Perfect Rice Every Time
Posted on | August 20, 2008 | No Comments
For years, I used a $20 food steamer / rice cooker to make rice. It did a pretty good job and I used it almost everyday. Since I bought it when I was single, I got the smallest size sold and it was perfect for a college student. Now that my family has grown, I wanted one that would be more suitable for 3-4 people.
This time, my budget wasn’t limited to $20, so I thought back to what was on my wish list years earlier. All of my Japanese roommates used similar looking cookers. All of them had chosen either Tiger or Zojirushi brands. I made a trip to the local Asian store to see what was on the shelf nowadays and found the 5.5 cup Zojirushi Micom Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker, model NS-MYC10. It now lives on my counter where it is nearly always filled with something.
We’ve had the rice cooker for over a year now and couldn’t be happier with it. It’s very easy to clean and couldn’t be simpler to use. In the morning, I dump in 1.5 cups of brown rice, 2.5 cups of water and then press the start button. When the rice is done, the cooker beeps eight times and switches to its “keep warm” setting. Rice can stay in the cooker on this setting for 12 hours and for even longer on its “extended keep warm” setting, which helps control dryness and color. At night I fill it with steel cut oats or other breakfast grains and set the timer. When we get up in the morning, breakfast is ready.
I’ve made lentils, barley, brown rice, basmati rice, wild rice, steel cut oats and quinoa in the Zoji. This little appliance has even went camping with us, well cabin-camping with electrical outlets available. (This is what we do in the late autumn when it’s too cold for the tent.) We used the rice cooker for breakfast oats, for rice at lunch and even to heat up our frozen soups and chili that we brought along for dinners.
In summary:
* Perfect rice every time
* Convenient for cooking whole grains - set and forget
* Easy to clean
Brazil Nut Milk
Posted on | August 18, 2008 | No Comments
Today I made Brazil Nut Milk for the first time. My journey into alternatives to milk started with soy milk and then rice milk. These were the only options sold in the stores I visited so many years ago. Over time, more milks have shown up on the shelves. I have seen soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, hazelnut milk, oat milk and even hempseed milk. Some of these don’t fit my budget, so I decided to try making them myself and have been rather successful.
Why Brazil nuts? Well, why not?! I’ve been making a lot of almond milk lately and was ready for something different. It turns out that I may like this better than almond milk or at least I was ready for a change! The brazil nut milk is creamy and has a mild, but sweet taste. We’ll be making this one again and again.
===== Brazil Nut Milk =====
2/3 cup Raw Brazil Nuts
2 Deglet Noor Dates (or 1-2 Medjool dates)
Water
A dash of salt
3-4 drops vanilla extract
Soak the nuts and dates in water for several hours.
Pour nuts, dates and soak water into the vitamix container. Fill with water to the 1 liter mark or less if you like it extra creamy. Blend on high for 90 seconds.
Pour the nut milk through a nut milk bag, cheesecloth or other fine strainer.
Stir in a dash of salt and a few drops of vanilla extract (optional).
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