I cook basmati in a high-end Tiger 10 cup Japanese Rice cooker, always with superb results, but Sanyo makes a smaller rice cooker for ~$100 which is good. For basmati in the rice cooker, I use 1 cup of rice to 1.5 cups of water. I add 1 Tbs of olive oil for each cup, and 1 Tps of salt. Sometimes, for a stronger flavor I use toasted sesame oil instead. I add a pinch of Cayenne pepper, and a large pinch of Saffron flower too. Saffron flower is not the saffron you buy for $10 a gram, but the entire flower which is maybe $2 an ounce. I find it in Hispanic grocery stores as Zaffron flower.
Another basmati recipe I enjoy (my own) uses Kalijira rice, which is a baby basmati with each grain only about 1/8" long. I fry the Kalijira until translucent, add a chopped Hungarian wax pepper or two, add water and salt, golden raisins, and chopped cashew nuts then cook as normal. It is really good.
It's good to know there is a smaller grain of Basmati. I would like to try some of that. Maybe should wait until I use up what I have. Walmart doesn't have either one you mentioned. I've never used saffron anything, never missed it ;-(
Actually I never really liked rice all that much Only with Chinese on top of it. Or my special rice pudding I adapted over the years, very yummy and creamy. If I have a choice of putting like stroganoff over something, I will choose noodles every time.
I think that is because I am basically a meat and potato person. But I just like this Mexican rice. My packets of Knorr mi arroz came. A little beat up. So I could go ahead and try it with some medium grain I have or wait for my Basmati.
So many neat ideas for culinary experts. Nice to see Freepers who like haute cuisine.
Now next on my list is a peach dump cake. Only because I don't have much left to cook with and have stuff on hand that will work. I saw one with instead of all that butter (too much imo) pour a can of 7-up over the top. Well I happen to have a bottle of club soda and some maraschino cherry juice, a can of peach pie filling, some regular sliced peaches, and a nice yellow cake mix. So that is what I am going to do. Put a little nonstick something in glass cake pan, pile in the peaches, spread the cake mix over the top, smooth out and gently mix the cherry juice and enough soda to make 12 oz, pour that over the top, bake at 3xx something (oven if a little off) and see what happens.
But I will need some vanilla ice cream and the biggest Hershey's syrup to finish up the club soda. I make the old fashioned chocolate sodas. Yum. I also make the thick malts if I have malt powder. I mash the ice cream with a spoon, and the malt and syrup and it comes out exactly like those thick malts you can get some places. So I am good at improvising some things.
The only problem is I am very picky about vanilla ice cream. It can't be French. It can be cheap, just has to suit me. I only like Whitey's, Blue Bunny, Countryfare which was a great bargain only looks like it's been dropped. It was cheap and good. Now I will have to try other cheaper brands because the first two are too expensive.