Eccentric Flower:199901/curried pecan rice

sixteen january (later)

curried pecan rice

Well, I suppose that if I'm going to spend time Not Writing, it's better to have spent it in the kitchen, actually cooking myself Real Food, than to be, say, playing computer games.

It's Mary Anne's fault. When she answered the survey (the one I answered two entries back), she was so enthused about her beloved curries that I got this curry craving and just couldn't face a pot of canned soup, no matter how much I doctored it up by adding vegetables and other things (as is my habit).

I dug through the kitchen. Fresh vegetables consisted of limp celery, one bell pepper, and about five mushrooms. Two lemons, a bag of small yellow onions, a head of garlic, and two red potatoes which had begun to sprout.

Well, I thought, I could make a roux, add the Holy Trinity (bellpepper, celery, onion, all chopped together) and rice and tomatoes (we always have tons of canned tomato products) and get a nice, if meatless, jambalaya ... but somehow that didn't seem like the way to go. I could taste curry in the back of my mouth. And rice. Rice seemed to be on the right track. I hadn't eaten anything all day but a banana; I needed something starchy and substantial and fairly hot (it's still cold and rotten out).

So - time to bluff.

This dish tastes like rice more than anything else. Oh, yes, you taste dates and pecans and the curry heat, but it tastes unabashedly of rice, and some people will find it mild and too starchy. If you don't love rice, don't make this.

Since this is so, choose a nice aromatic rice. "Wild rice" (which isn't actually rice) won't do, though; I recommend a good basmati. I used Konriko Wild Pecan Rice, which is neither wild rice nor does it contain pecans. It is a long-grained aromatic rice which smells and tastes nutty, and it is only grown in Louisiana. If you can find it, use it.

You'll need three cups of rice after you cook it. Boil it however you usually make rice. If you're me, and you can make complex things but can't cook rice worth a darn, follow the package directions closely.

(Actually, I have my doubts that the Konriko box made three cups. It looked like a mighty scant three cups to me. The label hedges and says it makes "about" three cups. Bah.)

Cook the rice first; it should be done, and sitting to one side ready to toss into the mix, before you ever start the rest of the recipe. The rest will happen pretty fast.

Peel two cloves of garlic. I squash them in my hand on the cutting board until the peel just comes right off, but you have to have strong hands for that. If you have a garlic press, you'll be using that later; if not, you'll need to chop the garlic as finely as you can right now.

In a deep skillet (deep enough that you can stir all that rice and other stuff around), put two tablespoons of peanut or vegetable oil and a half teaspoon of (whole) mustard seeds. I used a quarter teaspoon of yellow seeds and a quarter teaspoon of black, but it shouldn't make too much of a difference.

Heat the oil over high heat, maybe swishing it around a little, until the mustard seeds start to pop. This won't take long and you'll know when it happens; they make a popcorn noise. When they start popping, take the pan off the heat! Squeeze in (or drop in, if you chopped them) the two cloves of garlic. Add a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of cumin, and a generous sprinkling of cayenne (red) pepper. (I didn't measure, but it'd be less than a quarter teaspoon.) Stir all this together, and put it back on the heat, turning the heat down to medium, until it starts to sizzle again.

Crush in approximately one cup of pecans. Now, when I say "crush in" ... you're trying to break up the pecans over the skillet, so the nut oils and nut crumbs get in there. Unfortunately you probably can't use my method, which is to fill my hand (I have large hands) with as many pecan halves as it can hold, and then, using both hands, press and crumble them into the pan. If you need to chop them instead, you'll need to do that before heating the oil, just like with the garlic.

Stir the pecans around for a minute or two so they can heat up a bit. The kitchen should smell really good at this point. Add one cup of coconut milk. It will bubble and foam dangerously. Immediately stir in the rice.

Add approximately a half cup of chopped dates - I used the kind you buy already chopped, which are sugared, but if you have whole dates and want to chop them, that'll work too.

Stir the whole thing up and cook until the rice is thoroughly reheated or until you run out of patience. Warning: the dish is molten at this point; don't burn your mouth like I did tasting it.

If you think it needs something, tell me what, because I'm trying to improve it. I know it would have been richer with real coconut milk; I had to reconstitute some from coconut powder.

This'll serve two hungry people as a main dish, three not-so-hungry people as a main dish, or four as a side dish with something else (which might be the best way to serve it, maybe with a salty meat entree). I had two bowls of it and I had eaten a little more than half when I was done.

It beats canned soup.

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