curried rice

White rice is steamed in the usual way.

A vegetable mixture is steamed separately from the rice along with pre-cooked chicken bits frozen previously from a roasted bird.

A sauce is prepared and combined with with finished rice and vegetables. 

Sauce featuring fresh garlic and ginger. The liquid base of the sauce is chicken broth and along with this grated ginger and garlic it includes the usual Asian flavoring agents:

*  soy sauce

*  sake

*  sweet mirin

*  Three Crabs brand fish sauce

The vegetables are prepackaged cut mixed vegetables with sugar peas added

The chicken is from a whole bird roast, picked apart,  frozen previously in a MealSaver vacuum package.

The rice is steamed in chicken broth for 25 minutes on low pressure. The broth includes two teaspoons red curry paste. Two tablespoons ground corn was included with the rice.

Oh, almost forgot to mention fresh cilantro. 

About that ground corn. A few blocks from my home is a Cuban restaurant located in an old house. It is very popular with the hip crowd. Always packed with polite people drinking flavored mojitos. One time my date asked me if I could identify the unusual flavor within the plain white rice. I agreed it was unusual but I couldn't put my finger on it. She proclaimed, "It's grits!" She was right, and how well the grits and white rice went together too. I decided to do that. Except I am not using white grits. I am using popcorn that was milled to powder in the Nutrimill. It absorbs a lot of water and tends to turn pasty and firm just like polenta does so a lot of extra liquid must be added. More than what you might imagine for just two rounded tablespoons. It is very easy to error by adding either too much or too little water, and there is no way to know until you take the lid off after the rice steams.

About the curry paste. I picked up a tiny jar of curry paste at Whole Foods. The store is not the grand Whole Foods a few miles off, but rather the little satellite WF a few blocks from my home. They have two types on their shelf, red curry and green curry.  This did not instill confidence. Usually curry is named for the Indian State from which it originates or the Asian Country. Because they are usually complex combinations, they vary wildly even the curries with the same name. So much so that it gets down to the individual households all with their own various mixtures. And that tells you, that even you can devise your own curries by mixing your own favorite spices. Then make up a name for it.  

My personal curry would inevitably lean toward the Mexican spices, which I favor, and I would probably leave out turmeric because I just cannot see the point of it. I also don't understand fenugreek, but give me time, I still have to experiment with that. I am also really digging celery seed right now and dry mustard, and you don't see those in curries very often. I am somewhat indifferent to cardamon but that is another one which I will keep trying. I have cardamon pods and when I tear them apart inside are tiny black seeds with an intense aromatic licorice flavor that reminds me of those insanely strong mints that come in envelopes that smokers and drinkers use to disguise their breath. I think the cardamon powder that you buy is the entire pod ground up because it would take a ton of pods to get one ounce of those tiny black seeds. I tasted some and it is not nearly as strong as the tiny seeds themselves. 

Wanna hear something? Okay, goes like this. There are these little birds that appear on my balcony that hop around the planters out there scrounging for seeds and for nesting material. They look like wrens or some type of little passerine. One of them has a red face and breast, the others look the same but they're plain brown and without any other coloration. They're the cutest little things and I feel sorry for them because they keep coming back for so little reward. The only seeds I have are spices. I also have corn kernels, but those are too big, wheat kernels, sesame seeds, and rice. So I mixed up a bowl of various grains and spice seeds that I thought birds might like, including fennel seed, celery seed, coriander seed, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, everything in my cabinets that are in original seed form.  I hope they like them. Maybe they could use some fresh water too.