Power to the Pilaf Transcript

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Power to the Pilaf Transcript

SCENE 118,000 Feet - 3:07 pm

[no title graphic presented for this episode]

Each day, about two-thirds of the people on this planet fuel

up on rice. And why not? It's nutritious, versatile, delicious,

economical. It's even hypoallergenic. Yet still, there are a lot

of Americans who don't know pilaf from paella any more

than they can tell the difference between texmati and arborio.

In short, rice is still just a little bit mysterious. And since we


goodeatsfanpage.com/…/RiceTranscrip… 1/



are doggedly determined to

decipher all culinary conundrums,

we have no choice but to fling

ourselves in this tiny, vulnerable, woefully underpowered aircraft into

the heart of Cajun country. That's right. We're going to find our

answers at the International Rice Festival in Crowley, Louisiana. Oh,

and by the way, this is definitely Good Eats.

SCENE 2Crowley, LA - 4:15 pm

Half an hour west of La Fayette sits Crowley, Louisiana,

rice capitol of the world. Once we obtained lodging it was

time to crack the rice mystery. RICE

WELCOME TO THE

INTERNATIONAL

RICE FESTIVAL

Rice HOTEL

Air Conditioned · Phones

TV's · Free Parking

Reasonable Rates

SCENE 3Hoppe Farms - 5:39 pm

GUEST: Old Lady

So, we started at ground zero. We're not sure when rice

was first cultivated, but we're pretty sure that it happened

around the Kohrat region of Northern Thailand about 5,000

BC. We know that the Chinese were cultivating rice by 28

hundred BC because we've gotten written records of it. But

by the 4th century BC, the Indians were actually shippingrice to Greece. From there it was just a hop, skip and a

jump to Persia, over the Nile River Delta into Africa where

rice just loved the savannah wetlands and rice went really

well with the gumbos there.

Now, American colonists wouldn't taste rice until about 1625, when luck would have it, a storm-

beaten galleon bound for Madagascar limped into Charleston Harbor. Now, a local planter lent

assistance and was rewarded by the captain with a small bag of golden seeds. Now, odds are he

would have rather have had the gold, but things worked out pretty well for him.





See, the Carolina lowlands were the perfect place to grow rice. But the mud was so soft, the

machinery, even oxen, just sank into it. So, it had to be worked by hand, hence slavery. It was rice,

not cotton, that began the plantation era in the South. Not only could the African slaves do the

work, they had the knowledge of the rice from their homeland. By the early 18 hundreds,

Charleston was shipping out some 50,000 tons of Carolina Gold Rice per year and it was

considered to be some of the finest rice in the world.

Well, the end of the Civil War brought the end of slavery

and it ended the rice cultivation in the Carolinas. But by then,somebody had already figured out that the low river areas

around Louisiana, east Texas and Arkansas, not only could

support rice, but the heavy machinery needed to cultivate it

in modern times. So today, most of America's rice is

cultivated in states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri,

Texas, Louisiana and California.

The folks at the mill

gave me the grand tour: showed me how the husk is removed to

make brown rice and how the bran is removed to make white

rice. Even showed me the laser that sorts out the broken bits.Then I went over and checked out the rice cooking competition,

the rice eating competition and

even the rice threshing

competition. But I still hadn't

found what I was looking for. Why is rice light-and-fluffy one day

and a solid block of goo the next? Finally, a long time rice cooker

broke the silence. A rice cooker? Imagine my surprise.

The self-appointed rice capitol of America, Crowley has been throwing this little October Harvest party for, I don't know, 60 years? During the day time, it's all rice: growing rice, threshing

rice, cooking rice and a lot of eating rice. But come ...

SCENE 4The Kitchen

... night time, it's just a big party.





Complicated machinery and secret methodologies aside, there's just no substitute for knowing

your ingredients.

There are literally thousands of varieties of rice. From the

foothills of the Himalaya come the long, lightly perfumed

basmati grains. Tar Baby-like sticky rices from the paddies

of Japan, the amazing self-saucing arborio rices from

Northern Italy, Thailand's jasmine offers its heady perfume at

a fraction of basmati's price. Now appearing in a paella near

you, Spain's Valencia. We have wehani, texmati, della, blue,

red, black japonica, wild rice which isn't really rice to begin

with—it's an aquatic grass—and even white rice. When it

comes to rice cooking there're only two questions you got to

ask: first, what's the grain length and second, how is it

processed?

