Back in this message, I wrote about my mother's cooking and gave you one or two of her best recipes. I mentioned in there that she made a wonderful Meat and Rice dish. She didn't make it often because it took a long time to prepare…and if she was going to devote that much time to dinner, we all preferred that she spend it making one of her Lamb Hot Pots.
Recently, I tried a heat-and-serve entree I found in a local market's meat section. It's Hormel's Beef Roast au jus, which heats in the microwave in four minutes, then you have to let it sit for one additional minute before serving. During that minute, I can microwave one of the ready-to-serve Minute Rice cups. I empty the rice cup into a bowl, put about half the roast beef and juice on it and — voila! — I have a reasonable approximation of my mother's Meat and Rice dish. No, it's not every bit as good but if she was still around and cooking, and she felt like spending the hour-and-a-half to whip up the Meat and Rice, I think I would have told her to save 85 minutes and just do the pre-fab microwave version.
I'm tempted to romanticize my mother's cooking and say that her loving touch created a culinary delight that no corporate microwave creation could possibly equal…but the truth is that this comes close. On the other hand, no one — and I've tried them in all the great delicatessens of L.A. and New York — can come close to her potato latkes.