Seven spices later

Picked up spices from the Arabic grocery store facing the Faubourg. It was a mix dubbed "7 spices / Arabic mix" from behind the front counter - $1.50 for a pouch, and I picked up another one they use for making shawarma... Probably cinnamon, carmamom, nutmeg mixed with some other things.

It was meant for making kafta (ground meat with onions, fresh parsley and the "7 spices"), but I instead used the shawarma mix to season the lamb chops. Also prepared half of the merguez sausages I bought - one and a half left for lunch tomorrow.

The seven spices went in the rice, as the aroma was clearly the same from the rice served at Lebanese fast food chains (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc). I cooked some round rice (the calrose kind that people use for sushi), as it reminded me of what we were served in Egypt (I came across an article where they say that the "Japonica" variety made up 95% of the rice production in that country) - which I now recall was probably in fact barley, or some sort of cereal with parts of the shell remaining. I added the seven spices mix, finely cut onions, a slab of butter and, the secret ingredient, a handful of sultana raisins (and also a very bad-quality saffron that didn't color the rice by a bit, despite adding way more than a pinch of it).

I should've added some salt - but making savory rice in our household is already a no-no (unless it's itself a full meal - as for beef rice, Chinese lap mei fan, or risotto). Go figure. No food pr0n, I was too preoccupied with eating.

(So, says my father, it's a Chinese thing -of course-, b/c for each meal you eat every day, you have to have plain rice. As a continuity thing - symbolism, you know? ... Other Chinese people for whom savory rice is a taboo?)