Golden Rice Recipes

Steps:

• Heat the olive oil and butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat until sizzling hot (see Know-how, page 100). Add the shallot and cook and stir for about 2 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the rice, season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir to coat with oil and butter. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the thyme and just enough broth to cover the rice by about 1/4 inch, stirring just once to combine.
• Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the rice is tender and all the liquid is absorbed. Remove from the heat and let sit, covered, for about 5 minutes. Serve warm.
• Often called the grandfather of long-grain rice in the Americas, Carolina Gold is a beautiful variety that was the star of the antebellum rice trade and a driving force in the creation of a distinct Southern culinary tradition. Despite these claims to fame, Carolina Gold fell by the wayside after the Civil War, along with the South's rice economy. It was half forgotten and nearly extinct by the time Richard Schulz, a Georgia surgeon and plantation owner, rehabilitated the grain in the 1980s. Thanks to his efforts, it is now once again commercially available from vendors like South Carolina's Carolina Plantation Rice and Anson Mills (see Sources, page 377).

Steps:

• Put the saffron threads into a small bowl of hot water and allow to soak.
• Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan with a low heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes, stirring.
• Add the butter, cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper, paprika and bay leaves and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly.
• Add the rice and continue to stir for three minutes.
• Add the saffron and stock. Bring to the boil then simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until all liquid has been absorbed. If necessary, add a little more stock and cook until rice is tender and all the liquid has been absorbed.
• Discard the bay leaves, season, stir through the cashews and serve.