A scientist in the kitchen

Rice is always served on our Media Noche feast (of course, I’m in rice research) so for our New Year’s Eve dinner recently, I cooked some fried rice.

It’s quite easy to make. I prepare four cups of leftover rice, and refrigerated it a few hours before cooking. I prepared choppped garlic (one whole), chopped carrots, 1/4 cup chorizo de bilbao, 1 piece Chinese chorizo, scrambled eggs (2 eggs only, as we only harvested 2 eggs that day), 1/4 cup of chopped ham, and some cilantro I found in the ref. Saute garlic in 3 tbsp oil, add a dash of salt, add chorizos and ham and saute some more till the aroma permeates the room. Lovely smell here. Add 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 2 tbsp soysauce and 1/4 cup water. Simmer everything for a minute then add the rice. Mix everything till rice is heated through. Add the scrambled eggs which have been cut into strips and mix for a few minutes. Serve in a plate topped with chopped cilantro. It’s so good, you’ll forget your diet pills! Enjoy!

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I have cooked palitaw during New Year’s Eve since I was 11 years old. My aunt taught me how to cook this rice cake for New Year, saying that it is good luck gesture for the New Year. Not only because it is round, but because the manner of cooking this type rice cake. It is simple to make. Glutinous rice which has been soaked in water overnight is ground and passed through cheese cloth to remove excess water. It is then shaped into balls and cooked in boiling water. The balls would sink to the bottom and as it cooks, it starts to rise. If it is floating in the boiling water, it is now cooked. It is rolled in freshly grated coconut and topped with a mixture of sugar and ground roasted sesame seeds. The rice cake is called palitaw, litaw being a Tagalog rootword meaning to “appear”, “rise” or in the vernacular “litaw na litaw” means “to stand out”. Now, isn’t that what you would wish for the New Year? To rise in your chosen endeavor, to do your best to stand out?

Since New Year is a time for making rice cakes in my hometown, there is a long line for the machine that grounds it. Usually, the family soaks rice overnight and brings it to a neighbor who has the machine for grounding rice. There are usually long lines as people usually bring several kilos for grounding. A short cut? Try rice flour. I usually soak it in water for several hours then drain.

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This is my first post for the Lasang Pinoy series, this time on rice. Quite appropriate for me as I work on resistance of rice to diseases. This is not so Pinoy though, but one I really like.

One of my favorite fried rice is Thai bago-ong fried rice from a Thai restaurant here in Los Banos. I’ve managed to copy it at home but this post is not about that. It’s Thai inspired in the sense that I was craving for it during the Christmas holidays but did not have all ingredients at hand. It started with me seeing a bunch of cilantro my mom bought the day before. I was already imagining Thai fried rice with sour green mangoes. Undaunted, I rummaged the ref and found some pork slices as well. I made me some Thai-inspired fried rice. I like to add eggs to my fried rice, but at that time we didn’t have any (We rely on eggs from the chickens we raise at home, but at that time, all the hens were nesting hence no fresh eggs).

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Here’s a really cool site for those who can’t get enough of eating rice- as a main dish or a dessert. Check out FreeRice.com. It’s a vocabulary game that at the same time allows you to help the hungry around the world. For each word you get right, FreeRice.com will donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. How’s that for mind-filling, stomach-filling and spirit-filling day?

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