The global economy isn’t getting any breaks this year. It goes to show that no matter what great social or technological advances the human race has achieved thus far, we remain myopic in our existence. Springing from the very solutions to problems we face for our survival on earth i.e. sustainable energy, comes a fresh new set of problems i.e. the global food crisis.
And so, a sizeable portion of the today’s world population is now facing a dwindling supply and in turn, the rising cost of a staple, if not, basic necessity to survive: rice.
This recent (but arguably foreseeable) development has gotten me thinking about our relationship with rice. Rice is arguably a cornerstone of Asian culture. If one were to look at the dietary divide of the world’s civilizations, it is not the political boundaries that divides the East and the West, but a matter of the rice eating population vs. the non-rice eating population.
That said, rice is served and eaten in many different ways throughout the rice eating world. In the Middle East, rice is served firm, grainy and fragrant, enjoyed with a pat of melting butter, alongside meat kebabs. In China, perfectly rounded mounds of rice are served in porcelain bowl, brought close to the recipients’ mouths and fed expertly with chopsticks. In Japanese cuisine, rice is sticky and shiny, flavored with vinegar and sugar and rolled into sushi.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, rice is still regarded as somewhat of an exotic commodity. I often think Westerners miss the whole point of rice. Rice is often seen as a side dish, like mash potatoes to roast chicken, or polenta to lamb chops – which totally goes against the concept of rice in Asian cuisine. I hate going to Asian restaurants in western countries and getting a pathetic helping of rice next to a huge piece of meat or fish. It’s totally off balance!
To most Malays, rice is the foundation, the very heart of a meal. All other side dishes or lauk lauk are complementary to the rice. In other words, you can very well have rice without your side dishes, but you'd be hard pressed to serve your side dishes of Beef Rendang, Ikan Masak Assam, or Kakung Belacan without your rice. It just doesn't make sense.
This thinking, I suspect, is the very source of our nutritional downfall as a race, really. Because, if you're eating a meal of rice with side dishes and haven't timed your proportions prudently, then you may have some leftover Redang on your plate. So what do you do? It won’t taste half as good on its own, and you can’t possibly let it go to waste. So, you tambah nasi, add a little more rice to your plate. But then, once again, you've finished your Rendang and now have some leftover rice. So you add a bit more Redang, and say, maybe a bit of veggie.
And so on and so forth. I feel this is one of the greatest predicaments of the Malay race.
(My Ma, who for years during her postings overseas has been providing traditional home cooked meals to hundreds of Malaysians abroad, has a theory that if Malays don't get their regular fix of rice and sambal after a few days, they get visibly unsettled, if not cranky.)
On a more personal note, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with rice throughout my life. When I was younger I used to take great delight in a seemingly grotesque custom made mixture of rice, topped with some leftover chicken curry, ketchup and soya sauce, mixed together and eaten with my small hands. It was awful looking brown concoction, but it pleased my 6 year old self very much, alongside with coke drunk from a mug with a spoon. I know. I was a weird kid.
In Middle School, I remember a school organised trip with my classmates to Langkawi. After a 10-hour hike from the peak to the base of the mountain, our class was put up for the night in a kampung house as part of the “cultural” experience. So there we were, over dinner, graciously served by the tenants of the kampung house, a meal of rice and several Malay side dishes. Alas, when it came time to dig in, to the dismay of my famished mat salleh classmates, not a fork, knife or spoon was to be found. My otherwise non-rice eating friends stared at me in wonder as I expertly scooped up my rice neatly with my fingers along with a torn piece of chicken before shoveling it into my mouth. Do you always eat with your hands at home? How do you shape your fingers to get it all in your mouth? Oh! What a sight to behold, watching my classmates struggling to lick rice off their fingers and palms! When they cleared away the dishes, I was a bit embarrassed in front of the kampung folks as they surveyed their carpet, covered with the mis-aimed grains of rice that failed to reach the intended mouths.
Later on in life, with the advent of faddish diets like Atkins, South Beach etc., rice got a bad rep. Carbs, save for special occasions and post-relationship break-ups, were banned from the pantries of women across the world, which included the mother of all carb offenders, rice. Thus, pressured by the media, Oprah and my anti-carb friends, I began to cut down my intake of rice.
Which, in a way, has taught me how to appreciate the beauty of rice. Because rice isn't always on my daily plate, eating rice has become a luxury, a pleasurable event to be savored. Particularly when I’m able to enjoy my Ma’s home cooking. There is nothing that compares to her fragrant Nasi Lemak or divine Nasi Briyani. Or even a simple meal of heavenly white basmati rice with a side of meat and vegetables. Oo la la.
Along with appreciating rice more, I’ve also taken more notice of the wastage of rice. Because it’s seen as a basic necessity, we often undervalue it. You see plates and plates of uneaten rice at buffets, weddings, kenduris, being thrown into bins.
It takes a major shift in perception to understand that our most precious natural resource is not just oil, but a seemingly humble grain that feeds millions of mouths, that entire cuisines, cultures, if not civilizations are built around, and that it is at our peril that we should take it for granted.
And so, a sizeable portion of the today’s world population is now facing a dwindling supply and in turn, the rising cost of a staple, if not, basic necessity to survive: rice.
This recent (but arguably foreseeable) development has gotten me thinking about our relationship with rice. Rice is arguably a cornerstone of Asian culture. If one were to look at the dietary divide of the world’s civilizations, it is not the political boundaries that divides the East and the West, but a matter of the rice eating population vs. the non-rice eating population.
