Katona - Pimp My Rice

For my Maa, for Monmon, for India and for Tia my alphas and my omegas

Pimp My Rice

Nisha Katona

First published in the UK and USA in 2015 by Nourish, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited 19 Cecil Court

London WC2N 4EZ

Copyright Watkins Media Limited 2015

Text copyright Nisha Katona 2015

Photography copyright Watkins Media Limited 2015

The right of Nisha Katona to be identified as the Author of this text has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Publisher: Grace Cheetham

Managing Editor: Rebecca Woods

Editors: Wendy Hobson and Elinor Brett

Art Direction and Design: Georgina Hewitt

Production: Uzma Taj

Commissioned Photography: Lara Holmes

Food Stylist: Aya Nishimura

Prop Stylist: Linda Berlin

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84899-278-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset in Gotham

Colour reproduction by XY Digital

Printed in China

Publishers note:

While every care has been taken in compiling the recipes for this book, Watkins Media Limited, or any other persons who have been involved in working on this publication, cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, inadvertent or not, that may be found in the recipes or text, nor for any problems that may arise as a result of preparing one of these recipes. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding or have any special dietary requirements or medical conditions, it is advisable to consult a medical professional before following any of the recipes contained in this book.

Notes on the recipes:

Unless otherwise stated:

Use organic produce, wherever possible

Use medium eggs, fruit and vegetables

Use fresh ingredients, including herbs and chillies

Use unwaxed lemons

Do not mix metric and imperial measurements

1 tsp = 5ml 1 tbsp = 15ml 1 cup = 240ml

nourishbooks.com

Contents

Introduction

Rice is the best, the most nutritive and unquestionably the most widespread staple in the world.

Georges Auguste Escoffier (18461935)

The best staple in the world. Not just that, but the most nutritive and widespread staple in the world! Thats how the renowned Escoffier described this wonderful grain. He didnt scoff so why do we?

The Indian rice phobe

I wrote this book because I felt rice needed to be celebrated. I think this is borne from my guilt. Guilt because, for years, I overlooked rice as an anodyne, pasty-faced accompaniment: always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Why in the West do we treat this grain of grains like a second-class citizen? Why is it relegated to the realms of lacklustre side orders? Why must we dress it in garish, clownish hues to justify its presence at the Indian feast? Why does its cooking technique continue to confound adults in the West when children in the East can cook it before they can pronounce it?

And I am as guilty as any. To be Indian and rice phobic is like being a vegetarian Turk: hobbled where it matters most in your kitchen. I confess that I only learnt to master rice in my 30s, when I had a young family to cook for and little time to spare. Shame on me. I work full time as well as running a busy household, so I need ingredients that will be at my beck and call grown-up ingredients that can be shown the dressings and trusted to work their own magic. Ingredients that need not be poked and prodded and peeled and goaded into a splendid main course. But I confess it was only once a young family eclipsed time that I learnt how to cook rice.

No stress, no straining

A story that changed my riceless life came from a friend who worked in Africa. There, with very limited fuel, she told me they used one cup of rice to two of water, boiled the pan once, then placed the pan in a polystyrene box and left it to cook by itself. It did so in 20 minutes. No heat, no stirring, no straining.

I became swollen with awe at this assiduous grain. I cannot think of another ingredient that requires so little, to give so much to so many.

Rice swells to three times its size when cooked. It is the staple food of over half the worlds population. Its production alone keeps buoyant some of the worlds poorest economies. Quick to cook and slow to burn, rice is patient, rice is kind, rice is not proud, rice does not boast biblical in its worthiness, I became a Rice Evangelist.

But it is not just because of these merits of rice that I wax so lyrical. It is because, quite selfishly, it allows me to cook quickly, spectacularly and deliciously with the least effort.

The world beyond British shores knows this. One-pot rice dishes are at the heart of the cuisines of the majority of the worlds population. If one thinks of the crucible of rice the kitchens of the East this dedication makes sense. Rice cooking is favoured where fuel is precious, where pans are few, where mouths are many, where children sit on their mothers' hips as they cook one handed. It is in these lives that rice is understood to be a cooks best friend.

Since 2500bc our ancestors have known the simple importance of rice. And simple it is. I think many of us consider rice to be exotic, complicated, otherworldly. We think it is not our staple our staples in the West are the potato, wheat and corn, none of which is as simple to prepare. I want to show you how to master the grain, to show you how rice is one of the hardest-working companions you can harness in your kitchen. It does not need peeling, it does not need chopping or endless preparation. It likes to be left to cook without a watchful gaze. It is eternally long-life if kept dry and airtight.

A spiritual heart

One of my first memories is sitting on my mothers knee while she mashed rice and delicately spiced fish between her fingers on a steel plate. Quickly, she formed small balls with which to feed me. I remember the glint of the stainless steel in the Skelmersdale sunshine, the deftness of her fingers and the speed and the purpose with which she gently pushed the morsel past my lips. This confident haste made the interaction somewhat non-negotiable. There are not many Asian babies who require the choo choo train spoon into the tunnel routine. For so many, including myself, it is rice that is the first taste of a mothers love.

And that continues. Indian life is punctuated by rice ceremonies. Almost in the form of a deity, rice is at the spiritual heart of so many life-affirming occasions. The weaning ceremony for children, known as the Annaprashan ceremony, involves the child taking its first solid food. And, of course, that solid is the mother of all Indian foods boiled white rice.

When patients are at their weakest, the sustenance offered to them is often the cooking water of the rice, sometimes served like a soothing broth, lightly salted and with finely chopped onions. This was, in the mind of my mother, the panacea for all the gut rot I often suffered as a child on my voyages to India.