This is not milk...
...but it sure looks a lot like it!
I didn't grow up with soaked rice prior to it being cooked. My mom didn't have time for that. Rice was the quickest side dish (and at times, main dish) to make. She would chop onion, carrot, parsnip, and celery, bring the veggies to a shy boil with a dash of oil, salt and spices to taste, add the rice, and cover and cook on low for 20 minutes.
Sometimes she took her time; the rice was briefly rinsed and set aside to drain, the vegetables were diced uniformly, perhaps she dug out a yellow bell pepper from the fridge and diced that, too. The veggies were left to boil for 5 minutes so that the water would change color a bit, some saffron was added to give the rice a warm color. And this was definitely a side dish because the pièce de ré·sis·tance was some slow-cooked meat that could make wolves across the country howl.
It didn't matter which way she cooked the rice, quickly or slowly. It was so tasty. People knew about my mom's rice dish from the whole church I grew up at. They would fill their plates up with it, douse it with hot sauce and almost inhale it down.
"So, why do you soak your rice then if you have a perfectly good recipe from your mother?"
I cook my mom's recipe too, relax! The soaked rice version is a recipe from my mother-in-law. The whole rice dish is prepared in an entirely different manner. First the rice is soaked so that it releases its starch, yielding a faster cook time. While the rice is draining, vermicelli pasta is browned in ghee or olive oil (preferably ghee, because we all need healthy fats), and then the drained rice is added. You can imagine the shock the fat feels when it encounters moist rice. One may instinctively want to take cover from the shrilling pops in that pot. But we are all adults here so, no wet rice in a burning hot pot o' fat gonna scare me none. [spits in cowboy]
The inner-pot-war subsides as the contents reacclimates and resumes warming up, now in order to fry the rice a bit. Salt and pepper are added, then hot water to just barely cover the rice. Cover the pot, and cook on low until rice is tender.
But I've made shortcuts to this recipe, too. Because sometimes, like my mother, ain't nobody got time for dat.
If it is lucky, the rice soaks for 10 minutes. No vermicelli. Fry that rice. Spice and salt it up, cover with hot water and cook on low. [spits in Ioana]
To be honest, it taste the same to me. Husband can't tell the difference. And A doesn't care either because she loves rice so much she would eat it raw if I'd let her.
So, is there a point to going the long way sometimes if the end results are the same (in most cases)?
Yes. Indeed, there is. Food feels our emotions. It wants to be connected to our thoughts so that it can better serve our needs...syke.
No, really. Cooking meals without running 100 mph is so nice and relaxing for me. I image I'm back at my undergrad internship, running electrochemical experiments on different materials, preparing those materials in different ways for the experiments, and enjoying the mountain (!) of data analysis afterwards. Now, that is when I had real time on my hands to tinker, or as my exasperated boss would sometimes call it - messing around.
Tinkering with food recipes is much more forgiving than tinkering with research experiment protocols. The odd-ball result of either realm yields the same hysterical reaction. Yet, we are meant to experiment with what we have in order to make it our own. I never truly feel like I "own" something unless I have molded it such that it has the memory of its origin, but it is a different and unique entity. Similar to myself. Similar to you, I daresay.