kiya

I'm far from being a full-time foodie, but I do, occasionally, have rampaging moments of, "I wanna cook." I'm in one at the moment. (Tonight I intend to make soup. I got the fixings for two kinds of soup; I'll probably do the wild rice soup instead of the hot and sour, though there's a possibility I'll make both.)

But anyway. I wound up assembling dinner. Today seems to be Yellow Food Day. Y'see, a while back I was reading Issola, and saw within it a comment on rice made with honey, ginger, and saffron. And I said, "Ooh."

The thing is, I had ginger (I don't keep ginger roots around anymore because they Go Weird on me, but I have a jar of minced ginger for important events). I had honey. No saffron. I made this with just the ginger and honey before as a midnight snack, and it was Good. But I wanted to try with the saffron. So when we went grocery-ing (for supplies for me to make soup with, and, incidentally, dinner stuff) I prowled the spice racks for saffron.

No saffron.

Sigh.

So we assembled more stuff -- cooking for dinner, stuff for soup, and resolved to hit Trader Joe's afterward in search of saffron. Shopping continued, and finally I ducked into the Sensitive New Age Food section to get tofu. I saw a spice rack, and checked: Hah! Saffron! Along with organically grown thyme and Free Trade Organically Grown Mexican Spice Medley. Victory. (Yes, I do find the Yuppie Food Section of the supermarket amusing, why do you ask?)

Anyway. Sweet rice. Need something to eat to go with a sweet rice. So I did a stir-fry. (When in doubt, stir-fry. Can't go too far wrong with stir-fry with rice.) I have hoisin sauce, which is a sweet-spicy, so I figured that's enough sweet to not clash with the rice, and the spiciness makes for a way of doing something savory-spicy to work with. This is The Plan.

I started the rice -- I did this with the standard two cups water to one cup rice, and I drizzled honey into the water, and added two big spoonfuls of ginger, and then spent about five minutes trying to figure out how to get into the packet of saffron. A pinch of saffron buds, those things that are so intense a yellow that they're red.

I chopped up a lot of garlic; we had the center of one head left, so I finished that off and added a clove to it, and I set that sizzling in some oil in the wok. I added a chopped scallion and two sliced red chili peppers, on the principle that getting a bit of the oils and flavors from those into the oil was a good thing. And I added a spoonful of hoisin sauce, and splashed in a little rice vinegar.

After a bit I added a chopped bell pepper; a yellow one. If I'd been thinking when I picked stuff out I probably wouldn't have picked a yellow one, but hey, Yellow Food Day. Then a bunch of chopped-up chicken, of usefully bite-sized pieceness, and a chopped-up onion, and one large white mushroom, sliced and then the slices cut into thirds. More hoisin sauce; more rice vinegar, and after a while I decided some soy sauce besides.

Stir, cook, stir.

Food! I think it actually combines fairly well with the rice.

I'm going to finish eating now that it's cooled down some.