In which Doris eats Black Sticky Rice
I got a free pass on dinner making today thanks to frozen octopus no longer satisfactory for Cal’s work and thus having only to throw some potatoes in the oven with salt and oil as an accompaniment.
But that doesn’t a food blog make so I rummaged around in the pantry and pulled out the sticky rice I had chosen yesterday at the Asian Grocer.
GLUTINOUS rice, said the label. A quick google confirmed this was a seriously misleading misnomer. Attention fellow glutards: we’re alright on the glutinous rice. Sounds so naughty though, so indulgent, that forbidden binding agent.
I picked up the Spirit House cookbook and it only served to distract me with five other desert recipes way out of my league. I typed sticky rice into google and after noting that Luke Nyugen’s recipe had more than three steps I diligently discarded it (despite his quintessential SBS cuteness) and found something that demanded much less of me and my ability.
For something straight forward things took a sudden turn for the worse:
“Why is the black sticky rice purple?” I lamented, bemused.
Also, I think my stove may be broken because it doesn’t have a setting for ‘rolling boil’. It certainly sounds a tantilisingly romantic kind of boil though and turns out to be just as unattainable.
After no further setbacks and forty minutes the rice had turned mainly black and rolling boil or not it had achieved peak sticky status. Apparently, you’re meant to eat it cold but as far as I’m concerned there’s no time like the present so into the glass it went.
I topped with mandarin ‘marmalade’ that (I kid you not) I had ‘prepared’ earlier by dumping some mandarins in a saucepan with water and sugar and promptly forgetting about until I could smell something burning.
There’s more on this marmalade situation next time because there really is no greater masochistic tendency than the rescuing of ‘forgotten’ fruit that must then be dealt with domestically later. (Note to self: wild fruit does not need saving)
And meanwhile, it turns out I shouldn’t have bothered with the sticky rice as a blog filler because would you believe, I managed to find mishap in simplicity and overcooked the octopus that had previously been prepared to perfection. Bravo.
