On cooking rice...and other grain topics

While finalising my Tips & Tricks Guidelines for my Asian Inspiration cookery workshops, I decided to do a bit of online research on other people's experiences with cooking brown rice, which is the only type of rice that we now cook with (in fact I actually dont like white rice anymore when compared with brown). There seems to be a bit of mystique out there about how to cook brown rice, when I have found it to be much more forgiving than its white counterpart, which is apt to turn into a gelatinous mess if you turn your back on it for a minute! Brown rice on the other hand is difficult to overcook, and each rice particle remains separate even when the rice has gone cold. All this and its so much better for you - holding onto its vitamins and minerals and all the fibre that makes it a low-medium GI food to eat - and it tastes better - what more could you want?! So, go on, get out there and buy some brown Basmati rice, cook it for 30 minutes with double the quantity of water to rice and hey presto - great rice!

On a related carbohydrate topic - have you ever traipsed around a city mid-afternoon with someone who is wheat intolerant, in search of something quick to eat to tide you both over from an insubstantial and early lunch through to a late dinner? Well, it is an experience that you wont want to repeat if you can help it, but it is one that I went through recently in Dublin. Outside of lunchtime, the food options for people who are wheat intolerant - and up to 20% of people apparently have serious difficulties in digesting wheat - reduces to almost 0! Unless you count fast-food joints, which ironically are probably the only option available, where you can have chips and a burger, but you would prefer something slightly more healthy than that. We went from one end of the city centre to the other, and the vast majority of places which were serving food had wheat-based bread and no other options. So there was traditional Irish soda bread, Italian panini, French baguette, brown sandwiches, white bread sandwiches, pasta, pizza, but no other form of carbohydrate in sight! Why hasnt anyone tried to provide even spelt-bread based sandwiches as an option around the city? Perhaps we could have gone as far as the Maison des Gourmets in Castle Market - where they do sell spelt bread in their bakery - they might have managed to put something together for us. However, by the time we had got to that part of the city, our will to continue the search had waned considerably, so we ended up in a Mexican restaurant, which in fairness to them, they managed some corn-based tortillas and nachos for us - which at least gave us enough of a boost to contemplate the bus ride home!