Rice cuisine around the world has several constants, which may have appeared due to the nature of the grain itself. Possibly they appeared due to movements of peoples and the migration of recipes, but whatever happened, travellers are sure to find familiar fare if they stay with the world’s most eaten seed.

The most obvious constant of rice is the plain boiled or steamed variety, usually served as a supplement to something else. No great skills are required in the preparation and the finished food will usually store for a day or two, even in the hottest and most humid climates. For that reason it has become a staple of many diets.

A primary variant of this is to stir fry any remaining, cold, cooked rice with other vegetables, sometimes with meats or herbs added, and again this style is universal. In Thailand, it is called “khao phad” (pronounced cow pat) and often appears as a start-of-day or end-of-day dish to use up the leftovers.

Such a name for this dish is unfortunate, for as one of my past girlfriends demonstrated, any deficiency in skills needed to prepare khao phad, does indeed result in a cowpat appearance upon your plate. A dark, unattractively coloured, mound of steaming something or other does nothing to increase the diner’s appetite.

After several weeks of trying to adjust to such delicacies for breakfast, I resorted to buying a box of Kellogg’s finest and demonstrated how to serve it by having a bowl for supper. The following morning, coffee arrived accompanied by a suitably chilled bowl of cornflakes … with a dollop of cowpat on top.

The girlfriend was quickly “traded in” for a more kitchen savvy version.