Your youthful memories of rice may be as a pudding, in a nice oblong enamel dish and served with a brown skin, dusted with grated nutmeg. Variations included - or maybe this was the norm - raisins or currants in the rice. Today we buy quick-cook rice and tend to use it as a main or big-snack dish, riddled with sun-dried tomatoes or with lots of herbs or scallions or tomatoes, particularly those small cherry tomatoes cut in half. Or you can shred bits of last night's chicken or ham or fish into it. Life moves at a fast pace for some of us. But, hold on a minute: not all this is so modern. You look to see what Mrs Beeton had in mind nearly a century-and-a-half ago. Fast or fast-ish food isn't entirely a today thing. Though how fast is fast? Mrs B. gives what to her is a quick dish of savoury casserole of rice with your remains of cold fish, flesh or fowl mixed into the rice. This is an entree, she says, not a main dish. Big difference is that it takes her about three-quarters-of-an-hour to swell the rice. Now, a few minutes and it's done, if you get the right kind. As usual, we get a bit of history: it is of Indian origin and from way back formed the principal food for Indians and Chinese. Imported into Greece and thus Europe only about 300 BC. Said then to be nutritious and fattening. She says it's a wholesome food but inferior for nourishment to wheat. Not suitable as a sole article of diet.
Not like spuds, some of you will say. A friend with a jaded elderly palate declares that the best meal of his day is when he cuts up into quarters or halves cold, boiled potatoes which he has cooked himself, adds a little bit of "kitchen", be it sardines or just some diced cheese and a variety of herbs of which he keeps a good and varied collection. This forms his evening or midday meal, and he needs to have only a cup of tea or coffee or maybe a glass of red wine to satisfy him and keep him, as he says, still sprightly at a reasonably advanced age. That, of course, and half-a-dozen varieties of prescribed pills. God bless the Americans, he says, or whoever thought up that fast-cook rice. It also means he can satisfy the dog in about 15 minutes of preparation and cooking: boiled rice and boiled bits of meat - the latter four or five times a week. Y