SC - Statistically speaking-sulphites-oop

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Philippa Alderton wrote:
> 
> The
> English on the package was really descriptive- it called the mix "Mixed
> Grains". The ingredient list includes something called " Job's Tear" -
> anybody have a clue as to what that is?

My dictionary sez it is a tall grass with hard, drop-shaped,
grayish-white seeds, which are used as a grain in Asia. Tell me
something I don't know...I also know some derivative of the seed is used
as an emulsifier of some kind, in some commercial soy milk products.
> 
> The ingredients list follows in order of the package ingredients:
> 
> Barley
> Indian Millet
> Sweet Brown Rice
> Brown Rice
> Job's Tear
> Red Beans
> Black Beans
> Peeled Mung Bean
> Black Sweet Rice
> Corn
> Green Peas
> 
> Anybody KNOW how to cook it? How it's usually used? Adamantius, Ras, Ragnar,
> Ian, Bear, Christianna, as well as anyone else, your responses are
> solicited.

Given the mix, I suspect you wouldn't be able to do a typical 2-to-1
rice pot or pilaf. I think your best bet would be to either bring it to
a boil in quadruple water to grain by volume, and then simmer/steam for
maybe 45 minutes to an hour, or until the hardest items (probably one of
the beans) are tender. Or, you could do as the lady suggested and soak
overnight and then steam until tender.

Or, you could feed it to the nearest bird...I'm only being partly
facetious here. It's very hard to tell sometimes what some of these
things are for. Take, for example, the bag of compressed coarse-ground
grain pellets that I once found in my local Korean market, looking
vaguely like Grape Nuts, and smelling a great deal like them, too. The
actual packaging material just said, "Ingredients: Wheat and Barley.",
which was technically true, but then there was the extremely large
sticker reading something like, in bold black print, "It is illegal to
manufacture alcoholic beverages for commercial sale unless said
manufacture is regulated by Code blah blah blah..." Luckily I ran into
an elderly lady who spoke English, and asked her what the stuff was for.
At first she didn't seem to want to discuss it, and than I asked if this
was for making wine, and she said yes, it was.

Apparently you mash the stuff with sweet glutinous rice to make rice
wine... .

But sometimes it's hard to tell. I'd heard of a fascinating red rice
(and even tried some, cooked) from Indonesia, which was, supposedly at
that time, unavailable in the USA. A couple of years later I saw a bag
of honest-to-Gosh red rice (again, the ingredients read, "Rice"), and
figured this was the stuff I'd tried before. So, like a good adventurous
cook, I bought a bag and cooked some. It was horrible, nasty, soggy,
bitter, you name it: every conceivable unpleasant adjective applied, and
when I went back to the store, the clerk, who recognized my face, asked
how my sorghum wine had turned out. I looked blank, at which point he
said, "Well, I figured you were buying that yeast to make some wine."
Sure enough, upom examining a bag of the same product under a different
brand name, it was labelled as red sorghum wine yeast.

Now I wouldn't suggest Phlip's bag of mixed grains was a necessary
ingredient in making an alcoholic beverage, but then I _have_ made the
March Beer recipe from Gervase Markham's "The English Huswife", which
isn't too far off.

Adamantius
Crown Province of Østgardr, East Kingdom

Argent, an owl displayed guardant sable, between three pheons inverted
gules, all within a bordure sable.    
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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