[Sca-cooks] Partly OP: Brown vs. white rice?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach lilinah at earthlink.net:
>I don't know what kind of rice "brown rice" is, but i won't eat it, 
>and i rarely ate it even when i was a strict vegetarian. It's nasty 
>stuff in my experience.
>
>Unpolished rice is not necessarily like American brown rice. I've 
>eaten rice that hadn't been polished to whiteness when i lived in 
>Indonesia and it was tasty, not like American brown rice. The junk 
>that is sold in America as brown rice is definitely an inferior rice.
>
>Then again, i won't buy white rice grown in the US, because American 
>white rice is grossly inferior rice. One of the ways people bought 
>rice in Indonesia was to smell it. Good rice is fragrant, and 
>different rices smell different. I buy South or Southeast Asian 
>rices because they actually smell and taste good. I don't even buy 
>American rice for SCA feasts. I may compromise on some ingredients 
>to save some money, but not the rice.
>
>Also, a nice high quality white rice soaks up sauces which brown 
>rice won't, so brown rice doesn't fit well into many cuisines.

Somehow I have this strange feeling Anahita doesn't like American 
rice, or brown rice. Ya think? ;-)

I do have to agree, though, that a lot of the push for it in the US 
is the result of health-food faddists, and not based on _any_ Asian 
tradition I can think of. Its main advantage, if one wanted to argue 
that there is one, is one of higher fiber than most white rice, and 
possibly a greater vitamin content. I have not noted any particular 
quality difference between American and Asian rices, although 
Asian-grown rices seem to exist in greater variety, which is not 
surprising. I'm actually in a position to open the glass jars of both 
Carolina and jasmine rice from Thailand sitting on my shelf, and note 
that both have a noticeable aroma. Not the same, but both have one. I 
kind of _like_ the smell of the Carolina. The jasmine is a little 
soapy, to me... as for the smell of rice, even American rice, when 
cooking, I can only say I routinely know when it's done by the 
smell...

Adamantius