And so it begins...

As an 18 year old, just finished my A Levels, I've been feeling ever so slightly disorientated and bored without any work / revision / homework after 15 years of primary and secondary education. After spending days trawling aimlessly round the internet for a few days, I decided to start a summer project to keep me going insane with boredom. 

But what could it be? Drawing? Writing? Re-learning how to play the piano? After much thought, it became clear there was one blindingly obvious option - a food blog! After all, my family is food crazy, and although I'm no great cook, I am one great eater. I LOVE FOOD. And even though the university I hope to get in to is catered, I still need to learn to cook at some point. So although I'm not going to be cooking many of these recipes (yet!), I can at least collect them from my various family members for the future and hopefully share them with everyone who reads this.

This is me, wearing Assamese clothes

I should probably point out now, I am Indian. Or at least my parents are. More specifically, Assamese. Assam is a state about the size of Austria in the Northeast of India, especially famous in England for its tea. About 700 years people around the Southeast China area, called Tai Ahoms immigrated here. My family is descended from these people, although they're very much intermingled with the local inhabitants. Anyway, although I live in Yorkshire and I can't speak the Assamese language, I eat Indian food pretty much every day. And so, as my blog will probably be about what I eat, what I post will mostly be Indian food, though there may be other cultures thrown in.

Rice field in Namti, my mother's ancestral village in Assam

I've decided to start something simple today. Simple but important. Probably the most important component of an Assamese meal. In fact, the word for "rice", "bhaat", is also the word for "meal". You mix it with the gravy from your curry, with your daal, with your subji... but more of those later. Normally rice is boiled or steamed, but in our family at least, when eating rice every day, you want an easier option, of microwaving it.

Microwave Rice

Serves 4

1. Wash 2 cups of basmati rice until the water runs clear
2. Cover with double amount of water (i.e. 4 cups of water)
3. Microwave on full power for 10 minutes with a lid in the dish of rice.
4. Microwave on defrost setting for 10 minutes
5. Take out from microwave and fluff up with a fork.
6. Serve and eat. Yum yum yum!

You can get those microwave rice cookers, though we just use a big porcelain dish. When I was little, I would associate rice with a certain smell. It was only when I grew older that I realised the smell was of basmati rice and not all rice. And it certainly is better than the American long grain rices, when you get that nice fragrant puff taking of the lid.

Not all posts will be this long, or at least there'll be a better recipe than this one. Hopefully I'll keep going with it, or at least until my family get annoyed at having to explain all their recipes to me! I have a few more for this week at least.

Bye :D xxx