IN HUSK, OUT OF HUSK,

POLISHED

PRECOOKED, PARBOILED

BLACK JAPONICA, WEHANI

SHORT GRAIN, MEDIUM

GRAIN, LONG GRAIN

ARBORIO, POPCORN

BASMATI, VALENCIA

SUSHI, DELLA, BROWN,

SWEET

WILD

GOOD OL' AMERICAN LONG

GRAIN WHITE RICE

Each of the 10,000 plus different varieties of rice fallwithin three commercial classifications: long grain, medium

grain and, you guessed it, short grain.





Short: Sticky, 4-5 mm

Medium: Fluffy then Sticky,

5-6 mm

Long: Fluffy, 6 mm +

Short grain rices are grown mostly in Asia and California,

and when cooked, these stubby little guys are sticky enough

to be formed into Sushi or picked up easily with chopsticks.

In a strange, double, malapropian twist, short grain rices are

often called sweet or glutinous rices despite the fact that they

don't taste sweet at all and they contain no gluten

whatsoever.

Short Grain

Sticky When Cooked

Sweet

Glutinous

The starch coat on medium grain rices like Italy's famed

arborio can be coaxed right off of the grain producing the

characteristic creaminess of risotto and rice pudding. Now

although fluffy when first cooked, medium grain rices get

sticky as they cool down. But since their starch doesn't

crystallize, they're a good choice for salads and cold dishes.

Medium Grain

Release Starch Into Liquid

Stick As They Cool

Good For Salads

At four to six times longer than they are wide, long grain

rices don't release starch into their surroundings the way

medium or short grain rices do. So, what do you get?Beautiful, fluffy, individual, relatively dry grains. In other

words, American rice.

Long Grain

Don't Surrender Starch

Fluffy

Seperate [sic]

Now, long grain rices are great all-purpose rices, except when it comes to cold dishes. See, the

starch in these grains crystallizes when cooked and cooled which results in rock hard little grains.

When reheated, though, the crystals do dissolve again. So what is bad for, say, salad is good for

fried rice.





Due to their popcorn-like fragrance, long grain rices like

basmati and jasmine are called "aromatic" rices.

Once it's threshed off the ear, each grain is still encased in

a husk. Remove the husk and, voilà, brown rice. See, like

most grains, the inner part of the kernel, or endosperm, is

surrounded by a thin layer of bran which is where most of

the nutrients are. Since its a tough little cuss, brown riceneeds about 3 times as much water and time to cook as the

same amount of white rice. The hassle is worth it, though,

because brown rice has a great nutty flavor and a stronger

nutritional punch than its buffed up brother. It can be sold as

is or the bran can be rubbed off to reveal the pearly white

underneath.IN HUSK

OUT OF HUSK

Brown Rice

Bran

3 x H2O/Time

Polished

White and converted rice will keep for years on the shelf as long as you keep them in air tight

containers with lids. I like these kind of big-mouth jobbies, easy scooping. Now, brown rice on the

other hand is a completely different matter because, remember, it's still got the bran on it and the

bran means oil and oil will go rancid in just 6 months on the shelf. The answer is the freezer. In hereyou can keep it for one to two years. But, since fats oxidize and pick up off flavors, the thing to do

is to keep it inside a zip-lock bag and then keep that inside another sealed container. Spoilage foiled

again.

Rice bran oil is nearly flavorless & has a very high smoke point.

SCENE 5The Kitchen

Oh. Dang. [rice cooked badly]

[Dog dish]

Spot





SCENE 6Store

GUEST: "W", Equipment Specialist

Customer

Robot

Before settling on a cooking method, I thought I'd better check out the rice cooker scene with my

equipment specialist, W.

W: I thought you weren't going to come around so often.

AB: Hello, W. I need everything you've got on rice

cookers.

W: Come on.

The ever helpful W strutted her wares. The cookers

ranged from simple heated pots or buckets, ...

SCENE 7Living Room

... even, to a fuzzy logic model that not only cooked rice to perfection but scared the heck out of the

dogs while delivering it. Mysteriously, all these machines

seemed to grasp some piece of knowledge that had

alluded me.





ROBOT: [rolls up to AB with a pot of rice]

AB: [samples, nods approvingly, shoos him away]

ROBOT: Thank you ???, Master.

SCENE 8Store

W: Rice cookers work so well because they know

something that you can't.

AB: The Colonel's secret 11 herbs and spices.

W: No. The temperature inside the pot.

AB: Yeah?

W: When all the water's been absorbed by the rice the

temperature begins to increase. Sensors then pick up on

the change, tell the machine to let the rice rest and keep

it warm until service.

AB: Wow. Sensors. I'll take it.W: Uh, not this one. We're going to keep it simple for you.

