Adventure in the Kitchen (Or: I Just Wanted an Excuse to Wear My Frilly Apron)

Scott loathes my rice cooker.

I added it to our wedding registry online and sort of neglected to tell him about it, thinking (foolishly) that he really wouldn't care if we got one. Whoops.

When we opened the big box delivered from Macy's, his reaction: "What is that?"

Me: "It's a rice cooker."

Him: "We have a rice cooker. It's called a pot. We have a few of them, in fact."
The thing is, I like to believe that he wouldn't hate the rice cooker so much if, well, if it didn't burn the rice every time I've used it. Every. Single. Time. I've tried everything: cooking larger batches of rice, adding extra water, keeping an eagle eye on it to make sure it's unplugged as soon as the little yellow light goes out. Nothing seems to work. After the rice is finished, a crunch brown layer coats the bottom of the pan. To top that off, somehow a milky white film covers the rest of the pot’s interior. This milky white film refuses to come off in the dishwasher. Scott is the family's Designated Dishwasher most nights; the milky white film that doesn't come off in the dishwasher is what irks him the most.

Why, you may be wondering, has she babbled on for many paragraphs about a rice cooker? Because the rice cooker has been a matter of ongoing contention since we got it (not a great quality in a WEDDING gift). I think it makes cooking rice easier (minus the small detail of burnt rice at the bottom) because you don't have to keep an eye on the stove. He says it makes rice cooking (and cleaning up after) more difficult, and that cooking rice on a stove is just as easy. Well, my friends, I'm here to admit to the whole world....

Scott was right.

This weekend, I decided to tackle a new recipe from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything": Stir-Fried Spicy Beef with Basil. I served with sautéed mushrooms and, you guessed it, rice (white basmati rice, to be precise). I cooked the rice in a pot while prepping the entree (i.e. the rice was only minimally supervised), and ended up with a pot of fluffy white heaven.

The Stir-Fried Spicy Beef with Basil wasn't half bad either. I altered the recipe slightly, and left out the hot red pepper flakes (what can I say, I'm a wuss). I also, um, kind of overdid it with the lime. The recipe calls for juice of half a lime, which I interpreted as grab the reamer and juice the heck out of it. I think what Bittman actually meant was to squeeze the lime as best you can for SOME lime flavoring. The dish turned out quite limey, as you can imagine. Please don't make the same mistakes as me -- use lime sparingly.

Here's the recipe!

Stir-Fried Spicy Beef with Basil

1 1/2 pounds flank or sirloin steak
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon of peanut oil, plus 1 teaspoon for marinating
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, or to taste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Juice of 1/2 a lime

1) Slice the beef across the grain as thinly as you can; cut the slices into bite-sized pieces
2) Wash and dry the basil; if the leaves are large, chop them coarsely. If time permits, mix the beef, basil, and tsp of peanut oil in a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for an hour or so.
3) When you're ready to cook, have all the ingredients ready. If you have not yet done so, mix together the beef and basil. Heat a large skillet over high heat until it smokes, 3 or 4 minutes.
4) Lower the heat to medium and add the tablespoon of peanut oil. Swirl it around and add the garlic. Stir once or twice. As soon as the garlic begins to color, after bout 15 seconds, return the heat to high and add the beef-basil mixture. Stir quickly and add the red pepper. Stir frequently (but not constantly) just until the meat loses its red color, a minute or two longer. Add the soy sauce and lime juice, stir, turn off the heat, and serve immediately.

Husband satisfaction grade: B
My satisfaction grade: B- (Would be better if not for the lime incident)

P.S. Hey, does anyone want a FREE rice cooker? It's guaranteed to burn with every use!

(This picture is evidence that I REALLY need to learn Photoshop. And that perhaps I should have cooked a dish with a little more color so it would be internet-image friendly.)





Citation: Bittman, Mark. 2008. How to cook everything: 2,000 simple recipes for great food. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.