Rice, the Amazing Grain: Great Rice Dishes for Every Day

`Rice, The Amazing Grain' by Marie Simmons and `Risotto' by Judith Barrett and Norma Wasserman are two older books (14 and 18 years respectively) on a most interesting culinary subject. In fact, to most of the Asian cultures, rice is THE culinary subject, dwarfing all talk of wheat and its principle derivatives, bread and pasta so dear to the western European culinary palate. (The other side of the coin may be that Italian and French cuisines can claim some level of primacy over Asian cuisines in that both have an important role for rice, while Asia ignores wheat and its vassals.) While the first book deals with rice as a whole, including, per its subtitle, `Great Rice Dishes for Every Day', the second book deals only with the classic rice dish of northern Italy. On the face of it, therefore, one may think that the first book is more valuable than the second, but, for serious cookbook collectors, I think that is not the case. For starters, the author claims that `Rice, The Amazing Grain' started out as a book on the grain alone but, like an unruly child, it grew into a cookbook. From that introduction, I expected a major treatise on rice, its cultivation, varieties, and nutrition. Instead, we get something which is far inferior to what I found in the recent book, `The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook' by bread baking Guru Beth Hensperger and culinary colleague, Julie Kaufmann. This book on a very specific rice cooking technique actually has more useful information on varieties of rice than this book devoted to the whole grain. So, it took me some time to warm up to `Rice, The Amazing Grain', especially as Ms. Simmons did nothing to really show me how amazing the grain was. I grew to like the book a bit more when I discovered a clear explanation of the differences between a pilaf and a risotto, aside from the fact that one was born in Milan and the other in the Levant. (The difference is in the variety of rice used and the fact that all liquid is added at once to a pilaf at the outset of cooking). I was also very glad to find a good chapter on rice salad dishes. Most good salad books contain few if any recipes for rice in salad, much fewer, for example, than for rice in desserts. So, my final word on `Rice, The Amazing Story' is that it is only worth your while if you are exceptionally fond of rice as an ingredient. If you are a foodie and your interest is not specifically centered on rice, you are much better served by getting `The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook' and `Risotto'. I recommend you get both, since, while risotto can be made in a rice cooker, it is, by its nature, something that is done with lid off and with constant serving. So, what a rice cooker gives you is ersatz risotto, with the same ingredients and flavors, but maybe not the same great creaminess. You can imagine the difficulties by visualizing cooking Risotto in a microwave! On the other hand, if you really like rice and Italian cooking, `Risotto' is probably a book you shoul