AB: Eh.

SCENE 7The Kitchen

We gave a few of the models a spin and several did an excellent job, especially with brown rice

—traditionally tricky because of its longer cooking time. Many models doubled as steamers, too.

We even made some pretty decent jambalayas. So, if you cook rice a lot, don't mind spending 50to 100 bucks or more, and have counter or cabinet space to spare you have our blessing. Now, the

microwave cooker we tested didn't save any time but it performed consistently and freed up

valuable stove and oven space.

The problem is, you can't make risotto in a rice cooker. And

what's worse, you can't make pilaf. It seems the word 'pilaf' is

from the Persian, pilaw, means rice dish. Well, there's a little

more to it than that. A pilaf always starts with long grain rice, and

it's always sautéed in a bit of fat, usually butter, before any liquid

is added to the pan.







got a tight fitting lid. Now, when the butter melts add your onion and your bell pepper along with a

couple of pinches of kosher salt. Stir to coat then turn down the heat. We want this to sweat, not to

brown or sauté. You want to cook it slowly until the aromatics become soft and fragrant.

Now, these ingredients do not a pilaf make. Pilaf is a method. Even if nothing ended up in this

pan but rice, a little fat and water it will still be a pilaf.

Now, the second secret to happy rice is finding the right ratio of rice to liquid. The instructions on

your average bag of rice always says the same thing, "1 cup rice, 2 cups water." If that were right,

and I don't think it is, one could deduce that a 2 to 1 water/rice ratio would always be the way to gono matter how much rice was involved. Well, it isn't that way. Not only are 2 cups of water more

than any respectable cup of long grain rice needs, but the proportion of water to rice actually goes

down the more rice you cook. Here's how we see it.

Now, for the sake of argument we will restrict our

demonstration to American long grain white rice. One cup of

rice will cook very nicely, thank you, in 1 1/2 cups of water.

It seems pretty simple, right? But, the plot thickens.

1 1/2 Cups H2O

1 Cup Rice

Two cups of rice will cook perfectly in 2 3/4 cups of

water. Wait, it gets even weirder.

2 3/4 Cups H2O

2 Cups Rice

Three cups of rice can be cooked to perfection in 3 1/2

cups of water.

3 1/2 Cups H2O

3 Cups Rice

Which obviously makes it seem apparent that the more rice you cook the less water you need.

Now, if you have a slide rule and you know how to use it you could probably figure out some handy

formula or at the very least come up with a good comedy routine. "Hey, Abbot. When are we going

to have more rice than watuh?"

In Japan, rice fields are often named like people.





SCENE 8The Kitchen

Our veggies are soft and fragrant, so it's time to add the

rice. I'm going with two cups of American long grain

polished rice, not converted.

2 Cups Long Grain

Pressure steamed prior to milling, converted or par-boiled rice retains

many of the bran's nutrients, which explains its golden color.

I'm going to stir to coat and turn up the heat. I want the

butter to get hot enough to kind of caramelize some of the

sugars that are on the outside starch of the rice kernel.

That's going to give the pilaf its characteristic nutty flavor.

How long to cook? Well, until you smell nuts. Every good

cook I know is constantly tasting and smelling things. Why

trust your nose? It grew where it is specifically to help youfind stuff to eat. So take a lesson from your dog and listen to

your nose.

[sniff, sniff ... sniff] I smell nuts. Sure thing. Three and a half minutes. And our rice has taken

on a beautiful gold color and definitely a nutty aroma.

So, we're ready to add the rest of the ingredients. We're

going to start with the liquid. We've got a total of 2 and 3/4

cups because we've got 2 cups of rice. Now, a quarter cup

of that has been used to steep the saffron and you can tell

that it's already let go of a lot of its gorgeous color. It's going

to perfume and color the whole batch. So, in it goes along

with the rest of the stock. I want to wash out the saffron

bowl to get all that color out. Great. Give it a stir.

2 3/4 Cup Liquid

I'm going to toss in a bay leaf, ah, what the heck, two bay leaves and about a 1 inch wide strip of

orange zest. Now the most important ingredient, salt. Rice, like any starch has got to be cooked

with salt or it won't matter how much you add later, it

will never taste right. Now, I like to get this up to

about, I don't know, seawater flavor so I'm going toadd a teaspoon and a half of salt, give it a stir and then

taste it ... not with the fingers I had in the salt. Good.

Bring the heat up to high, stir it once and then throw

away the spoon. Never again will a spoon t... No,

never again will a spoon touch this rice. Let it come to a

boil.

I love that time

folding trick.





