A bowl of rice

               

St Malo was absolutely fabulous. We stayed in one of the many hotels within the old fort town and had a great time walking on the surrounding rampart, playing in the sand and eating superfresh seafood. I have not gotten round to processing the pictures so today I will highlight my current twin staples: plain rice and its perfect condiment.

Everyday we are bombarded by news of rising food prices especially rice. Two weeks ago at Tang Frères many of the shoppers' trolleys contained a big bag of rice, 20kg of the new harvest rice was 32.50 euros, up from the 25+ euros we paid for the same bag just two months ago. Needless to say we are more conscious and appreciative of our daily bowl and make sure not to waste a single grain of it. Instead of cooking dishes to go with rice, I have been simplifying our menus to make the rice the main focus. It can be a bowl of white jasmine rice, sometimes studded with a few precious grains of wild rice (not a rice technically) or mixed with some brown rice or other whole grains or legumes. Then I look for something simple to match the rice.

Around the same time, I came across a nearly forgotten speech by Lim Kit Siang when he talked about his son Lim Guan Eng's prison days:

He relates an incident during a meal on Sunday where each prisoner is given a single hard-boiled egg.  He was unlucky enough to receive a rotten egg. As he could not get a replacement egg, he had to eat plain rice. How he long for some ‘kicap’ to go with his plain rice!  Still, this experience will allow him to have a better story to tell his children than the one his mother told him when he was young. To coax the children to finish their rice when  young, his mother loved to compare her difficult days when she had to eat rice only with kicap.  Now, Guan Eng can say that he is worse off than his mother, kicap also not available - just plain rice!

I was moved by this man's strength and optimism, but more than that I was curious to taste for myself some rice with only kicap, or light soy sauce as we refer to it back home. I remember my paternal grandfather used to do that too but by our generation we were encouraged to eat less rice and fill up with meat, fish, vegetables etc instead. Driven by these ambiguous memories and evocative story, I went into the kitchen to scoop some cooked rice (it happened to be white rice and Korean 5-grain mix that day) and sprinkled it with a few drops of my favourite soy/seasoning sauce. It was a delicious combination, the nutty rice chewing slowly to release its starches and sugars tinged with the umamilicious sauce. I was hooked, and it has been at least three weeks now that I've been eating lunches of just rice and a simple condiment along with some obligatory vegetables and protein matter.

               

What else goes well with rice? Well, Bordier butter flecked with sel fumée (smoked salt) for example. Before she left Paris, Sui Mai told me about melting some of this cult butter on hot rice. And what do you know, last Sunday morning I was in St Malo and there on the little street there was a Bordier signboard. Unfortunately the shutters were drawn though there was a sign saying their butters were sold in the fishmonger across the street. Butter will make any old rice tasty but this golden butter with black flecks of smoked seasalt turns it into another being altogether, mmmm total deliciousness; the smokiness did make me ask where's the ham as it was inexplicably meaty tasting as well. The butter is equally good with bread and home-popped popcorn ( credit to Sui Mai for this too) but I think I'll keep what's left of my tiny stash for rice.

Other well-known condiments would include good quality XO sauce. Like the butter and soy sauce, a little scoop goes a long way and if I have some on hand I usually accompany my XO rice with a boiled egg and some green vegetables. If I don't feel so lavish I would substitute with some Lau Gan Ma chilli sauce, especially the versions boosted with some chicken bones or pork nibs and black olives. Some Indian pickles would be perfect too but this is very hard to find, usually I finish the little pot that they give out with the pappadums at Aarchna my favourite Indian restaurant (19 rue Telegraph, 20th arr, T:+33 (1) 40330657).

