Food is precious. Life is precious. So I applaud Jamie Oliver’s recent televised “gala dinner” where he slaughtered a chicken in front of his guests “to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken” (nytimes article). Food should be respected and we need to be more connected to it.

The standards for food, living animals that we consume, is appalling. How cheap do we need our food to be? Really!?! There is a point where food no longer is food. I often come across foods I can’t even identify.

I’d love to walk into Dominicks (grocery chain here in Chicago) one day and see the enormous 20ft x 4ft freezers, overflowing with frozen chickens, pre-seasoned pork, unidentifiable meats, removed. Who is eating all this stuff anyway? The food industry is set up to burn through an animals life cycle as fast as possible.

Forget for the animals sake, be selfish, think of the health factors. How many processes do we want our food to go through before it gets to our table? If we do not respect our food, we will continue our endless battles against preventable diseases.

Don’t get me started on Trader Joes…

The one thing I could always count on growing up was rice pilaf. Holidays. Thanksgiving. Family parties. There was always huge patches of this family staple ready to be devoured. I’d pile this dish onto my plate and throw a few cheese boeregs on top and I would be set.

My friends got through college living on Ramen. Me? Rice Pilaf.

Hope you like butter… here we go.

The Ingredients
1 1/4 Cup Long Grain White Basmati Rice
1/2 Cup Vermicelli Noodle, Chopped (No yolk Kluski European Noodles)
2 1/2 Cup Chicken Stock
2 Tablespoon Clarified Butter
4 Tablespoon Cubed Butter
1 Teaspoon Salt
Pepper

The How-To
Add 2 Tbsp. clarified butter and the 1/2 cup Vermacelli Noodle to a medium saucepan and put on medium heat.

Continually mix with a wooden spoon until the noodles are a nice brown – about 5 minutes.

Add the 1 1/4 cup rice and cook and mix for 6 minutes.

Add the 2 1/2 cup chicken broth, 4 Tbsp. butter and 1 tspn. salt.

Mix for about a minute.

Cover and simmer for 15 minutes until broth has been absorbed/evaporated.

Taste.

Not done? Add more broth, 1/4 cup at a time until done.

Taste. Done. Good. Eat.

Chef’s Notes
If you can, buy No Yolks Kluski European Noodles. My grandmother would curse another choice so I do the same.

Try it with some lemon juice or a lemon-olive oil vinaigrette and some chopped parsley. Don’t be shy.

Seriously. Give it a shot. It’s fantastic.

If I had a food blog award to give away, it would go to SushiDay.com… hands down.

photo stolen from: http://sushiday.com/archives/2006/11/09/firecracker-roll/

Chef Allison makes some of the most beautiful rolls I have ever seen. I too am just amazed at her creative feat… Such clever rolls, combos that make my mouth water.

I mean come on, Halo 3 Sushi! That’s just awesome!

Apart from the rolls the blog is a pleasure to navigate through. Directions are easy to follow and there is a ton of learning that can be had on the site. All around a great site.