photography​

    we've seen worse
    ​

    Picture

    Port Chalmers​

    Dunedin, New Zealand
    ​

    Picture

    Blackthorn ​
    ​Rose Review

    Garden Hoe Wisdom
    Picture

    Verse​

    Loss, love, truth, beauty everything, everything
    ​
    Picture

    The  Lovely R's Blog​

    Likes photography  Knows a bit about it

    Picture

    We Liked This​

    Amazing things from other people
    ​

    Picture

    Cacti, Aloes
    ​&
     
    Flora​

    Our garden & general vegetal splendours
    ​

    Picture

    KitchenBitch

    Home cooking
    & raw ingredients
    ​
    Picture

    Ethnographic​

    Strange wonderful things from elsewhere
    ​

    Picture

    Jewellery
    ​

    Picture

    Tiny Little 
    Dinosaurs
    - a book for children -


    All images & text property of the authors 
    ​
    unless stated

    © us
    & original sources
    All Rights Reserved



    Picture

    Privacy Policy
    ​This is a noncommercial site.
    No ads. No shady data jacks. 
    No interest in your bizniz.

    ​We don't personally view, utilise or sell your data, apart from occasionally checking totally anonymous + super basic site view stats. We don't even know how to monetise that stuff, so don't worry.  Everyone's privacy is important to us.

    Our platform is probably harvesting your data, though, via their cookies. Look at their privacy page so you can see what they're up to.

    Please use Adblock or something similar.
    ​
    Google et al superimpose ads that we never see a penny from so fuck them.

    Picture

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013


    Picture

    Categories

    All
    A Thing Of Beauty
    Blackthorn Orphans
    Blackthorn Rose Review
    Cacti & Aloes
    Ethnographica
    Flora
    Hostile Witness Film Reviews
    Jewellery
    Kitchen Bitch
    Make Up Review
    Maximum Respect
    Perfume Reviews
    Photo Du Jour
    Photo Essay
    Places & Things: A Blackthorn Review
    Port Chalmers
    Remembering Dreams
    Roses
    Selected Ravings
    Softcore Rendition
    Sweetmeat
    Textiles
    The Lovely R
    Verse
    We Liked This

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.