But what really gets me and GG going is this jar of gouramy paste we picked up at The Big Store in the Chinatown area of Avenue d'Ivry. For many weeks now, I have been yearning for some cincaluk. It started with lunch at Odori where an order for cold boiled pig trotters came with a little dish of fermented shrimps very much like a less salty cousin of cincaluk. Cold gelatinous pork with cincaluk turned out to be a match made in heaven. However, as husband didn't like neither pig trotters nor cincaluk I had to doggy-back most of it home and the next day GG and I shared it for lunch; the restaurant were so sweet to give us another tiny plastic pot of the dip which we started eating with our just-cooked rice and within minutes we were both rhapsodizing over the pungent baby shrimplets. After that I looked in the Korean stores and all the Asian grocers in Paris and it was impossible to find. Unbelievable! I remembered seeing bottles of it in Paristore and Tang Frères before but had refrained from buying because if left uneaten, the sauce tends to bubble and grow and the bottle has been known to explode in the fridge which will definitely piss my husband off. Just when I want it, the supply dries up, Melaccan, Penang, Korean, all nada, GG even checked the Filipino grocer at Ave Victor Hugo and found only an inferior version. Maybe it's the wrong season, but I hope the stores carry it again.

             

This pickled gouramy sauce has therefore saved me from going a bit mad. I've never tried it before but the description of it sounded closest to cincaluk so we decided to try some. Made of gouramy/gourami fish, ground rice and salt, it is pungent in a very good way, of salted fish and lots of ginger and of course fermentation, some would call it funky and first-timers would probably faint. Sludgy and finely gritty sediments- see top image-would describe the overall texture but the taste is crazy good. Salty, savoury, sweet, gingery and sour all at the same time and then finishing on a decidedly spicy kick. It is our favourite topping for our rice these days though we try to ration ourself as it is very salty and probably loaded with preservatives after all. I am not even sure if this is the most well-liked brand in Thailand but this is the only brand available so we'll take what we can get. Interestingly there is an article on the internet which found that like some fermented foods it contains fibrinolytic enzymes which dissolve clots. There is probably a twisted logic here: eat pickled gouramy, get hypertension, then thrombolytic stroke/ heart attack/ gangrenous legs, then dissolve clots with more pickled gouramy. The humble little fish gets the last laugh haha!

             

Comments

[Su-Lin]

Did you walk out to the fort during low tide in St Malo? Love that town - so pretty. Love Brittany in general.

And while you were in St Malo, I was in Paris! :D

[umami]

Hi Su-Lin, no we didn't, Mimi was reluctant.

[Su-Lin]

Poor Mimi. :(

BTW, I've tagged you for a meme!

http://tamarindandthyme.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/another-meme/

[findingmrlazy]

i like plain rice, they are actually pretty tasty with varied textures & flavor for each type of rice grain.

Now, I'm really missed the Bario highland rice from Borneo. perhaps time for a trip to kuching for buy some.

[babe_kl]

i loved plain rice wid a dollop of oyster sauce and lightly drizzle wid garlic oil, of course wid the deep fried garlic bits!

[TTC]

You must try drizzling a mix of pork lard oil with superior soy sauce (blend of dark soy, fish sauce, a little optional sugar).

[umami]

Su Lin, no problem she is happy now. I'm sorry, I won't have time to do your meme.

slurp, I found Korean cincaluk last weekend. It is fermenting and stinking up the fridge right now.

babe_kl, sounds like an umami bomb, yeah I can imagine how tasty that would be.

ttc, I love superior soy sauce, and pork lard oil too. Both would be more dangerous to my waistline than cincaluk I reckon.

[Vivian]

Hi unami, I was searching for baking classes and your blog appeared on the search results. I love the cakes you posted sometime ago (2006). Can you tell me where you learned that or do you teach? I'm looking for baking classes and don't know where to find. Any advice?

[umami]

Hi Vivian, I took a basic cake making course at Creative Culinaire, the instructor was the owner Judy and she is lovely. Here's a post about the classes.
http://umami.typepad.com/umami/2006/02/baking_class_1.html

Their address is in Tiong Bahru but I don't have the latest, you can probably click the link in the above post or google for it. Good luck.

[East Meets West]

Umami, my mom likes to tell me about how she is perfectly happy just eating freshly cooked white rice with dark soy sauce and sambal belachan. Myself, I often manage with just dark soy sauce. It is crazy but how wonderful simple things like that can be, right?

And I love St Malo too, in fact Brittany in general. Another lament that we should be so far away now...

Meanwhile do you think the prices for rice will remain this high or is it just another gimmick to scare us? But to play safe maybe I should go grab a big bag of it myself :-)