Now you see - I don't do it like that....

I put the rice in the pan of boiling water - unwashed.  I bring it to the boil and cook for about 5 minutes - then turn it off.  I then just leave it to absorb the water for another 10 minutes - then turn it into your colander and pour over it a kettle-full of boiling water.  This washes it free of the starch and you find the grains are individual rather than a big lump of stodge.  It's fresh and fluffy.  

If you like coloured rice, add a teaspoon of turmeric to the water if you don't have any saffron.  Saffron is best of all.  Nice and golden.

I'd also recommend the Thai jasmine-scented long-grain rice if you can find it.  

Don't blame you Mort, that method would take about an hour! Mind you it takes 1½ hours to cook the curry sauce which I posted earlier so there's no rush to get the rice done. Mrs Beeton's book is full of gems. It doesn't actually say that you'll die if you don't have meat, fish, cheese or eggs at every single meal but the implication is there.

There were countless Editions of Mrs. Beaton Household Management over the past 100 years, I think variations in recipes are quite common according to which Edition you have.

This is also Mrs. Beaton on how to cook rice and you will see she quotes 15-25 minutes for time taken: "Pick, wash, and soak the rice in plenty of cold water; then have ready a saucepan of boiling water, drop the rice into it, and keep it boiling quickly, with the lid uncovered, until it is tender, but not soft. Take it up, drain it, and put it on a dish before the fire to dry: do not handle it much with a spoon, but shake it about a little with two forks, that it may all be equally dried, and strew over a little salt. It is now ready to serve, and may be heaped lightly on a dish by itself, or be laid round the dish as a border, with a curry or fricassee in the centre."
Time.—15 to 25 minutes, according to the quality of the rice.
Average cost, 3d.

`strewth! Be careful, mate!

Milly, I do love olives of all varieties, thank you for the recipe 

Going back to Mrs. Beeton, she started writing the book at the age of 21 as a monthly supplement to a Ladies Magazine, and just before her 29th birthday she died.  Her Publishers, knowing they were onto a good thing with with the increasingly large sales didn't publicise the fact that she had died.  Anonymous journalists were brought in to update and revise the book over the years so unless you have a First Edition I guess you cannot know which are her authentic recipes.

Interestingly: Anyone eating the Mrs Beeton way would get twice as much vitamin B1 and much more vitamin B6 than today’s guidelines advise. They would be getting plenty of iron, too, although the fact that there was so little vitamin C in the Beeton diet (boiling carrots for 2¼ hours took care of that) might well have hindered its uptake. Meanwhile zinc — crucial for immunity and fertility — was ample and vitamin D levels were far higher than today’s suggested dose

Here it is, although the picture-quality of the old footage is pretty poor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaU1y-dS-Bg

Marty, I did not see the programme, but she was married at a very young age to a, I think much older publisher, her first child was born 9 months after the marriage, a sickly child who lived 3 months;  there followed a series of miscarriages    and still births and she died of child-birth fever after her fourth.  Her mother, evidently having 21 surviving children, thought she was a weakling    and whisked away the surviving children and deposited them with a cousin and had nothing more to do with them.  I am just only now investigating this.  Quite what her husband did, I do not know, except cash in on her name and make a fortune.  Very sad and short life, seven years of marriage, dead children, it is said she turned to writing the Complete Cookery to take her mind off her sorrow.