"Have you eaten?" A love letter to rice.

Rice = Food = Life. 

Happiness is a warm bowl of rice. A beloved staple in all the warm parts of Asia, in some languages like Chinese and Japanese the word for rice, 飯, is the same as the word for food. 

Chinese greeting: Chi fan le ma? 吃飯了嗎? "Have you eaten?" = 'how are you?'

Japanese boasting: Asameshi mae! 朝飯前! "Could be done before breakfast!" = 'it's easy/a piece of cake!'

When you combine rice with pineapple, spices, and veggies and put it in a pineapple shell, as in northern Thailand, wonderful things happen...

In Japan and Taiwan, there's sticky rice. In India and Thailand, the jasmine or long grain variety. In China, it's kind of in between the two--moist, but not sticky. There's red rice, brown rice, even black rice (nutty and wonderful)...

The First Rice

We still don't know exactly when some hunter gatherer looked at a grassy wild rice plant and thought, "This could be something more!" But the earliest known rice has been found in the middle Yangtze River Valley of China, at about 14,000 years ago. (Wait a minute! That was during the Ice Age!!)

Like the woolly mammoths used to say:"吃飯了嗎?" 

Rice didn't arrive in Taiwan until about 6,000 years ago, and in Japan until about 3,000 years ago. In both cases rice was brought by immigrating farmer-fisher folk. Hunter gatherers who were making a good living off wild resources might have enjoyed a friendly bowl of rice during a visit, but might have been less interested in the hard labor involved - at least, not at first.

During Yayoi times around 2,500 years ago, farmers in southern Japan used nice slate harvesting knives. Microscopic analysis of wear patterns shows they pulled the edge along the rice head to remove the grains. 

Early rice probably looked like this red rice, bred from an ancient variety still found in monasteries of Japan! 

Rice grows OK on dry hillsides, but you can get more by planting it in wet places. First, folks just planted it at the edge of natural wetlands. But then rice paddies were invented!

Young rice in a Taiwan paddy glows emerald green.

Cool stuff you can do with rice

For first-timers, go ahead and invest in a rice cooker-it does all the thinking for you. But if you're old school, just rinse the rice of your choice and pour out the cloudy water. Hold the tip of your finger on top of the rice, and add fresh water till it reaches your second knuckle. This works for any quantity of rice.

Look out tupperware! Here come the rice cookers...

Bring to a moderate boil (don't walk off, it'll boil over), then bring down to low for about 7 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it cool. Now fluff it! If you're making sushi, be sure to use sushi rice. I warm about 1/8 cup of rice vinegar with a little sea salt and cane sugar till they dissolve. Then drizzle into the rice and gently mix in-- this adds flavor and encourages it to stick. Once it's cool, it's ready to roll!

Ahhhh sushi. If you don't have fancy fresh fish just use thinly sliced red peppers, carrots, cucumber, omelette strips, tofu, whatever. My go-to sauce is simply a bit of mayo mixed with sri racha. For sides/dipping don't forget the ginger, wasabi, and soy or tamari. For extra umph, squeeze fresh lime juice into the soy to make ponzu.

Last week, some cool friends here in Osaka invited me to a kiritanpo party! This is a popular winter soup in Akita Prefecture with a fun rice twist. Our hosts made a nice big batch of chicken soup ahead of time (any clear broth soup will do). 

They then mashed up some rice into a sticky dough. Dipping their hands in a little saltwater, they scooped a little handful of the dough and molded it around a small stick. You can use a chopstick, but a thicker one is better. Traditionally the little cattail looking rice sticks are toasted over glowing coals, but you can also fry them till browned in a skillet. 

Kiritanpo literally means 'tip of a practice spear' (the cotton padding resembles a fluffy dandelion seed). Cool, huh?  

It's party time! Regular Japanese homes are still floor-level; all furniture is about 1 ft high. That way little guys like Riku here are in the middle of the action...

After the kiritanpo were browned, they were gently pulled off the stick, chopped diagonally, placed in a bowl, piping hot soup was ladled over, and flakes of red chiles were added. 

We ate bowl after bowl! With a lot of sake!! I'm so adding this to my party recipe lineup. Thank you, rice.