The Pot and How to Use It

The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker

Roger Ebert

• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780740791420
• eBook ISBN: 9781449406011
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Culinary Arts

A guide to the handy kitchen appliance, plus a range of recipes, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning movie critic.
In  The Pot and How to Use It, Roger Ebert—Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic, admitted "competent cook," and long-time electric rice cooker enthusiast—gives readers a charming, practical guide to this handy and often-overlooked kitchen appliance.
While  The Pot and How to Use It contains numerous and surprisingly varied recipes for electric rice cookers, it is much more than a cookbook. Originating from a blog entry on Roger's popular Web site, the book also includes readers' comments and recipes alongside Roger's own discerning insights and observations on why and how we cook.
With an introduction by vegetarian cookbook author Anna Thomas and expert assistance from recipe consultant and nutritionist Yvonne Nienstadt,  The Pot and How to Use It is perfect for fans of Roger's superb writing, as well as anyone looking to incorporate the convenience and versatility of electric rice cookers into his or her kitchen repertoire.

1

I AM A COMPETENT COOK

I am a competent cook. Those at my table usually enjoy what I serve them. I am not, however, an educated or gourmet cook, and my methods are rough and ready. I’ve tried a few fancy recipes, but more for my own entertainment. There was a period in the early 1970s when I had broken up with a woman I did a lot of cooking with, and in loneliness I filled the long evenings by plundering cookbooks for recipes. Steamed trout. Chicken masala in a pastry-sealed pot. For weeks I recycled a Chinese red cooking liquid, constantly renewed, inflamed by stories of such liquids preserving a line of descent for a thousand years. This was during a period when I was doing a lot of drinking. In my experience, a woman who calls herself a gourmet cook may be a gourmet cook, but a man who calls himself a gourmet cook, unless he does it for a living, may be an alcoholic. There is nothing quite like sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for a pot to boil, sipping some wine, and paging ambitiously through The New York Times Cookbook. I still have the original Craig Claiborne version, not because the newer ones are not better, but because this one is stained and greasy and dog-eared, and has clippings stuffed into it. The splashes on the page for Country Captain are memorials to several confused but joyous evenings. On weekends I would mix myself a gin martini and keep it in the freezing compartment between sips. When I had broken the crust on the chicken masala and a thick cloud of curry mist escaped into the room, I would play “Also Sprach Zarathustra” on the 2001 sound track album at top volume on my hi-fi set. I recommend this music to accompany the presentation to the table of all main dishes, except oatmeal.

It was at that time I acquired Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking, by Kenneth H. C. Lo. Now there’s a book with stains on almost every page. I got a cheap wok and a wooden spatula and took up stir-frying. I also used the steam tray to steam foods. This method quickly replaced most of my other methods, and although I stopped drinking in 1979, I never for a second stopped stir-frying. If I were for some reason alone at home, I rarely went to a restaurant by myself. After seeing The Lonely Guy with Steve Martin, that became too painful. It was not a great movie, but there was a shot in it showing a Lonely Guy sitting all by himself at a restaurant table that has haunted me. Why do you think so many solitary diners are so deeply involved in books? Because they are big readers?

I like to read while eating alone, because there is something in my mind that abhors a vacuum, and I cannot sit there and bless the universe for the beauty of the sprout. I won’t watch TV during meals because my mother wouldn’t let me. The radio is no good because I can’t just sit there listening. I will read anything, but I prefer to be reading a long novel, for example, by Dickens or Trollope. Some guy could start reading some short novel and the damn thing could run out on him. How well I remember reading my first Stendhal later in life and discovering that he is funny, which no one ever told me.

All of which has nothing to do with the purpose of this little book. It is simply to establish that I enjoy cooking. I still do, even though I stopped drinking in 1979 and, for that matter, stopped eating in 2006. I cook for others, partly to make myself useful and mostly because I can have dinner on the table while most people are still spinning their wheels. As I have grown older, I have grown simpler and more a creature of habit. My wife, Chaz, tells me that everything I cook tastes the same and even looks about the same. This is not unfair. I like green, red, and yellow peppers, green vegetables, onions, corn, carrots, and tomatoes, combined with other elements and various creatures from the land, the sea, and the sky. Often I like to season them with hot dried or fresh peppers or various bottled Indian or Caribbean sauces or Worcestershire. I am of the school that says a little Splenda never killed anybody.

