Try some very nice rice

If you believe rice is best served nice and sticky, in two scoops to the side of your teri-beef, perhaps a little education is in order.

Stop by the Japanese Cultural Center from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday for a tasting of premier-grade rice from Minami Uonuma in Niigata, Japan.

G-Call Corp., a Japanese telecommunications provider, has imported a ton of the rice and says this is the first time the deluxe product is to be distributed outside Japan.

The rice will be served in musubi. If you're impressed, for a donation of at least $1, take home a 2.2-pound package. Proceeds will be donated to the Department of Education, for distribution to a local public school.

The cultural center is at 2454 S. Beretania St. Call 945-7633.

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NPR cooking diva offers turkey triage

If you're in need of emergency cooking advice tomorrow, or if you just want to be amused, National Public Radio will present "Turkey Confidential 2006" with Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of "The Splendid Table," doing turkey triage.

Kasper will take calls from around the nation during the two-hour special. Her guests will include Seattle chef Tom Douglas and Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated Magazine and the PBS show "America's Test Kitchen."

Past shows have included queries such as one from a trucker cooking his Thanksgiving dinner on the manifold.

The show will air locally on Hawaii Public Radio, from noon to 2 p.m. on KIPO 89.3 FM. It'll be a tape-delay, so to call in a question you'll have to get up early and call between 6 and 8 a.m. To listen live, the program will be simulcast online at www.splendidtable.org at 6 a.m.

"The Splendid Table" airs at 9 a.m. Saturdays on KIPO, and Kasper's newspaper column is carried in the Star-Bulletin on Sundays.