Rice & Grains

A Batch of Rice in which the grains remain distinct is called com roi (separated rice), while rice that has been compacted by hand into dense balls or logs is called com nam (pressed rice). Like Japanese onigiri (rice balls), com nam is both shaped and eaten by hand. You simply pick up a piece, press it against a boldly flavored food like Caramelized Minced Pork (page 131), Cotton Pork (page 134), or sesame salt (see Note), and pop the morsel into your mouth. For many Vietnamese of my parents’ generation, com nam is an old-fashioned food that conjures up memories of home, perhaps because it was a creative way for moms to get their kids to eat more rice, the main source of sustenance. As a reminder of such times, my dad regularly prepared com nam and then presliced it for family road trips, picnics, and whenever we wanted a fun alternative to eating rice from a bowl.

An elegant preparation of northern Vietnam, this soup is special-occasion fare. Rather than simmering the rice until it disintegrates into a silky creaminess, the grains are cooked until their ends “bloom” into flowerlike petals, an effect achieved by parboiling the rice and then simmering it for a shorter time than for standard cháo. Tapioca pearls thicken the soup and lend an interesting shimmer, and the halved shrimp turn into pink corkscrews as they cook, adding a final flourish to the presentation.

Warm, creamy, and comforting, chao is a staple of the Viet diet. It is eaten at all times of day, and is the magical antidote for whatever ails you—a stomachache, a cold, a hangover. With less than a cup of rice, you can create a pot of soup that will feed people in biblical proportions because it keeps thickening as it cooks and sits, requiring ever more liquid to thin it down. At its most basic, chao is rice simmered in liquid—water, homemade stock, or canned broth (the latter two are best)—until all its starch has been released. The thick finished soup is a versatile canvas. For a flavorful savory addition, eat it with Salted Preserved Eggs (page 101) or a sprinkle of Cotton Pork shreds (page 134). For richness, put a raw egg into the bowl before ladling in the hot soup. For a simple seafood soup, drop in raw peeled shrimp just before serving. Or, make one of the four chao recipes that follow.

Bland and mushy are forever banished; this is oatmeal for grown-ups. Steel-cut oatmeal (also referred to as Irish oatmeal) has a wonderfully nutty taste and a texture that is at once creamy and chewy. As a kid I always loaded my oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar; now I cook tart apple slices with the same ingredients for an unexpected yet familiar treat to layer with the oatmeal. A sprinkling of turbinado sugar and a quick hit from the broiler create a sweet brûléed crust and an extra touch of decadence. Crack the crust with your spoon and pour in the cinnamon-scented cream . . . oh yeah, you’ll be in love with oatmeal after this.

Squash blossoms are a spring delicacy. Coated in rice batter and panfried, they become light, crisp envelopes for a savory mixture of tender shreds of pork braised in barbecue sauce and creamy ricotta cheese. The sharp bite of black pepper is mellowed with honey in a vinaigrette that brightens each sumptuous bite.

Dirty rice is a traditional Cajun dish of white rice cooked with chopped chicken livers. The liver darkens, or “dirties,” the rice and infuses it with its mild yet distinctive taste. My version is classically flavored but prepared in a not-so-traditional manner: I use Arborio rice, cook it as I would a risotto, and fold in cooked wild rice as one of the last steps so that its nutty flavor and chewy crunch run throughout the dish. I think of this as a Louisiana-style dish, and the southern flavors of deep bourbon and sweet, crunchy pecans are fitting accomplices to the rich duck and aromatic rice.

This dish is brought to you straight from Harlem. Fried chicken and waffles was invented by the singers and musicians who performed in Harlem’s storied jazz age. Those gigs would last until the early hours of the morning, when the musicians spilled out into the neighborhood’s restaurants. Hungry after a long night and still in their evening clothes and mind-sets, they found fried chicken fit the bill. At the same time, the sun would be rising, and a breakfast of waffles sounded pretty good, too. And so waffles became a bed for fried chicken, and a soul-food classic was born. I put my own riff on the dish by adding nutty wild rice to the waffles and serving the whole thing up with a sauce of honey and sweet, mildly peppery pink peppercorns.

I met chef Kevin Stewart and his partner, Richard Cordray, at my friend Loncito Cartwright’s South Texas ranch. Kevin prepared this dish using Loncito’s grass-fed lamb and I asked for the recipe, named after Kevin and Richard’s former Marfa restaurant, Blue Javalina. Wild packs of javalinas—compact, coarse-haired, piglike animals with short snouts—roam the high plains of West Texas. Javalinas do not come in blue, nor do they make for great eating. Loncito’s lamb is a different story. His grass-fed lamb has a mild taste that appeals to even the most reluctant lamb eater. It is available at select farmers’ markets and specialty foods stores throughout Texas.

Chef Quincy Adams Erickson and I worked together in Austin during my stint as executive chef for a national chain. A graduate of the famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Quincy now owns Austin’s Fête Accompli, a catering company specializing in fresh, handmade appetizers. I asked Quincy to give me a cocktail party recipe for this book and, as usual, she came up with a winner. Make sure you have a small cookie cutter that will make bite-size shapes that your guests can easily pop in their mouths. Use whatever shape you’d like: circles, hearts, stars, triangles, or squares.

Beans and rice create an unassuming but essential backdrop for the quintessential Tex-Mex meal—leave them out and you’ll probably hear about it. Rosa Albiter Espinoza, who has worked for more than seven years in the Rather Sweet kitchen, makes her Mexican rice regularly for our lunch specials. She prefers Adolphus rice, a long-grain variety native to Texas. When I’m preparing a Tex-Mex spread for a party, I make sure to serve a pot of rice and plenty of refried black beans.

