ArcaMax

When I was growing up, the only rice brand I was familiar with was Uncle Ben’s. Maybe we also had some long grain, wild rice from Minnesota on our grocery shelves, but that would have been it.

With the proliferation of products available on the shelves at grocery stores these days, the “rice section” at my local store now takes up half an aisle. A long aisle.

I went looking for rice the other day. I have not eaten rice in over five years, so it was quite a surprise for me to learn some of the new offerings. In my big dinner party days, I had come to depend on Arborio rice for my Italian dishes and Basmati rice for my Indian dishes, but I had never heard of things like Kasmati, Texmati, Jasmati, or sushi rice. Of course brown rice has become more popular and you would not believe the number of rice packets containing the extra spices and herbs to make all kinds of processed food side dishes and entrees. It boggled my mind.

I was in the mood to design a new curry dish, so I decided to take a leap and offer a bit of rice as part of the dish assembly. It’s optional in my mind. The dish tastes great without any rice but since it’s so traditional to curry dishes I thought I’d jump in and delve a little more into rice options.

First off, how much is a portion? For me, a portion is ¼ cup COOKED. The kasmati rice container I bought suggests a portion is ¼ cup DRY. That would make about two cups of cooked rice. Each portion would come in at 34 grams of carbs. (Almost all rice comes in at the same amount of carbs, so factor that in.) 34 grams of carbs is about 1/3 – ½ the number of carbs most humans can consume in a day before they start to get fatter. You won’t catch me being sucked into cooking a ¼ cup dry per person. That’s an insane amount of carbohydrate intake in a single ingredient in my meal. I’d rather take my chances with a cupcake! The average-sized chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting comes in at 29 grams of carbs....

Read the full column at PlanZDiet.com

Shrimp Curry

Related Recipes at PlanZDiet.com:
Heavenly Sole
Asparagus Flan

Servings: Serves 4

Ingredients:

1-½ pounds of cooked shrimp, tails removed. I encourage you to buy smaller shrimp for this dish. Maybe 30/40 count shrimp. You can save money that way. You’ll see in the picture my fishmonger only had bigger shrimp that day, but this dish would actually be easier to eat with smaller shrimp.
1/3 cup of butter
1 cup of chopped onion (yellow, white or vidalia)
1 – 2 cups of organic chicken broth
1 – 2 cups of cream or half and half
2 Tbl of flour (This is optional. The flour will make the curry sauce thicker. I used gravy flour because it’s smoother and I can get away with using less flour this way.)
4 tsp of curry powder
¼ tsp of ground ginger
Garlic powder to taste. I used about 1 tsp
Worcestershire to taste. I used 6 blops/drops
Grated sea salt to taste
Tabasco to taste. I used 10 drops. My curry was not hot so add more as you choose. This is a different kind of heat than the usual cayenne heat. It’s a more in-depth heat combination with the Worcestershire and garlic.

Other optional things:

Put raw, baby spinach in the bottom of the bowl. As much as you’d like!
Add a quarter cup of cooked rice to the bottom of the bowl. I used Kasmati rice.
Garnish with chopped peanuts on top

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a saute pan on medium. Add the onions and begin to cook. When they are loose, add the flour (if you choose). Then add the curry powder, salt and ginger. Stir thoroughly. Turn heat to medium high and slowly add your chicken broth and your cream. If you use whipping cream keep in mind that as it simmers it will thicken the sauce. I listed 1 – 2 cups of each in the ingredients list so you can judge how creamy or how thin you prefer your curry sauce. You’re going to simmer your sauce and stir it frequently until it’s the consistency you like. Depending on how much water and cream you choose this might take 10 minutes. You can also taste test it to see if you want to add more zip. I even added a bit more curry powder to mine. I wanted the curry to stand out. Once the sauce is ready, put in your shrimp and heat it on medium just until your shrimp are heated through.

This will only take a few minutes.

I like to eat my curry out of a bowl. So that’s how I serve it.

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola