I love rice. As a confessed carboholic it's true that I love every other form of savory starch too, but rice just might be the one I love most so, of course, I lust for what must be the most coveted thing in rice cookery: the tahdig. 'Tahdig', as most of you would know, is the Persian word for the crispy layer that can form on the bottom of the rice cooking pan if you play your cards right.
But that can take some work, and not long ago a happy accident resulted in my discovering how to get a tahdig-like texture without digging (ha ha) too far. In fact, my method results in a higher crispy-to-noncrispy ratio than the conventional Persian method and that's not too much of a good thing!
Here's what happened: a friend invited us to dinner and I, who was long on potatoes that week, volunteered to bring a gratin to go with her steaks. But when the day came, Bob had some kind of car crisis that required my presence elsewhere all afternoon so I didn't have the two hour lead time needed to make a gratin. Instead, I made a rice pilaf, something I could cook for ten minutes then turn off the fire and walk away from, then return home and plate up for reheating at the site. Only, when I got home I found that the pilaf I'd put too much liquid in--I typically cook jasmine rice at about 1:1 but I must have miscalculated this time--and the kernels were bloated and mushy. I hate that. So I spread the rice out on a nonstick cookie sheet and popped it into a cold oven that I turned up to 350 F on Convection Bake. About ten minutes later I had rice that had not only unswollen and gotten just a little chewy and golden on top, but had--to first my horror and then my delight--toasted to a lovely golden brown uniformly across the bottom. That rice stuck at first but as the tray cooled it released the hostages so I had all these lovely, crunchy toast-colored kernels intermixed among the pale herb-flecked remainder. Mucho attractivo! I mounded all that rice in a wide, shallow gratin dish, and topped it with a goodly quantity of finely chopped chives as a reference to the classic steak pairing of baked potato-with and off we went to Anne's. Later, while the steaks were resting, it took just two minutes in the microwave to bring back my dish back to serving temperature--still crispy. It was so nutty-good that the dish got passed round and round until every kernel was gone, and I'd made enough to feed eight. There were only five of us.
I've been making rice this way on purpose ever since. Not every time, but because the texture's so fabulous it's especially lovely in accompaniament with a soft proteins like fish and braised meats, and also vegetable main dishes or curries. Last night I made this version, which I call Prairie Rice, to accompany a vegetable main course of baby carrots halved and browned in butter (and no I don't mean those machine-tumbled stubs you buy in bags in supermarkets here called 'baby carrots', I mean real whole carrots picked when they're just four-five inches long).
The following will provide two large servings.
1/4 cup finely diced onion
1 pat butter and 1 tblsp olive oil
1 cup plus two tablespoons strong chicken or vegetable stock
1 1/2 tsp dried basil
3/4 tsp dried dill
3/4 tsp dried French thyme
a couple grinds coarse black pepper
3/4 c jasmine rice
2 tablespoons wild rice
Salt to taste
In a saucepan with a good-fitting lid, sweat onions in butter and olive oil for about one minute, then add rices. Stir to coat the rices well and let heat through, about one minute, while loading in the herbs. Finally, add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Cover tightly, reduce heat to low, and leave for ten minutes, then turn heat off. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID, at least for the next 20 minutes or until cool and all excess moisture has evaporated. This entire step can be done earlier in the day.
Spray the bottom of a cookie sheet with cooking spray, then spread rice on top and pop into a hot oven (350) for about ten minutes. If you have a Convection setting, use that but lower the heat a bit. Do keep an eye on it, it will go from toasted to burnt if you leave it just a few minutes too long. This step, too, can be completed earlier in the day and the rice reheated just before serving.