We have a boil so it's time to talk about lids. We need a tight

cover that won't let steam sneak out of the pan. Here's a cool

trick. Say you've got a boil, which we do, turn off the heat and

then spread a barely moist dish towel over the pan. Then cover

and fold up the edges. This is also going to keep condensation

from dripping off the lid back into the pan. Okay, in the oven.

Now, you may have to rearrange the racks to get the handle in a bit. Set your timer for 15

minutes and walk away. You know, I feel good about the 15 minutes because I know my oven is ata cozy 350º. How do I know? Because I've got a thermometer in there to tell me so. Now, rice bag

instructions have to be a little bit vague for cooking times because they can't be sure about your

range heat anymore than they can microwave wattage. So, they have to average a guess.

SCENE 9Baseball Field

The fall flowering crocus is ground zero for saffron. Each tiny flower contains three little

threadlike stigma which have to be picked by hand. Now, if you picked this patch and about43,000 more just like it—it's about 5 of these infields worth

—you'd have a pound of saffron with a market value of

about a $1,000 making saffron the most expensive food on

earth.

Now, Kashmir saffron is the best. It's easily recognized

by its solid red threads. Now, Spanish and Turkish saffron

like this can contain up to 10% yellow stamens so they're a

wee bit less intense. Personally, I don't notice the difference

in flavor as much as the difference in price which can be

substantial. Now, luckily a little goes a long way. We only used about a quarter's worth for our

pilaf.

Now, we suggest you buy saffron from a specialty spice catalogue, not from a store where it may

have been laying around losing its punch. And never settle for crushed

or powdered saffron. It's almost always been cut with turmeric. Now,

keep your saffron in a heavy plastic bag or a jar with an air tight lid.

The safe, is optional.

[beep, beep] What's that? Fifteen minutes already?





SCENE 10The Kitchen

Fight with all your might the urge to open that lid for

at least 10 minutes. Fifteen would be better. Twenty

would be okay. See, there's still a lot of heat in there.

That rice is still cooking. You open that lid now, whew,

well, that rice will miss its one shot at being all it can be.And believe me, a grain is a terrible thing to waste. And

don't worry. If something did go wrong in there, odds

are we can fix it.

Okay, break time is over. You can look at your rice if

you're ready with a bowl or a serving platter to turn it out

into. Ah, looks great.

15 Minutes Later

But, danger lurks just below the surface. See, the starch is a little unstable. Stirring could turn the

whole thing into a gummy mess. So, turn it out onto a large platter. Just let the grains fall where they

want to go. Now, you may fluff the rice.

Use a large serving fork or a pasta fork and go ahead and take out the zest and the bay leaf.

They have given their all. And now it's time to go with the peas. The rice is plenty hot enough to

warm it through. If you want to get fancy, consider, maybe, golden raisins or, my favorite, chopped

pistachios. That is a fine looking pilaf.

Now, rice is, it's not manufactured. It's a natural product and every grain is different. Every crop

is different. And because of that, you can't very well expect every pot of rice to be the same. What

I'm getting to is that even if you do everything right, occasionally there's going to be an accident. Butmost of them are fixable.

For instance: if you cook your rice and it's done but a little watery, just drain it in a colander, put

it back on a sheet pan or jelly roll pan, put it in the oven for about 5 minutes. It will dry up. If it's a

little on the underdone side just drop, say, a cup, well, half a cup even of hot water in the pan, slap

on the lid and wait five minutes. The steam will cook it the rest of the way. If on the other hand your

rice is gooey and gummy and mushy, well, consider finding yourself a good rice pudding recipe. Or

do what I do, feed it to the dog.

In China, quitting a job is referred to as "breaking the rice bowl".

SCENE 11Church Front

Considering its history, versatility, cultural significance and the fact that it's cultivated on every

continent on earth except for one, you might say that we've just barely cracked the book on rice.

But we hope that you know more than you did half an hour ago.

Just remember: short is sticky, long is fluffy, white cooks





quicker than brown. Now brown smokes "converted,"

nutritionally speaking, but converted does edge out white

just by a hair.

Short is sticky

Long is fluffy

White cooks quicker

than brown

Brown smokes converted

nutritionally

Converted edges out

white barely

And consider this fun fact: of all the rice cultures on earth every one of them considers rice to be

a symbol of fertility, which is why we've been throwing this [rice] at weddings for the last few

millennium and not corn cobs, small watermelons, or live fish. See you next time on Good Eats.

Visit us on the web at www.foodtv.com.

Last Edited on 01/18/2010


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Power to the Pilaf Transcript

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