as you may know froman earlier post, i am fond of brown rice. and i will argue with you that it’s just as good as white rice in most ways and for most uses. but there are a few occasions where i think white rice, and in particular jasmine rice, is superior. one of those occasions is a pretty trashy one. years ago after leaving a club, on our way home, friends and i stopped into a perfect little chinese restaurant in the early morning hours as was our (and many others’) custom. the place was full of scarborough teens, twenty-somethings and the odd table of chinese adults eating plates of hot,tasty and sometimes unauthentic chinese food. we’d order black bean short ribs and chinese broccoli, but one friend would also always order sweet and sour pork and have a bowl of that and plain white rice to start. i would never have bothered to order that from a place that served such delicious “real” chinese food, but i followed her lead and have loved that combo ever since. jasmine rice, sweet and sour pork (mock pork these days) and sriracha sauce is still something i have appreciated ever since. but only with white rice. the flavour and dense texture of properly cooked fresh jasmine rice and the sweet, crispy and chewy red pork are a great match. as with the seaweed + rice combo, perhaps because there are only two star players, white jasmine’s texture and taste stand out as superior to brown.
