Food, cooking, eating, and me

A reader asked me about sweet rice flour, which he had been unable to find in his area. I suggested looking in Asian stores for “glutinous rice flour”, which is another name for it. Sure enough, he and the clerk finally found it, although they were at first understandably concerned by the resemblance of “glutinous” to “gluten”.

Various types of glutinous rice are used in Asia. In Korea and Japan, they use short-grain glutinous rice, while in Southeast Asia, they use long-grain. I understand there is a black type in Thailand, but I have not seen this.

The first time I ever saw long-grain sweet rice in a Cambodian store, I asked the clerk how I should cook it, and he said, “Very carefully.” OK.

If I want to boil it like regular rice, I rinse it well and soak it for a few hours in my rice cooker before turning it on to cook with a regular cycle, one cup of rice to 1-1/3 cups of water. I like salt in my rice, so I add 1/2 teaspoon per cup of rice. I understand I’m the only one who ever does this, as the traditional method is to soak it in water for a long time, then steam it over simmering water. Personally, I love my Zojirushi neuro fuzzy rice cooker and would need a really good reason to cook it any other way.

Sweet rice when used in cooking tends to get moist and stay soft. So a sauce or pudding thickened with sweet rice flour will not harden up when chilled like one thickened with white rice flour. Sweet rice flour used in baking makes the product moister and stick together better than without. I prefer not to use xanthan gum in baking, as it causes blisters on my tongue. I find that using some sweet rice flour in a baking recipe often gives the result I need.

The Japanese make mochi, which are soft rice cakes made by pounding steamed sweet rice, either with giant mallets in a stone mortar or with a powerful machine. I will have to talk about mochi sometime…

Here’s a photo of the different types of rice I happen to have in my cupboards right now. Can you tell I like rice?

1. Long-grain sweet rice
2. Arborio rice, for risotto
3. Short-grain sweet rice
4. Jasmine Rice
5. Short-grain Japanese rice
6. Long-grain brown rice
7. Brown short-grain sweet rice
8. Black Chinese forbidden rice
9. Lundberg mixed brown rice
10. Short-grain brown rice