Black rice is beautiful

ONCE YOU GO BLACK, YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK  

It was a surprise to take the lid off the rice cooker and find a mass of purple grains! I had expected specks of black throughout the brown rice instead of what I saw.

The "black wild rice" labelled on the package, I thought, was something else. It wasn't the seed of an aquatic grass of the Zizania species that is often cooked with brown rice as a side dish. And it wasn't black glutinous rice. No, this was actually a rice grain, only black – purple, actually.

Despite the confusion, there was no denying how good it tasted! The fact that it's nutritious as well is a bonus.

The black rice does colour everything it comes into contact with though. I only added a small palmful of it to about a cup and a quarter of brown rice, and as I said, the whole pot turned purple when it cooked.

I ate the rice with some dendeng daging or spicy beef strips I posted on a few days ago, and kneaded some of the leftover into a bread dough. It gave the bread a chewy texture and of course, added purple speckles. Rather attractive it was.

Bread with purple freckles

Even without the black rice, I now like brown rice. I didn't before and actually thought I would never eat it again after the first time I tried it.

A few years ago I thought I should try eating less white carbs and so I bought a bag of brown rice. I cooked a cup of it by the absorption method with plain water. The texture was a little firm but it was the taste that I couldn't stomach (pun intended). And the smell really put me off.

A few days later I tried again, this time cooking the rice in chicken stock in the rice cooker. With the offputting smell again wafting through the kitchen, I almost didn't want to taste the rice. But then I drowned it in a curry and cleaned the plate  – but only because I didn't want to waste it. The curry helped (A LOT!) but I said I would never eat brown rice again and I gave the 1kg bag of rice – minus two cups – away.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I would try it again and got a small bag of Cambodian brown rice. This time, there was no smell and the taste was delicious! The black rice made it even nuttier.

My taste buds are the same, so I don't know what changed. Maybe it was the type of rice. All I know is, brown rice – with a touch of black – will now be a part of my diet.