Rice

From the Greek oryza, a grain that has been cultivated for at least 7,000 years. Alexander the Great came across rice during his travels through Mesopotamia and carried samples of rice back to the Mediterranean Basin, where it was well received by the Greeks and Romans. In the 5th century BC, Sophocles made mention of rice in his tragedies. Rice did not become popular in Italian cooking until the 16th century, when it began to be cultivated on a large scale in the Po Valley. Traditionally, rice has played a much greater part in the cooking of northern Italy than in the south. Catherine de' Medici brought rice with her to France, where it was cultivated in the Rhône Valley.

The cultural role of rice is best expressed idiomatically. In China, losing or quitting a job is described as "breaking the rice bowl", in reference to the effect it's likely to have on one's food supply, and getting a new job is described as "buying heavy rice." A typical modern Chinese greeting is: "Have you had your rice today?" The Japanese word for "cooked rice" is the same as the word for "meal." The importance of rice is also displayed in industry: honda means "main rice field", and toyota means "bountiful rice field." When the Thai call their family and friends to a meal, they say, "Let's eat rice." In India, it's said that grains of rice should be like two brothers: close but not stuck together.

Clues to a society's ethos lie in how its people name their chief staple. In Cantonese, rice is called mai, meaning "agriculture", while in Mandarin, it's called me, meaning "culture." In Japan, it's called gohan, meaning "a full meal", in Sanskrit, vrihih, meaning "life-giving seed." The Thai word for rice translates as "food with wings to fly." In Korea, it's translated either as "God's tears" or "God's fears." The Greeks call it oryza sativa, oriza meaning "of Oriental origin" and sativa meaning "sown."

There are three styles of rice. Long-grain rice is the most widely consumed, almost five times longer than its width, light and fluffy, remaining separate when cooked, grown mostly in the U.S., Thailand, Surinam, Indonesia, Vietnam and India. Medium-grain rice is two to three times longer than its width, tender and moist, often clinging together when cooked, grown mostly in China, Egypt and Italy. Short- or round-grain rice is short, plump and almost round, and when cooked, the grains are soft and cling together, releasing almost 15 percent starch into the cooking water; it is cultivated in Japan, California, Egypt, Spain, Italy and Portugal and is also known as "Japonica."

Much of Asia's cultivation of rice is still carried out by hand, following traditional techniques. The land is prepared by plowing, fertilizing and then smoothing the field flat. Seedlings are begun in beds and transplanted into a flooded field, with irrigation controlled by a system of canals and dikes. Flooding controls the growth of weeds that inhibit the seedlings' growth. The fields are drained before the harvest. Paddy rice is prolific. Often one growing season can yield two harvests.

The milling of rice entails removing the husk, leaving what we know as brown rice, the intact kernel still covered in layers of bran. Polishing is the next step: the rice travels through a wire-brush machine to remove the aleurone layer and its inherent fat content, which would otherwise leave rice with a short shelf life. Sugar is sometimes added to brighten its sheen. See also wehani rice, wild rice.

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