Curious Cook

Rice: Old and new flavors; cooking; parboiled

A last installment (for the time being) of rice news.

Old and new Japanese rice As I've mentioned, Japan generally prefers their rice as fresh as possible; new-harvest rice is prized. Japanese scientists looked at the flavor changes that take place during aging, and found some pretty significant changes.

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Colorful garlic

In today's debut of my occasional column in the New York Times Wednesday food section, I write about the strange, blue-green colors that can develop when garlic and onions are handled in certain ways. The information in the column comes from several recent papers on the subject from labs in Japan and China. For readers who would like to follow up, here are a few (slightly confusing!) chemical details, and the references.