That said, rice is served and eaten in many different ways throughout the rice eating world. In the Middle East, rice is served firm, grainy and fragrant, enjoyed with a pat of melting butter, alongside meat kebabs. In China, perfectly rounded mounds of rice are served in porcelain bowl, brought close to the recipients’ mouths and fed expertly with chopsticks. In Japanese cuisine, rice is sticky and shiny, flavored with vinegar and sugar and rolled into sushi.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, rice is still regarded as somewhat of an exotic commodity. I often think Westerners miss the whole point of rice. Rice is often seen as a side dish, like mash potatoes to roast chicken, or polenta to lamb chops – which totally goes against the concept of rice in Asian cuisine. I hate going to Asian restaurants in western countries and getting a pathetic helping of rice next to a huge piece of meat or fish. It’s totally off balance!
To most Malays, rice is the foundation, the very heart of a meal. All other side dishes or lauk lauk are complementary to the rice. In other words, you can very well have rice without your side dishes, but you'd be hard pressed to serve your side dishes of Beef Rendang, Ikan Masak Assam, or Kakung Belacan without your rice. It just doesn't make sense.
This thinking, I suspect, is the very source of our nutritional downfall as a race, really. Because, if you're eating a meal of rice with side dishes and haven't timed your proportions prudently, then you may have some leftover Redang on your plate. So what do you do? It won’t taste half as good on its own, and you can’t possibly let it go to waste. So, you tambah nasi, add a little more rice to your plate. But then, once again, you've finished your Rendang and now have some leftover rice. So you add a bit more Redang, and say, maybe a bit of veggie.
And so on and so forth. I feel this is one of the greatest predicaments of the Malay race.
(My Ma, who for years during her postings overseas has been providing traditional home cooked meals to hundreds of Malaysians abroad, has a theory that if Malays don't get their regular fix of rice and sambal after a few days, they get visibly unsettled, if not cranky.)
On a more personal note, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with rice throughout my life. When I was younger I used to take great delight in a seemingly grotesque custom made mixture of rice, topped with some leftover chicken curry, ketchup and soya sauce, mixed together and eaten with my small hands. It was awful looking brown concoction, but it pleased my 6 year old self very much, alongside with coke drunk from a mug with a spoon. I know. I was a weird kid.
In Middle School, I remember a school organised trip with my classmates to Langkawi. After a 10-hour hike from the peak to the base of the mountain, our class was put up for the night in a kampung house as part of the “cultural” experience. So there we were, over dinner, graciously served by the tenants of the kampung house, a meal of rice and several Malay side dishes. Alas, when it came time to dig in, to the dismay of my famished mat salleh classmates, not a fork, knife or spoon was to be found. My otherwise non-rice eating friends stared at me in wonder as I expertly scooped up my rice neatly with my fingers along with a torn piece of chicken before shoveling it into my mouth. Do you always eat with your hands at home? How do you shape your fingers to get it all in your mouth? Oh! What a sight to behold, watching my classmates struggling to lick rice off their fingers and palms! When they cleared away the dishes, I was a bit embarrassed in front of the kampung folks as they surveyed their carpet, covered with the mis-aimed grains of rice that failed to reach the intended mouths.
Later on in life, with the advent of faddish diets like Atkins, South Beach etc., rice got a bad rep. Carbs, save for special occasions and post-relationship break-ups, were banned from the pantries of women across the world, which included the mother of all carb offenders, rice. Thus, pressured by the media, Oprah and my anti-carb friends, I began to cut down my intake of rice.
Which, in a way, has taught me how to appreciate the beauty of rice. Because rice isn't always on my daily plate, eating rice has become a luxury, a pleasurable event to be savored. Particularly when I’m able to enjoy my Ma’s home cooking. There is nothing that compares to her fragrant Nasi Lemak or divine Nasi Briyani. Or even a simple meal of heavenly white basmati rice with a side of meat and vegetables. Oo la la.
Along with appreciating rice more, I’ve also taken more notice of the wastage of rice. Because it’s seen as a basic necessity, we often undervalue it. You see plates and plates of uneaten rice at buffets, weddings, kenduris, being thrown into bins.
It takes a major shift in perception to understand that our most precious natural resource is not just oil, but a seemingly humble grain that feeds millions of mouths, that entire cuisines, cultures, if not civilizations are built around, and that it is at our peril that we should take it for granted.
4 comments:
It has taken me several challenging trips to find my favourite perfect brand of rice here. Needless to say, I teach my son to eat rice with his HAND! Something that did not come naturally to him.
But then, I also got amazed when I saw a 3 year old in China pick up a morsel of a chicken with chopsticks!
one of nabila's friends refused to eat bread at all. He is vietnamese so he never stayed in school during lunch break. He is a rice eater. Because of him, everytime an asian or half asian kid enrol in their school, the parent will eba sked about this and the school is actually very open to international cuisine. Funnily enough it is not the white kids who make fun of his rice habit - rice is ubiquitous in NL, you can buy nasi in any supermarket; and they call nasi goreng nasi it is a four letter word - it was a Morroccon child who told him rijst is vies (rice is sinky/dirty/awful)because he grew up eating only bread and beans.
I am happy to report our usual 20kg sack of jasmine rice now costs only Euro24.50 after the Euro29.99 scare recently!
Euro5 can buy me a kilo of halal beef and 2 whole halal chicken!!!
*open in the sense that if they are staying over during lunch, they can have their soups or nasi campur or whichever bekal they bring heated int he microwave at the teacher's lounge
and all the meat served/sold in the school during school events are halal!
Yan, great piece least i know im not the only one who loves rice.
My main issue here is watching most ppl in the non eating rice regions eating rice with a fork.
I keep telling them that rice is from my side of the world and this is how it should be eaten with a spoon a nice big scoop.
When we eat western dishes we use a kinve and a fork. We follow how its to be eaten.
Thanks for this. And i totally agree if i dont get my rice fix with a base for my 'lauks' am totally egdy !!!!
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