Basil Rice

YESTERDAY I had an old friend of mine, who was in town on work, over to lunch. “Do you eat pork/pork products?” I had asked him in a message ahead of his visit. [Since he's Zoroastrian, I wasn't too sure and didn't want to take a chance.] “I eat anything that doesn’t bite me back!” was the prompt reply. That was just perfect for me, because I don’t exactly fancy cooking anything that might bite me back either…crocodiles, snakes, tarantulas and scorpions may sound like the stuff of exotic (and bizarre) fare, but certainly not on my list of edibles. So I had made pork spareribs, digging out a recipe with which you can't go wrong. More on that later. But the flavour of the day was decidedly Thai - the main dish being red chicken curry. Making it was a breeze but the credit for its authenticity and taste should rightly go to a readymade red curry paste that I used.

A basil rice, I thought, would be the perfect, simple complement to the complex flavours of a Thai curry. I used the delicately fragrant, fine-grained jeera samba. Somehow, I’ve always preferred it to the long-grained basmati.

Wash two cups of rice and soak 15 minutes in water. Boil separately double the quantity of water as the rice, that is, four cups. Add a splash of cooking oil to it – about two tablespoons. Drain the rice and put it in the boiling water. Add salt to taste, lower the heat and cook covered. Tear up 10-12 basil leaves and add them when the water is nearly absorbed. Cook for two more minutes on very low heat till the water is fully absorbed. Garnish with cooked green peas.