coconut rice

To give myself a small spring break during a very snowy Friday evening, I made coconut rice last night, and I think I may be in trouble. It was really really good.

Combine 3 cups light coconut milk (about 2 cans), 2 cups uncooked long-grain white rice and 2 bay leaves in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Let stand 5 min; discard bay leaves. Fluff with a fork, and stir in .5 teaspoon of salt (kosher if you have it).

I never before understood the fluffy rice thing; I like my rice clumpy and chewy. With this dish, though, I wanted to savor every individual grain it was so good. Let me know if you try it with brown rice!

The recipe had an accompanying dish called spicy tomato sauce. I liked what I made, but I had deviated so far from the recipe that I'm not sure I could really tell you what I did. Basically, you saute shallots (I used onions) and garlic lightly in peanut oil (I used canola), and then mix in Thai chiles (which I obviously skipped), brown sugar, lime juice, lime zest (which I didn't have) and tomatoes, and let that simmer for about 20 minutes. My rice wasn't done after its 20 minutes, so I kept both of them on the heat, but then I forgot about them because I was posting yesterday's posts. By the time I got back there, the rice was perfect and the spicy tomato sauce had reduced so much that it was sweeter than sun-ripened tomatoes. The tomatoes had almost completely disintegrated, the onion had gone way past caramelizing and somehow reverted to a simple sugar state... it was great with the rice, but I think that may have been a happy accident, never to be repeated.