So you see what you’re dealing with here. Every suggestion in this book comes with the same injunction: This is just an idea. Change anything or everything in the recipe, and cook it your way. That is the way I use all cookbooks, and that is the way you should use mine. When I got my first Mac in the late 1980s, my guru, Don Crabb, told me: “They make every software program follow the same basic commands. If you know the commands, you know how to do everything.” It is the same with a wok. And for the noble Pot.

2

YOUR OMBUDSWOMEN

I have enlisted in this enterprise two innocent bystanders. They do not endorse this book. They have been recruited simply to protect you. When I say they are friends of mine, the fact that they have agreed to this is proof. One is Anna Thomas, the celebrated author of the international best-sellers The Vegetarian Epicure; The Vegetarian Epicure: Book Two; The New Vegetarian Epicure; and Love Soup. The other is Yvonne Nienstadt, author of Cal-a-Vie’s Gourmet Spa Cookery: Recipes for Health and Wellness and nutrition director of Rancho La Puerta Fitness Resort and Spa in Tecate, Mexico.

I met Anna Thomas in 1976, when she and her then-husband, Gregory Nava, brought their film The Confessions of Amans to the Chicago International Film Festival. It was the story of a medieval Spanish monk who walked to the Middle East and learned the principles of mathematics and a great deal about life. I considered it brilliant. They shared an Academy Award nomination for their screenplay for the great El Norte (1983), which Anna produced and Gregory directed. They collaborated again on A Time of Destiny (1988) and Mi Familia (1995), and they wrote Frida (2002).

Although it is against my principles to become personal friends with filmmakers, I liked them so quickly and sincerely that I found that rule impossible to enforce. You would, too. I spent many happy evenings in their Los Angeles home (where the Independent Feature Project was founded in the living room) and later in their hilltop Running Ridge Ranch in Ojai, where in her kitchen I had many meals, including her mushroom soup made with wild mushrooms collected by Gregory, once the head of the local mushroom fanciers’ society.

Her first cookbook was one of the most influential cookbooks in the history of modern vegetarian cuisine. She had been cooking for friends in film school at UCLA, and noticed she was eating less and less meat, and finally none. She devised her recipes from fresh seasonal ingredients, testing things and making them up. That should be your inspiration. She sent her manuscript to Alfred A. Knopf, the august New York publishers of such giants as James Beard and Julia Child, and they bought it instantly. “They were a little amazed to discover it had been written by a kid,” she told me. We had dinner once at Charlie Trotter’s, the finest restaurant in Chicago. She saw kohlrabi broth on the menu and mused, “Just the other day, my son Teddy asked me, ‘Mom, how about some of that kohlrabi broth!’”

Charlie invited us back to his kitchen and proudly presented his copies of her first two cookbooks, which were battered, dog-eared, and splashed with things. “I own thousands of cookbooks,” Trotter told her. “These are the only two I can say I have cooked every single recipe from.” In my opinion, you could prepare many of them in a rice cooker. Of course, in my opinion, you can prepare almost anything in a rice cooker, including a recipe I am working on now, So-Called Pot Roast.

In asking Anna to write her introduction, I suggested she say something like: “Roger, Roger, Roger. You know I love you, and a rice pot is fine, but for recipes, your poor readers would be better off reading another cookbook—mine, for example.”

Every time I see Yvonne Nienstadt, I tell her she is the most brilliant woman I have ever met. I tell her this even in the presence of Chaz, who smiles benignly. She knows how I am. There is nothing she doesn’t know about nutrition, and she is not one of these twig-eating ascetics who walk around looking worried all day. She has a big, hearty laugh, and she loves food, and she merely hopes you don’t kill yourself with what you’re eating, which is hard to argue with. After surgery deprived me of the ability to eat in the manner to which I had become accustomed, I had to switch to a liquid diet that came in cans. I know someone who has lived on the canned stuff for thirty years. We nevertheless hurried back to Rancho as soon as we could, because although their food is terrific, it is also the most peaceful, spacious, beautiful, and enriching place I have ever been, and not the most expensive.

As is my habit, I always turn up for Yvonne’s afternoon lecture on diet and nutrition. It is not one of those horrible lectures at other spas in which clichés are recycled out of half-remembered Weight Watchers classes. Yvonne stays on top of the latest research, keeps an open mind, thinks vegetarian eating is good for you but doesn’t insist on it, brings you to your senses about salt and fat, and knows all about vitamins and minerals, by which she doesn’t mean bring home lots of bottles from the health store. She speaks fluently and clearly, with every fact at her command, and answers your questions. She doesn’t get all wound up. In fact, once I walked into a meditation workshop and who was sitting cross-legged on the rug but Yvonne. Even then she doesn’t say you’ll find nirvana. She only says you might be able to dial down and clear your mind a little.

