A plate of celebration (continued): Spiced rice

Hello again! It turned out that I`m not that busy (even when I pretend to) nor lazy because I`m sitting here ready to share one of the recipes I told you about yesterday.

So, I`d like to start with the rice, but before I continue with the recipe, I think I`d like you to know that I seemed to mistakenly name the dish as "Herbed rice" where herb was actually not used (none at all!). It was all spice I used instead, thus calling it "Spiced rice" sounds right.

But now I came to think of it, maybe next time I really need to make that Herbed rice as it sounds very appealing to me (and my taste buds). 

Now, get your apron and follow me to the kitchen. No apron? Oh never mind, I never wear one anyway. Well, three times in a year, maybe.

Here where we live, a rice cooker is a common thing to have in every household and I think the same way goes to most of rice-eater countries. But, if you don`t have it, then just use a pan/pot and follow the cooking instruction on the rice package. However, to be honest, I never cook rice in a pot, so I really can`t give you any advice on this.

First, after washing the rice and draining it, add some turmeric, ginger, and cloves. For turmeric and cloves, I used the powdered ones (that`s all I have) and for the ginger, I used fresh one (julienned). You can grate the ginger instead if you want. I just love to have the crunchy ginger in the rice and with the steaming, the heat is much more bearable than the fresh one.

And by the way, add a pinch of salt too.

The original nasi kuning recipe usually calls for coconut milk, but I wanted a lighter version so I omitted it. Also, this is my first time making nasi kuning so I was clueless on how much turmeric powder I should use to turn the rice to be completely yellow. So I just gave a try and add like 1 tsp of turmeric powder to 4 cup of rice. 

Did it work? Not exactly. The rice didn`t turn yellow at all, except a light shade of tea color. So I recommend you to add more of turmeric powder if you want the rice to be vibrantly yellow. After all, it`s yellow rice anyway, so there should be no such thing as too yellow.

After the spices, put in dried shiitake mushroom and stir lightly until combined. Oh I just love this mushroom!

Now, add water (or coconut milk) according to the marks in your rice cooker or cooking instruction on the package.The mushroom will float on top, but that`s alright.

Close the lid, turn on the switch, and done! Leave it to the cooker and you can do whatever you want while waiting it cooks.  

1 hour later...

Rice is done! Quite simple, right?

So this is how it looked like when I opened the lid. The rice has swollen up and the top was covered with softened mushroom. 

And this is where I realized that I`ve been using the wrong white balance setting from the start. D`oh!

Quickly stir up the rice with a spatula to make it fluffier.
Now here is the real color of the rice. Not so yellow anymore, isn`t it.

Clearly this is not nasi kuning at all for its barely-yellow color and the different ingredients I used. The warmth (if not heat) from the ginger beautifully blended with the aromatic cloves. The mushrooms? Oh, they are just perfectly soft and meaty.

So you too can experiment with the rice using your favorite choices of spices (and herbs too!). Let me know if you make one! And have fun!

p.s. I`ll be back with next two posts on the chicken and fish sambal! When? Err..I don`t know, but soon I hope ;)

Ingredients:
Rice
Water or coconut milk
Turmeric
Cloves

Ginger
Salt (a pinch)
Dried shiitake mushroom