I like it when the college cafeteria give us soups. The plates of rice or noodles are always so big. Soup is a good size!
This one looks quite different to the others though. Those were always variations on broth. This one is filled with barley and tiny white things that are… rice?
Trying some. Let’s face it, Mongolian cooking doesn’t really ‘do’ species or flavouring. It tastes like whatever it is and so when something is carb-based, it just tastes like plain carb. So it’s a savoury stew with chunks of potato and the odd scrap of lamb or carrot.
But what are these white things? They taste kind of… like potato? But they can’t be potato, they’re each only a few millimeters long with a very regular shape… which is triangular…
I ask one of the students sitting with us what it is. She and the other girls look at their bowls and discuss in Mongolian how to translate.
“It’s rice,” she says at the end of the ten-second conference.
“But it’s triangular…”
“Yes!” She seems pleased that I apparently understand. “Triangle-shaped rice!”
“And the brown bits are barley?”
“Yes.”
“And the white bits are rice?”
“Yes.”
Okay… I’m still a little dubious but I have no other ideas about what I’m eating… it’s triangular rice that tastes vaguely of potato.
Rating:
Specifics: Only the cooks know, and they don’t speak English
Triangular Rice
I like it when the college cafeteria give us soups. The plates of rice or noodles are always so big. Soup is a good size!
This one looks quite different to the others though. Those were always variations on broth. This one is filled with barley and tiny white things that are… rice?
Trying some. Let’s face it, Mongolian cooking doesn’t really ‘do’ species or flavouring. It tastes like whatever it is and so when something is carb-based, it just tastes like plain carb. So it’s a savoury stew with chunks of potato and the odd scrap of lamb or carrot.
But what are these white things? They taste kind of… like potato? But they can’t be potato, they’re each only a few millimeters long with a very regular shape… which is triangular…
I ask one of the students sitting with us what it is. She and the other girls look at their bowls and discuss in Mongolian how to translate.
“It’s rice,” she says at the end of the ten-second conference.
“But it’s triangular…”
“Yes!” She seems pleased that I apparently understand. “Triangle-shaped rice!”
“And the brown bits are barley?”
“Yes.”
“And the white bits are rice?”
“Yes.”
Okay… I’m still a little dubious but I have no other ideas about what I’m eating… it’s triangular rice that tastes vaguely of potato.
Rating:
Specifics: Only the cooks know, and they don’t speak English