Yvonne’s lectures always put me right to sleep. That is because I always get up in time for the Rolling Hills Hike or the Garden Breakfast Hike, and when she speaks after lunch, I get … uh … my eyelids … uh…. Yvonne knows this weakness and is fond of me despite it. “After all these times, at one time or another, you have been wide awake during every portion of my remarks,” she assured me. “I know you’re not dozing because you’re not interested.”

When I broke the news to her that my eating days were over, she looked interested, not horrified. A few days after returning home, I received an e-mail from her titled “Dead Food!” She wrote: “Now eating out of a can has kept you alive, but eating fresh and vital foods will help you to heal. Besides, you are a special person and need premium fuel! Freshly made vegetable juices mixed with the canned formula would be an improvement….” Then she sent me some info about homemade G-tube formulas, but I won’t go into that because I am not your doctor.

Rancho has its own organic farm, and in some seasons 80 percent of what you eat is grown right there. This is no sacrifice, because I’m not kidding when I say it’s delicious. Yvonne supervises the nutrition and works with the chef on his recipes. In deciding to write The Pot, I asked her if she would look it over and point out anything that struck her as being unhealthy, unwise, or lethal. This she has agreed to do as a life-saving measure. She thinks a rice cooker is more useful, but does not endorse any of the recipes, and possibly would refuse to eat some of them—except with her revisions and substitutions, which is how you should regard them, too. This is not an instruction book. It is an evocation of the ancient spirit of the Pot.

3

YOUR BOOK

This is a little book for people who would like to be able to prepare meals simply and quickly in a very limited amount of space—not even necessarily in a kitchen. I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room. You, solitary writer, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. You, with a corner of your desk or table free. You, parents on tight schedules with kids. You, who are beginning to believe you should pay more attention to breakfast. You, night watchman. You, obsessed computer programmer or weary Web-worker. You, lovers who like to cook together but don’t want to put anything in the oven. You, in the witness protection program. You, nutritional wingnut. You, in a wheelchair. And you, serving in uniform. You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food. You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog’s documentary about life at the South Pole. You, early riser skipping breakfast. You, teenager home alone. You, rabbi, pastor, priest, monk, nun, waitress, community organizer, nurse, starving actor, taxi driver, long-haul driver. Yes, even you.

4

GET THE POT

First, get the Pot. You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook and Warm. Sometimes Warm is named Hold. Not expensive. Now you’re all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, including an area to do a little slicing and dicing. No, I am not putting you on the Rice Diet. Eat what you like. You can get fat with a rice cooker, or you can get thin. Your choice. Depends on what you put in the Pot.

It is a squat cooking utensil that some find unlovely. When I regard one, I remember many happy meals it has given me. “Form follows function,” as Louis Sullivan instructs us, and the Pot is a beautiful expression of that idea. It is as pure and uncomplicated as possible—a pot with a lid, a handle, and one control that clicks between Warm and Hold.

How does this Pot work? We will begin with a conundrum. You put Minute Rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. Minutes later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. The rice waits inside, cooked perfectly. Tomorrow night, you put in whole grain organic rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. Forty-five minutes or an hour later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. Again, the rice is perfectly cooked.

How does the Pot know which kind of rice you put into it? It has no dials or settings. As far as you can tell, there is only an electric heating element beneath. It doesn’t look to you like there’s room for anything else to hide. How does the Pot know how long to cook the rice? It is an ancient mystery of the Orient. Don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to. The point here is to save you some time and money. If you want gourmet cooking, you aren’t going to learn about it here. The Pot knows. The eternal dilemma: Which rice? Minute Rice cooks fine in the Pot, if you will but follow the exact instructions on the box. Later, I will instruct you not to read instructions. That’s fur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Yvonne Nienstadt
• Introduction by Anna Thomas
• 1: I am a Competent Cook
• 2: Your Ombudswomen
• 3: Your Book
• 4: Get the Pot
• 5: To Repeat, Get the Pot
• 6: Breakfast for Your Lifetime
• 7: Your Soups
• 8: Your Secret Soup Weapon
• 9: Your Sodium Level
• 10: Your Proteins
• 11: Your Herbs and Spices
• 12: Your Sauces
• 13: Your Comments
• 14: Nonvegetarian Recipes
• 15: Vegetarian Recipes
• Metric Conversions and Equivalents