Hello! Mia again, filling in for Melissa Clark today. She’ll be back with us next week.
When I moved into my first New York City apartment (on 112th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), there was enough space in my teensy galley kitchen for exactly one kitchen appliance. Would it be a microwave? A food processor? A high-powered blender to make fancy smoothies instead of shelling out for them at Nussbaum and Wu (now Wu and Nussbaum)? Nope — it was a rice cooker, because I. Love. Rice.
There’s no better bed for all manner of sauces and curries and stir-fries and gravies, and I love how rice also transforms into puddings, risottos and salads. Christian Reynoso’s new creamy coconut-lime rice with peanuts is the sort of satisfying vegetarian main my brain shouts for when I want the lightness of salad but the comfort carb-iness of rice. The rice cooker makes easy (read: no) work of the coconut rice, which is then tossed with tomatoes, peanuts, handfuls of herbs and a peanut-coconut dressing spiked with sambal and lime. Of course, you can cook your rice however you normally do, though do consider singing a happy little jingle to yourself when it finishes cooking (as my Zojirushi does to me).
Featured Recipe
Creamy Coconut-Lime Rice With Peanuts
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Would I eat Ali Slagle’s pan-seared ranch chicken on top of rice? Absolutely I would, sliced up and shingled next to a pile of kimchi. I learned that tangy, herby ranch is good friends with sour, funky kimchi from the cookbook “Cook Real Hawai‘i,” in which chef Sheldon Simeon pairs his kim chee dip with Cool Ranch Doritos. I have also happily eaten Ali’s ceviche on white rice as a sort of extra-bright poke bowl with plantain chips crumbled on top.
I can’t say I’ve eaten Hetty Lui McKinnon’s broccoli salad on rice, though I could see how some cooked brown rice stirred into her vinegary, mayonnaise-free mix would be delicious. But I’ll stand down for Dwight Garner’s sage and walnut pasta nada, which is perfect as is: hot pasta, toasted walnuts and velvety sage tossed with plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper.
Lastly, two desserts, one rice, one not, both nice. Melissa’s Instant Pot rice pudding is delicious any time of year; in the summer, I skip the raisins and the cinnamon and add cubed mango or sliced strawberries instead. And Laurie Ellen Pellicano’s dulce de leche icebox cake needs only five ingredients, one of them being 10 ounces of Oreos. (According to some quick Googling, Oreos usually come in a 13-ounce pack, so.)
I love ratatouille, but I don’t love how I always forget to get some crusty bread to go with until after my nearby bakery has closed, and ratatouille really needs some sort of carb for those delicious juices. Here, then, is Vivian Cham-Tam’s one-pot ratatouille pasta.
