Beating the Heat with Chilled Rice Meals

Welcome back to JJNN.

Today's article is from MSN news.

There are a lot of ways to keep cool. There is always going to a pool, going to a mall to steal the air conditioning, or even eating some ice cream. Personally, I am trying to stay away from ice cream, because I find that once I eat ice cream just once I crave it every day until the end of the summer.

So that leaves me going to the mall and looking for something else to eat that will cool me down. Luckily there is a new trend in Japanese restaurants in which they are serving chilled rice meals. The Japanese version of the restaurant chain Denny's came up with a winning combination when they made a chilled rice and mackerel soup. Normally a meal is considered popular if it sells 10 times in a single restaurant in a day, but the soup (seen below) apparently sells more than double that amount.



Chilled Rice and Fish Soup

I don't want to turn this into a commercial for Denny's or anything, but there is a lot of good that comes out of that meal. For one, it cools the person that eats it down. That goes without saying, but it also only has about 460 calories (less than a medium sized plate of pasta) and has an effect on the body similar to non‐digestible oligosaccharides. In other words, the body's reaction to the chilled rice is slowed down when compared to normal rice and the secretion of insulin is also slowed down, which makes it harder for the body to produce fat. Sounds good to me.

The article ends with a recipe for a chilled rice meal so I figured I would pass it on to you. You will need 100 grams of chilled rice, 1/6 of a block of tofu, 1 slice of pan-fried pork, one piece of okra, one package of ochazuke mix and 150ml of ice water.
1) Cut the fried pork up into 5mm squares and cut up the okra into small pieces.
2) Let the tofu get a little dry before breaking it up and mixing it with 1.
3) Quickly wash the chilled rice and place in a blow. Place 2 on top of the rice and put the ochazuke mix on top of that. Add the ice water and you are finished.

It is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is ご飯(ごはん). It is pronounced gohan and it means rice.