in which the author eats a delicious meal

lately, i've found myself tempted by the allure of the rice cakes at my local asian grocers.

for those not aware, when i say rice cake, i mean the kind that is a cylinder or flat disc of... dough, i guess, made from rice flour, that you then cook in water to hydrate them until they are soft and chewy. most asian grocers i've been to sell them in plastic packs in the refrigerator.[1]

i've been slowly learning how to cook with these recently, in which i've discovered several nice properties that have made this quite fun:

• rice cakes just have great texture, at least if you're into slightly chewy things. they also hold this texture quite well as they're cooked, just getting a little softer, but overall they're-
• they're hard to completely mess up. if you undercook them, you can just add some more water and cook them longer. in my experience it's very hard to overcook them, since it takes so long for them to lose all their chewiness (after which i assume they'll probably break up like pasta if you gave them long enough).
• they generally release enough starch to thicken their cooking liquid into a sauce that's thick enough to coat them nicely, if you reduce the cooking liquid down enough.
• they're made of rice, so they can work with a lot of different flavours.

usually, i cook these by boiling/steaming them in a bit of water in a pan[2], cooking them til the water i added has reduced down and they're soft, then adding random combinations of liquids and sauces i own. sometimes i'll steam or fry some vegetables and add those too, for variety. as i said before, it's almost impossible to ruin this completely, so i've found this to be a nice way of experimenting with different flavours in the stuff i add. the whole process only takes a few minutes and usually ends up much tastier than i would expect for the amount of effort i put in.

i strongly recommend trying some for yourself, if you've never cooked rice cakes before. they're pretty cheap at asian grocers, they're easy to cook, and if you like chewy things i think they can taste quite good.

[1]i've also heard of a fully dried version, which would presumably keep longer, but need to be hydrated for a few hours before cooking - i've never found these, but they might be convenient if you want to keep them for a while. i haven't had problems with keeping open packets of the refrigerator ones for a week or so.

[2]this always takes less water than i expect. i usually do this in a shallow frying pan, and i usually need enough water to barely cover the bottom layer. that being said, they can take a decent amount of cooking, so if you add too much you can just reduce them down for a bit.