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In January 2020, earlier than the world shut down, I took a prepare, a ferry, and a bus to the Staten Island Museum to go to a rice tasting. Rice won’t sound like one thing you’ll wish to take three modes of public transportation to attempt, however this tasting was led by Chef BJ Dennis, a Charleston, South Carolina, native and Gullah Geechee culinary professional. Dennis has devoted years to tracing the lineage of strains of rice that enslaved folks dropped at the US.
Enslaved West Africans, compelled from their houses in rice-growing areas, utilized their information to planting and tending rice for his or her enslavers and for themselves. By 1800, in Charleston and its surrounding communities, there have been greater than 100 sorts of rice, Dennis advised us, as he served us dishes made with totally different variations of the grain. The ingenuity of enslaved folks fueled a rice increase centered on a specific long-grain varietal known as Carolina Gold, prized for its taste and flexibility. Carolina Gold’s dominance ended with the Civil Warfare and shortly grew to become troublesome to search out. It was the Gullah Geechee folks, descendants of the unique West Africans, who stored its reminiscence alive. Rice was a transfer food, one other method that generations of Black cooks have formed American delicacies.
When you begin excited about rice, it is troublesome to cease. It is mainly not possible to overstate how essential rice is to the methods folks across the globe eat. Rice is the supply of one-fifth of all of the energy consumed by the world’s inhabitants. Rice types the spine of hundreds of thousands of individuals’s diets. Rice has been a key participant in historic occasions and an important factor of too many meals cultures to call.
America alone grows 20 billion kilos of rice yearly, a quantity that’s dwarfed by the output of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and different nations. It may be easy consolation meals, a crispy deal with, or an elaborate, special-occasion dish. With out it we would not have plov, sticky rice, paella, biryani, jollof rice, sushi, bibimbap, damaged rice, tahdig, fried rice, nasi goreng, arroz con pollo, rice and beans, risotto, soiled rice, or the easy pleasure of a bowl of rice mixed with yogurt and dotted with curry leaves. A 50-pound bag of jasmine rice that I purchased within the early, grocery shortage-fueled days of the pandemic has offered regular nourishment and succor for greater than a yr. The extra our employees talked about it, the extra it grew to become clear: Rice is every thing, and it touches everybody.
The gathering of rice tales and recipes right here is not complete—how might or not it’s? We might have an entire separate journal solely devoted to rice, Rice & Wine, if you’ll, and by no means run out of matters. However we hoped on this collection would give some thought of simply how huge, assorted, and complicated the world of rice is. We cowl the sensible aspect of how finest to cook dinner it, and if you would like a rice cooker, which one to get. Amongst rice cooker fanatics, you will additionally run into the cult of Zojirushi, an costly however glorious machine that reliably produces excellent pots of rice and retains them gently heat for hours.
There are additionally tales about what rice means on a private degree, and the way it shapes and enriches the conversations we’ve got about our identities and households. We reached out to writers, cooks, and different rice obsessives to share their very own private rice journeys. Courtney Sprewer explores the oft-overlooked Minute Rice and what it means to Black Midwestern households, and Amethyst Ganaway explains red rice and its connection to Gullah Geechee tradition. Leah Koenig appears on the world of Plov, and Lenore Adkins writes about chef Peter Prime’s Trinidadian Pelau. Mari Uyehara dives into the state of furikake, the traditional Japanese rice seasoning. Valerie Erwin, the brains behind Geechee Woman Rice Cafe in Philadelphia, talks about being on the vanguard of the rice renaissance. It is sufficient to get anybody enthusiastic about rice, or a minimum of add a bag or two to their subsequent grocery listing. —Margaret Eby, Senior Editor
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