ACK 4: Rice

RICE is one of the most important ingredients in Vedic cuisine. In India, where most people eat rice at least once a day, we find a seemingly infinite variety of ways to cook it and combine it with other foods.

Cooked with herbs, spices, nuts, raisins, homemade cheese, and vegetables, rice makes a hearty pulao. Cooked and seasoned, with yogurt folded into it, it makes a cooling side dish for a hot summer's day. With seasonings, dal beans, and vegetables, it becomes a delicious all-in-one meal. Boiled with milk, sugar, and sweet spices, it makes a creamy pudding. You can grind rice into flour, heat it into puffs, or use it in pancakes, dumplings, sweets, and snacks.

Whatever the recipe, the first step is to choose the best rice. In our kitchens, we never use "easy-to-cook," parboiled, precooked, or instant rice, because they're weak in both taste and nutrition. Besides, when you offer food to Krsna, it's best to offer what you have cooked yourself.

Different kinds of rice are suited for different dishes. Longgrained rice is the one we use most often, because it has a fluffy consistency. Medium-grained rice works well for combination ricedal dishes such as khitchri and sambar. Short-grained rice is used for milk puddings, and it's sometimes ground to make dosas. If you use brown rice, remember that it requires more water and around one hour to cook (45 minutes with a pressure cooker).

There are three excellent varieties of long-grained rices: North Indian Patna, American Carolina, and Dehradum basmati (the best of all). The people who harvest, husk, and winnow basmati rice have shunned the bleaching, pearling, oiling, and powdering that produce a commercially appealing rice at the expense of flavor and nutrition. Basmati rice, nutritious and easy to cook, has a unique nutlike taste and fragrance. You can buy it in most Indian and Middle Eastern grocery stores, or in gourmet food shops.

Most people in the West don't know how to cook rice properly. They use too much water and cook it longer than necessary. The result is generally mushy and unappetizing. But when you follow the recipes in this section, it's easy to cook rice so that each grain comes out firm, separate, and tasty.