Cooking rice

We've had our share of exploratory adventures where we rough it up and cook with a wood fire and camped out in a tent. One of our more memorable ones was an Easter weekend in Munting Buhangin long before it became just another over built and over populated resort along Nasugbu beach. Time was there were only tents available and building a bonfire was still a herculean effort of gathering wood among the environs.

On this trip, one of our companions, a lovely, petite girl had offered to be on rice cooking duty. In as much as not all of us were at the time, aware of what and how this is done without a rice cooker we relented. Over the next few days, we had to rummage through burnt kernels and uncooked rice for all our meals. Turns out - this lady had dutifully followed someone's instruction to allow the water in the rice to get up to the first digit of the index finger. Being a petite girl, of course her hands were much much smaller than most, resulting in each rice cooking exercise lacking the requisite quantity of water to cook through.

Now we know better.

Rice is an interesting staple, as unlike wheat that needs to be milled in order to make any kind of reasonable libation, you simply separate the individual kernels from the chaff in the course of threshing and you have a simple white (or brown depending on the type of rice) ready for cooking.

There are different types of rice and generally long grain is favored for its ability to retain the starches within and prevent sticking resulting in a fluffly cooked rice with the individual grains clearly delineated. California, Basmati and most premium rice are this type. Another is the small grain rice such as Milagrosa, the Japanese Honishiki variety Konishiki and Musenmai (washed) which release much more starch during cooking and require quite a bit of soaking in water prior to cooking. Finally ,the medium grain variety, such as the Japonica and most other lower priced rice varieties. Is there any one single standard way to cook rice? I ask my students how they do it and it comes out consistently 1. Measure out the rice 2. Wash - rinse - drain - repeat until the wash water is barely clear enough - still milky but almost clear 3. Add water and this is where it gets touchy - 1.5 times the amount of water as rice OR stick your index finger until barely touching the top of the rice and add water until it reaches the first digit 4. Return to the rice cooker OR set to boil uncovered 5. ONce boiling wet flame to the lowest possible and cover the pot 6. wait at least 8 minutes and resist the urge to look 7. when time is up, check the rice - there should be no bubbles or residual water and there should be dimples and dots on the top 8. it may need another minute or two to get there and only then turn off the fire 9. DO NOT SERVE YET! wait 5 minutes with the flame off. This will give the starches released into the pot to retreat back into the rice grains 10. Now you can eat, fluff it if you want, scoop it into a bowl, or whichever way you like thats simple