[quote=“Interlocutor”]Aprimo wrote:
[quote]
A Tatung rice cooker/steamer is a necessity at every Taiwanese’s home (and almost every overseas Taiwanese’s home too. ) The one I have now is the second one I’ve owned and it was bought in Taipei at NT$600 several years ago.
Tatung is simple and versatile. The main body of the rice cooker is like a hot plate that you actually pour 1/4 to 1 cup of water into. The metal bowl where you put your rice and water into, goes directly into this small pool of water. When the rice cooker is on, it boils the water in the main body which keeps the temperature even and cooks the rice. You can put just about anything into the main body of the rice cooker to steam (raised from the small pool of water). You don’t need a special “rice pot”. Any metal container that fits into the rice cooker works. You can also use a porcelain or ceramic plate or bowl in the steamer.
I know there are cookbooks about making Rice Cooker Dishes but I don’t know if there’s a bilingual version.
Perhaps this isn’t quite the right thread to post this in because (a) I like to cook and (b) it’s not the simplest recipe in the world, though it’s really not very difficult, but I just had to boast that. . .
I just made a couple of pans of lasagna for dinner. I got the idea in the first place when I saw this awesome fresh mozarella cheese at CostCo that I had to buy. I had to go to this Japanese grocery store in my neighborhood for the noodles (Welcom and Carrefour didn’t have them). And I picked up the Ricotta cheese at that store in Breeze Center (Jasons?). They didn’t have tomato paste at Welcom as I hoped for, so I ended up using a giant jar of spaghetti sauce from CostCo (with onions, meat and garlic added). So I guess buying the ingredients was the hardest part.
And I haven’t baked them yet. They’re all laid out in the pans, ready to go, but they look great. And there will be lots of leftovers for biendangs, etc.
Aside from finding the ingredients, it’s really easy to make. In fact, I was really surprised about one thing. The noodles – real Italian noodles, imported from Italy – say on the box that they don’t need to be pre-cooked. I didn’t believe it, so I briefly boiled them first anyway. Well, I should have trusted them as they were apparently correct. I ended up boiling way too many noodles and half of them stuck together and are pretty useless, and were unneeded anyway so I threw them out. Anyway, that was news to me – that you can just take the noodles from the box and put them in the pan, cover them with cheese and sauce, etc., without boiling them. Next time I’ll know.
So, I’m looking forward to giving them a try in an hour or so, with some fresh garlic bread and a glass of Chimay. 