The Rice Bowl: Part 1

Rice

One of those beloved starchy staples for a good majority of the humans on planet earth.  The preparation of which is a hotly contested topic that will earn you withers of scorn if you do it "the wrong way".  And trust me, everyone's got a way.

For me, eating rice was just something you did.  I am Filipino after all, despite my Midwestern Parents (who by the way, acclimated to Filipino food like they did everything else, naturally and with enthusiasm.)  It's not a meal until you have rice.  Ok, some things are not so good with rice- like pancakes...but there are scallion pancakes,which are good with rice, so I rest my case.


It's kinda hard to explain the Asian, and in my particular case, the Filipino love for rice.  I could go on and on about how rice holds together the cuisine of the Philippines - randomized as it is by centuries of Spanish, Chinese, Moro, and American influences - just to name a few.  (And that's another post - to butcher the Alton Brown tagline.) 

We have seven different words for RICE: 

We MacGyver it into a hundred dishes,
 If you are wondering if my love for kimchi just stemmed from Kdramas - note that it seems to be a Filipino predisposition

Make it a national study,

There are thousands of varieties of rice from all the world bred for all sorts of characteristics like size, length, gluten content (how sticky or "dry" it is) fragrance, and obviously - taste.   (Hence everyone's very strong opinions about what rice is best.)  In fact in the Philippines there's even an institute especially for the study of rice: http://www.philrice.gov.ph/  (because Filipinos are awesome like that.)

Make up songs and dances about it, 

Here are some adorable kids doing a traditional rice planting dance to: Magtanim ay Di Biro 

Which sounds like this (Lyrics below in the info section)

When I got into college, especially, I realized that most people in the U.S. (read: my fellow college students) didn't know anything about preparing rice outside of sweet rice pudding with raisins (whaaaaaaaaaaa?) and broccoli-rice casserole.  Suddenly I became the resident "Asian food expert" which was hilarious, as I was coming up with half of it from memory and the rest of it I was just making up as I went based on cookbooks, cooking shows, and watching people cook. 

Traditional basket for sorting rice.  You can find them WAY over-priced on EBAY

People looked at me sideways when I bossily insisted you had to WASH the rice (at least twice, but preferably three times), do you have any idea how it's harvested?  How they lay it on the side of the road to dry?  Are you SURE the company pre-washed it?  Because, really, then you have to deal with potentially moldy rice.  I hadn't even brought the shallow rice basket for flipping and sorting the rice from the stones and husks. 

 The technique looks a little like this video (although I have no idea what's going on in the background as my language skills are a bit rusty. 
 
And then the actual cooking.  At that point, our rice cooker (with it's incompatible 220 volt plug) was a distant memory, and I'd been cooking rice the old-school pinay way in a regular pot.  THE rice pot.  Which HAD made it from Quezon City to rural Indiana - and if you cooked everything JUST right you could get lovely tutong (crunchy "burnt" rice) at the bottom which is basically heavenly for breakfast tapsilog (But that's another post).  

There I was rinsing, measuring rice, befuddling roommates - and I realized that sometimes it's the simplest of things that create a framework for how you see the world.  At the risk of waxing poetic again - I always feel MORE Filipina when I'm cooking.  Even though I realize that I will forever be a person stuck between worlds - a little too Pinay for some Westerners (or just "foreign") and far to American for many of those in the homeland, I am fiercely proud to be a cultural mutt.  And the way that I often display it the most is my love of fresh mangoes, adobo (hmm - I suddenly realized what I want for supper now...) and rice.  

And since I don't want to SUV into a big cultural identity discussion at the moment (because, hello, good adobo takes TIME! and I'm still sitting on the couch) I will leave you with this humorous explanation of the Filipino love for this starchy staple: 

Hi-larious Pinoy artist and comedian Mikey Bustos made a GREAT video about our love for rice (which, maybe is more funny to me than you - but I share it with the great internet anyways!) 

In Part Two: I'll take a stab at helping the Rice novice decipher what, when, and how to cook the beloved starchy staple!