Rice with the Wind

The rice salad's promise lures sunbirdy from his nectar  

The humble Chinese fried rice is a God-sent when I lived an easy distance from the Botanic Gardens. An easy and tree-lined three-minute walk away is a fabulous takeaway that woks up the yummiest char siew, sweet green peas and crunchy green chilli loaded balanced meal in a tiffin carrier.

But much as I constantly crave it for lunch, I’ve never cooked one up myself. It’s just too much of a hassle to have to boil the plain Jasmine rice before stir-frying that with all the time-honoured ingredients. Lunch should be a breeze to prepare.

“What about using left-over rice?” you may ask. Yes, I do serve plain rice at dinner at times. But I’ve developed a technique of cooking that just enough for two. Then I never have to scrub out the cooked grains still stuck to the bottom of the pot. The unfortunate result is a total absence of rice to leave over.

So I appease my appetite with equally satisfying substitutes that can be prepared at near hurricane speed - like with the astonishingly flavoursome Australian warm rice salad or the marvelously exotic Latin American mussels in rice ladled with rich coconut milk. And are they really appetizing? Well, my mum polished off a very hearty portion of the fragrant rice from down under even though she normally eats like a sparrow and hubby was more than willing to do the South American delicacy two nights in a row.

And you can race with the wind whipping up these dishes: they only take as long as it’s needed to cook the long grains once. Basically, you toss up all the market-fresh ingredients in the pot as they simmer over the fire. Before you know it, you’ll be wolfing them down deliciously piping hot.