My day to day rice is pretty simple. Half a cup of organic which jasmine rice, 1.5 cups of water, a heavy drizzle (a tablespoon?) of olive oil and some salt (a teaspoon?). Bring to a boil, cover, cook for 15 minutes, leave it aside covered for 10 minutes, fluff with a fork.

When I’m feeling fancy I do a different version. I dice half an onion, fry it, add 3-4 cloves of chopped garlic, fry it, add the rice and salt, fry it for a minute, then add the water already boiling. Cook for 15 minutes as well, wait 10, fluff.

Every time I move to a new house I need to adjust the water to rice ratio to keep the cooking at 15 minutes. I’d rather add less water than cook for longer.

I have a wheat allergy so I eat a lot of rice. I wanted the best rice cooker and got one from Zojirushi that uses a microcontroller with fuzzy logic to sense and compensate for if there is slightly too much or too little water. It does take noticeably longer for it to cook the rice, but it comes out perfect every time. It also has different modes for white rice, brown rice, semibrown rice, and rice porridge. The white rice setting is also perfect for quinoa, although for quinoa the water ratio is 1:2 instead of following the marked lines on the pot.

For rice porridge: I’ll season with garlic salt and ginger, and cook it with onion and black mushroom. Serve with lime and jalopeno.

For quinoa: I like to substitute 25% of the quinoa with millet, and cook it with Consommé, golden flax seed, and lemon.

For brown rice: diced or shredded carrot works really well since the brown rice cooks for longer. I’ll usually season with garlic salt, ginger, cumin, and curry powder.

For white rice: it normally has to be plain to add to something else like curry or a stir-fry, but my favorite white rice dish is cooking it with lots of bok choi, season with salt, fresh ginger, white pepper, sesame oil.