Sticky rice

I feel like a genius today. I just cooked up a giant pot of the most beautiful sticky rice you'll ever see. And not only did I do it without a rice cooker, I did it without instructions! Because the instructions that I found online insisted that they were "100 percent sure that [I'd] burn the rice." Way to be fatalistic, huh? Well, if their recipe leads inevitably to burned rice, then I'd say it's time that they get a new recipe. Mine, for example! Follow these instructions and you can have perfect rice for sushi, for sticky fried rice like you get at Kobe's, or for just about anything else.

1. Buy short grain rice. Not medium, short. It has to be short. Don't buy special sushi rice. Special sushi rice is short grain rice repacked with a higher price tag.
2. Measure your rice. Dump into a large bowl.
3. Add water to large bowl. You don't have to measure yet. Just add lots of water.
4. Let stand for thirty minutes. This will make the rice more supple and help in several small ways. Notice that after thirty minutes your rice has turned a beautiful pearly white, rather than the whitish grayish transparentish that it was before.
5. Wash the rice. If you use a colander, you'll probably end up with little grains of rice plugging up every hole. Use a bowl. Fill it up with water. Pour the water out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until the water stays mostly clear. All of this is to remove starch that will keep your rice from being sticky. This is a very important step. Don't skip it.
6. Drain the rice in a colander for thirty minutes to an hour. This is not a very important step. I included it here for thoroughness. You can skip it. I always do.
   
7. Add a small amount of water to a large pot. Dump in the rice. Then add one cup water for every cup of rice. Don't stir the rice! Remember all that effort to get the starch out? Stirring will bring it all out again. So don't do it.
8. Bring to a boil on high or medium high heat uncovered.
   
9. As soon as it boils, turn the heat down to low and put on a tight fitting lid. If you don't have a tight fitting lid, feel free to get creative. I have lots of success with stacking a skillet and a heavy Pyrex bowl on top. Seriously. Looks dumb, works well.
10. Go away for ten to fifteen minutes. If you think your heating element is pretty hot, make it ten. If you think it leans on the cool side, make it fifteen.
11. Remove the pan from the heat source but don't remove the lid! Let sit another twenty to twenty-five minutes. You're steaming the rice now, so don't even peek. You'll let the steam out and ruin everything.
12. Take off the lid and celebrate your beautiful rice! If you're making sushi out of it, then this is part where you add the vinegar mixture and then let the rice cool (by spreading it on cookie sheets or plates, if you want to speed up the process). Then you cover the rice with a damp cloth until you're ready to make sushi.

That's it! Okay, so it's rather a long process, but it's worth it. Now go make some sushi! Or go make my Vietnamese fried rice. You won't be disappointed.

Vodka Sauce

Vodka sauce vodka sauce vodka sauce vodka sauce. This is the best pasta sauce EVER! Sort of. I mean, the carbanara sauce is really good too, but this one is HEALTHIER because it uses real (canned) tomatoes and (slightly) less cream. And it's good. Really, really good. I promise.

Ingredients:

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 large shallot (really, it makes a difference. Shallots are good.)
• 1 small yellow onion
• Olive oil
• Butter
  
• 1 can of tomatoes
• 1 can tomato puree
  
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• Cayenne pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup vodka
• Flour for thickening

Chop the garlic et. al. and sauté for a few minutes in the olive oil and butter (yes, both. Because this recipe just deserves it). Sometimes I add a dash of white wine to make it an extra-drunk recipe. Add the canned tomatoes, the tomato puree, and the pepper and cook for a few minutes until some of the liquid has evaporated. Add the cream and vodka, and thicken with flour if necessary (it's always necessary).

Serve over pasta (yeah, don't forget to cook the pasta) with vegetables, if you like. It goes very well with sautéed mushrooms.

Oatmeal Pancakes

These pancakes are amazing. Seriously. They only have one drawback and that's remembering to prepare the batter the night before. But they're so good that you'll probably be thinking about them all the time anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups quick oats
• 2 cups buttermilk (fake it by using a tbsp of lemon juice for each cup of normal milk)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Combine the oats and buttermilk in a large mixing bowl and let them soak all night (or at least two hours, but preparing breakfast two hours in advance? Doesn't usually work out). This is where the incredible texture comes from. It also creates a mixture that resembles dough far more closely than it resembles batter, but no worries, the other ingredients will loosen it up.

When you're ready for your pancakes, preheat the skillet and add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl. Add some chocolate chips if you're gourmand like me. They cook up like normal pancakes, except for the incredible scent of oatmeal and honey and cinnamon that permeates the room.

Goes great with raspberry syrup. Or a spoonful of maple syrup and a couple tablespoons of raspberry jam, if you're cheap and don't have the real thing.