Thursday, February 7, 2013

Mango & Pineapple Sticky Rice/Searching for Sugar Man

This week's post comes to you from my dear sister, Caitlin. Caitlin lives in Chicago. She's awesome and a better writer/photographer than me so don't expect the rest of the posts to be this great from here on out. Enjoy!

Soon I will start Academy Award Madness. I have two movies/recipes up in the queue.

Sisters! In Chicago!


Welcome to my guest post!

I'm Caitlin (Kim's sister), and I gotta say, I might not be on Kim's cooking or movie-reviewing level. But with an optimistic spirit and an undeniable sweet tooth I bring you my take on mango sticky rice as well as the Oscar-nommed documentary "Searching for Sugar Man" about a folk musician who made it big in South Africa. A warm dessert in juxtaposition with the cold streets here in Chicago... kind of like Rodriguez's snowy apartment in Detroit in juxtaposition with his fan base's lush & subtropical home of South Africa!

The recipe is inspired by my roommate last year, who is from Asia and loves Thai food. She used to dig on this sticky rice from Thai Palace, a deliciously evil Thai food place in Holland, MI. I wanted to try and recreate it with a couple of things I already had in my apartment.

I also have an insatiable sweet tooth (and my mother will let you know it), so this hit the spot! I used white jasmine rice, but feel free to use actual sticky rice. I'm just going to say that you can't beat coming home to a kitchen that smells like jasmine rice. It's the closest I'm going to get to a dog's affectionate greeting until I live in an apartment larger than your average office cubicle.

Recipe: Mango & Pineapple Sticky Rice


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups jasmine rice
1 can light coconut milk
1 cup water
1/3 cup honey
1 mango
1 cup pineapple
cinnamon to taste

Pour the coconut milk and water in a medium saucepan. Add the rice & bring it all to a boil - then, turn down the heat and let the rice sit covered for about 20 minutes.

While that's happening, it's time to chop up that mango. I chopped mine like an avocado: vertically slice around the entire circumference of the mango, then pull it apart. The pit is a little more difficult than an avocado's, but with a little persuasion, it should come loose. Then, make a grid of slices on each half and pull them out with a spoon. Chop the pineapple into small cubes.

After the mango battle, your rice should be just about done. Be sure not to let it lose too much liquid while cooking or it will form a horrible brown layer on the bottom of your pan - especially when you're using milk. I tasted the rice here (and burned my tongue - I am so bad!), but I'm glad I did because it was much sweeter than I anticipated due to the coconut milk. You should wait about 10 minutes for it to cool. With your taste buds in mind, add honey as necessary (though I recommend 1/3 of a cup). Fluff the honey around with a fork.

Now you can mix in your fruits and spoon the rice into your favorite mug. Add cinnamon for a CrAzY bit of flavor. Eat it warm or cold! But warm is better.


My ingredients, featuring honey.

Add the coconut milk and water to a saucepan.

Add the rice next. You should absolutely use a bigger saucepan than the one pictured.
Get started on the mango while the rice is cooking. Cut it in half, then pull apart around the pit.
Try to cut the halves in a grid, then pull the fruit out with a spoon.
The rice is probably ready by now, so squeeze in honey (to taste!) and fluff with a fork.
Mix in your mango - I also mixed in cubed pineapple! (You could add all kinds of fruit, but I liked the tangy bite and the tropical theme of pineapple.)
Throw it in a mug and add a bit of cinnamon. Serve warm or cold! Please note the rollerskating panda bears.


Review: Searching for Sugar Man

I'm a journalist, so one of my favorite parts about movies is the storytelling. That's why documentaries originally got me into filmmaking as a whole: Filmmakers are typically expert storytellers. It's long-form journalism with the most delectable presentation!

"Searching for Sugar Man" is a very sentimental movie with beautiful shots and the greatest motifs I've seen in a documentary in a long time (check out those colors!). There is an emotive story behind it, to boot. You can't help but fall in love with Rodriguez; his music has the professional quality of Nick Drake and Bob Dylan and reaches even deeper levels of sadness and romance, but he never sees commercial success. Storybook setup right there, folks.



From there, it wasn't difficult for the filmmakers to actually tell the story... all they needed to do was spill out their notebooks. And that they did! There's a pretty great tension building throughout the film, even a confrontational scene with a record company man who gets caught fudging numbers. And I have to admit my eyes were a bit watery by the end.

One of my favorite parts was when a journalist from South Africa spots a lyric about Dearborn and dramatically looks it up in an atlas to prove to the audience that Dearborn is a real city, a part of Detroit, even! Dearborn being my hometown and all, I had to laugh. But I couldn't point you to the nearest Starbucks in South Africa (heh heh I've got jokes), so I'll let it slide.

favorite quote: "People in Detroit need to hear something good."
favorite song: "Street Boy"

Now that looks a bit more like a Midwest winter.
(ps, Rodriguez played in Ann Arbor two weeks ago and will be appearing at the Somerville Theater in April!)






1 comment:

  1. Awsome, can you make this for me Saturday? Love mom

    ReplyDelete