The I Hate to Cook Book (20 page)

4 servings

4 slices bacon, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

½ green pepper, chopped

1 small jar pimento-stuffed olives, sliced

8 ounces macaroni, cooked

Fry the bacon bits till they’re crisp, then add the onion and green pepper, and cook over low heat until they’re tender. Add the olive slices, and mix the whole works with the hot cooked macaroni. Taste it, then salt it. You may serve it with parsley and tomato salad on the side.

R
ICE
presents no real problems, except how to afford the wild kind. But when you get tired of looking at it plain, you can make

     ROSY RICE     

Substitute tomato juice or V-8 juice for half the water you would ordinarily use in the cooking. Before serving, add a little butter and a dash of garlic salt.

Incidentally, if your rice usually turns out soggy, and if this bothers you, it is handy to know the following system for cooking rice so it’s dry, with each grain separate. This system has two disadvantages. You can’t use just any saucepan; it must be a thick-bottomed one, heavy iron or enameled iron. You will have to soak the pan, too, before you wash it afterward. But in this world we can’t have everything.

     DRY RICE     

Use one and a half cups of water to one cup of rice, and bring it to a fast boil in that thick-bottomed pan. Boil it with the lid off for five minutes. Then turn the heat to medium and cook until the water has apparently boiled away. Now turn the burner to its lowest possible heat or flame, cover the pan, and cook it for twenty minutes
without stirring.

That’s the big thing. Don’t stir. You can muss it around a bit on the surface with a spoon, if you care to, but you must not disturb the crust that’s on the bottom. This apparently does something magical, to make the rice dry and the pan hard to wash.

Should you ever use this method, allow a little more rice than you normally would, because it doesn’t expand quite so much.

     CHEESE RICE     

6 servings

3 cups hot cooked rice

cup grated Parmesan

3 tablespoons melted butter

dash of pepper

Just toss these things together.

     RAISIN RICE     

6–8 servings

(Easy, and good with anything curried.)

1
cups uncooked rice

1 teaspoon salt

¼ cup onion, thinly sliced

¼ cup slivered almonds

2 tablespoons butter

¼ cup seedless raisins

Cook the rice. While it cooks, sauté the onions and almonds in the butter till they’re a gentle brown. (You buy the almonds already toasted and slivered, of course, in cans at practically any grocer’s. If they’re the already-toasted kind, don’t recook them—add them later.) Then add the raisins, heat thoroughly, and when the rice is done cooking, mix everything together. Now taste it—it may need a little more salt.

And finally we come, with a mild flourish of trumpets, to

     MRS. VANDERBILT’S COOK’S WILD RICE