Staple carbohydrates

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

It seems to me that there are three of these, potatoes, rice and cereals, particularly wheat and maize. And that's the order in which I like them, possibly because of the way I was brought up.

On the potato front, I love them mashed, fried or roasted. Mashed potatoes seem to go with everything and, in my experience, American garlic mash is one of the very best served in their restaurants. Fried? Well the whole world loves chips/French fries and I am no exception. I used to have one of those electric deep fat friers but it stank the place out and was an absolute bugger to clean so now I just do oven chips. Roast? Well, the secret here is to get them crisp; soggy roast potatoes like soggy chips are awful.

Rice is fine on its own or as part of a dish. As I recall, the Chinese word for rice is the same as their word for food and you can understand that. I know that wild rice is supposed to be good for me but I am really happy with plain boiled Basmati, cold or hot. I love to take a handful of cold rice and roll it into a ball and eat it. Better still make a dip of light soy sauce with chopped garlic and chopped chili pepper. Leave it to stand for 30 minutes and infuse and then dip the rice in it.

Cereals, I am in two minds about. Certainly, I am not into breakfast cereals. Barley is best used to make beer: oats is best ignored. Wheat is fine for bread and I love fresh bread. Not nearly so keen on pasta and I really cannot understand what all the fuss is about there. Always seems rather slimy to me and usually a good sauce is required to give it any flavour at all.

The only maize product that I have eaten is ugali, the staple starch product of millions of Africans. It is an utterly tasteless stodge. Only had it once, on my African trip, when I chose not to go to a restarant in Vic Falls and had a meal with our truck driver who also made an onion omelette. The latter was nice but I could live my life without ugali.