Beans and rice create an unassuming but essential backdrop for the quintessential Tex-Mex meal—leave them out and you’ll probably hear about it. Rosa Albiter Espinoza, who has worked for more than seven years in the Rather Sweet kitchen, makes her Mexican rice regularly for our lunch specials. She prefers Adolphus rice, a long-grain variety native to Texas. When I’m preparing a Tex-Mex spread for a party, I make sure to serve a pot of rice and plenty of refried black beans.

Puffy tacos have become modern-day icons of the San Antonio food scene. You can find the meat-filled, deep-fried corn tortillas throughout the Alamo City and—believe it or not—on the baseball field, too, where Henry, the Puffy Taco, serves as a mascot for the San Antonio Mission, a minor league team. I propose a build-your-own puffy taco party, where guests crowd into the kitchen to feast on hotfrom-the-skillet tacos stuffed with bison chili, a dab of guacamole, and whatever other fixings you set out. Ask friends to act as revolving fry cooks, so nobody gets stuck by the stove for too long, and in the meantime, assign others to shake up batches of Silver Bullet Margaritas (page 175). Diana Barrios Trevino, friend and the restaurateur behind San Antonio’s La Hacienda de los Barrios, gave me permission to use her famous puffy taco recipe. It was the recipe that beat TV chef Bobby Flay in a puffy taco “throwdown” staged for Flay’s popular Food Network show. If you can find fresh masa dough, use it to make the tortillas. Otherwise, dried masa mix will work just fine.

Posole is a pork-based soup that’s really a cross between a soup and a stew. Apart from the pork, the main ingredient is hominy—white corn kernels that have been soaked in lye. Many Texans profess to love posole, but I’ve always found it impossibly bland. That is, until I tried Rosa’s version, which she transformed from blah to bueno with the addition of a flavor-packed red chile sauce. Rosa, a native of Mexico City, has worked at Rather Sweet since it opened almost ten years ago. A traditional Mexican concoction, posole comes in many styles, and is often prepared on feast days or to celebrate the new year, says Rosa. Sounds like a natural party food to me. I like to serve Red Posole as a main course for an informal dinner party on a cool night. Make a big batch of guacamole (page 255) and set out bowls with all of the traditional posole accompaniments—lime wedges, thinly sliced radishes, lettuce, and green onions. Serve the posole in the Dutch oven you made it in, or seize the chance to use that old-fashioned soup tureen you inherited from Great-Aunt Belle. Decorate your serving table with a Mexican-style tablecloth or a colorful runner. Bundle cloth napkins with the necessary silverware and set out a stack of deep soup bowls and small plates. Let guests serve themselves buffet style. Complete your stress-free, do-ahead dinner with a large pitcher of White Sangria (page 175) and a combination plate of Chile Crinkle Cookies (page 206) and Chubby’s White Pralines (page 68).

I first tasted Ralph Watterson’s Six Rivers Tuna last year when he and his group of bicycling buddies passed through Frederickburgs on a four-day cycling trip. His tuna provides hearty lunches for the group as they cover 300 miles and cross six rivers on their annual spring cycling trip. I asked for the recipe, which he described as his mother’s version, plus a few embellishments of his own. I made it, tried it out at the bakery, and our tuna sandwich sales skyrocketed. Ralph’s Six Rivers Tuna is now a part of our regular menu. Given its proven track record as a recipe that travels, I figured it would be great for an outdoor picnic or a potluck. On bike trips, Ralph says he often serves it with crackers. I wanted something more substantial and created a soft, honey-kissed roll that when split and filled with tuna makes a memorable and satisfying sandwich that travels with ease.

When I’ve got a crowd to feed and a tight budget, I turn to rice salad. I love its versatility: Simply add meat or shellfish for a heartier dish, but omit them for vegetarians. Sometimes I divide the rice mixture into two serving bowls before adding meat or shellfish, reserving one for my non-meat eating friends. It’s hard to beat homemade mayonnaise, which tastes fresher and richer than the commercial stuff. I’ve included a recipe for the mayonnaise we use at Rather Sweet Bakery & Café.

Because I was so used to the watery texture and bland taste of regular tofu, the flavor and texture of marinated and baked tofu was a revelation: a little chewy and nicely tangy from the addition of soy sauce. I know you can make it yourself, but the store-bought kind is so easy to come by that I can’t pass it up, especially because it improves even further with more cooking, such as broiling it along with asparagus to add crispness and color. This recipe is my concession to being outdoor space–challenged, meaning that instead of firing up my trusty Weber like I used to when I had a yard, I crank up the broiler to get a similar flame-kissed effect, without the smoke, of course. If you have a grill, by all means feel free to use a perforated grill pan or vegetable basket for the asparagus and tofu, cooking them until they get charred spots.

My introduction to the joys of room-temperature farro salad came years ago in Boston, when I wrote an article about two chef-couples’ different approaches to an outdoor dinner party. Gabriel Frasca and Amanda Lydon, who have since taken over the storied Straight Wharf restaurant on Nantucket to much acclaim, cooked the farro in the oven, then combined it with, among other things, fresh cherries, blanched and sautéed broccoli rabe, and pecans. Besides scaling it down to single-serving size, I stripped down their method considerably, standing in fresh arugula for the broccoli rabe so I don’t have to cook it, adding protein in the form of chickpeas, and using dried cherries instead of fresh because I can get them year-round.

This recipe was inspired by my discovery of single-serving-size butternut squash the size of hand weights at my local farmers’ markets. Roasted butternut squash is a great thing to have on hand for use in various other dishes, though, so feel free to roast a larger one and use 1/2 cup of the flesh here, refrigerating the rest for up to a week or freezing for several months in an airtight container.