IT HAS been almost eight months since I wrote about buying a new rice cooker and discovering the pleasure of eating rice again.
Here’s the link for my March 3 article if you should wish to refresh your memory: http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2009/3/3/rice-never-tasted-this-good
When the piece first came out, scores of people from all over wrote to me for details of the cooker that I bought.
But even though the article has long since sunk out of sight from the Straits Times blog page, I still get enquiries every few weeks or so.
Thanks to Google, a search for the "perfect rice cooker" or some such assortment of key words invariably throws up my old blog piece, hence the enquiries.
My very last enquirer even came back to me for more information after he took my advice and went shopping for a cooker. He was such a polite e-mail writer, it was a pleasure corresponding with him.
Coincidentally, the subject of rice cookers came up last week when I was having lunch with a contact and her colleagues.
My contact reminded me that there is a function on most induction heating rice cookers called "hayadaki" in Japanese, or "Quick Cook" in English.
While the regular cooking cycle takes close to 50 minutes on my cooker to complete, "hayadaki" takes just 20-30 minutes. One maker even produces cookers whose "hayadaki" takes just 15 minutes.
The "hayadaki" function seems to me to be intended for people who want to cook their rice in a hurry.
The accepted wisdom here is that "hayadaki" tends to produce rice grains that are slightly too firm in the centre – much like spaghetti cooked al dente – which is not quite the way most Japanese like their rice.
My contact, who is married, said she uses "hayadaki" to cook rice for dinner each evening and it produces excellent rice.
She thinks that it may be because she soaks the rice in the pot before leaving for work every morning.
(As I found out afterwards, the manual for my cooker does advise, in the fine print, to soak rice beforehand when using "hayadaki". But then, how many people read manuals thoroughly?)
"Why don't you set the timer so that the rice will be ready by the time you get home?" I asked, curious.
"The problem," she replied, "is that I don't know exactly what time I or my husband will be home, and we prefer to eat freshly-cooked rice."
So no matter what time she gets home, all she needs to do is press "hayadaki" and rustle up some dishes while waiting for the rice to cook.
She thought her use of "hayadaki" this way was common. But her colleagues were surprised when they heard about it.
To be honest, I was rather sceptical.
So the next day, I tried it myself. I left uncooked rice to soak for several hours in the pot before pushing the "hayadaki" button.
Less than half an hour later, we were eating nicely-formed grains of rice with no unduly firm centres. In fact, the rice tasted almost as good as what we would expect to find at a proper restaurant.
It also felt good to know that this soaking plus "hayadaki" method saved on energy.
Despite all the latest improvements in rice-cooker technology in Japan, the Japanese are still trying to come up with even better cookers.
But at many of the finer Japanese restaurants here, rice is still cooked using an earthenware pot and not a rice cooker.
Much care and experience goes into washing the uncooked grains. Good tasting water is used for the actual cooking. The wood fire is carefully tended to and the heat is lowered at just the right time to make sure the grains puff up properly.
Some restaurants may even have someone whose only job is to cook rice.
When a bowl of such lovingly-prepared rice appears at the table, one is moved to compliment the chef in appropriately hushed tones and then to ask which part of Japan the rice comes from.
And it is on such occasions that one understands anew why rice is served as the last course of a traditional meal in Japan, complimented only by simple pickles and a bowl of miso soup.
After one's taste buds have been assaulted by a multitude of flavours during the course of a meal, a simple bowl of well executed rice somehow makes for a rather satisfying ending.