Remarkable Rice
The food that powers Thailand.
Chances are that if you are anywhere at all in South-East Asia, then rice will be on the menu. As a foodstuff, it’s ubiquitous. Thailand is often called the rice bowl of Asia, and with good reason. That’s because the country grows such an inordinate amount that it can safely export thousands of tons per annum. And that’s after feeding the country’s population of 60 million inhabitants.
Rice, along with wheat, corn and barley, is a type of grass with the edible part being surrounded by a tough husk, which first needs to be taken away, by either milling or pounding. The processing affects the product and a lot of goodness can be lost along the way. Take the example of white, polished rice. It contains almost 90% carbohydrates, all edible, but loses most of its minerals in the processing stage. In times past, more traditional ways meant that vitamins and protease inhibitors (the latter are important as cancer retardants) were left. Modern-day rice, where quantity is so crucial, gets a bad rap as a result. This hasn’t been helped by stories circulating on the internet that Thailand has been swamped by so-called ‘plastic rice’ which reportedly comes from China. No such thing exists, but the stories continue as an urban (or in this case agricultural) myth, perhaps because rice has become for some people so over-processed.
Many visitors to Asia forgivably don’t know much about how rice grows. It can be produced both on low, flat ground and hillsides. The usual way in Thailand is to use wet lowland soil, with flooded fields. The rice grows underwater before the fields are drained, but you can also find it growing on mountain sides. The kinds of rice grown are usually ones that sprout quickly – it’s possible to grow up to four crops per year on some land – and which are most likely to assure a good crop. Other types are grown that provide a better crop, but the downside is that they need a longer time to come to fruition.
The rice that you actually eat in Thailand comes in different types. You’ll almost certainly have eaten the fluffy rice popular in central and southern Thailand, known as ‘khao suai’. It’s light, easily edible and tastes delicious. Sticky rice, or ‘khao niao’, is eaten with a variety of dishes all over the country but particularly in northern parts. It also has red and black varieties, adding colour to the taste. One of the stars of Thai rice production is undoubtedly ‘khao hom mali’, or jasmine-scented rice, which is also becoming more and more popular outside Thailand.
It’s hard to avoid eating rice in Thailand. Even if you opt for noodles, they’re likely to be made using rice flour, and desserts are often rice-based too or have rice as a constituent. Even leftover rice isn’t to be wasted but can quite easily be made into traditional-style sweets.
Even if a lot more Thais are eating bread than they ever used to – check out convenience stores for the different varieties of bread that they now all stock – rice is still very much a part of the diet; on average, each Thai this year will eat over 100 kilograms of it. Speaking of convenience, nothing’s easier than washing a cup or two of rice and then putting it in a rice cooker, which will cook it in about 20 minutes and then keep it warm throughout the day. All that’s needed is a topping or two. Whole families are fed this way, whilst plenty of others may use a system that’s not changed over hundreds of years: they steam sticky rice in a wood basket and then either eat it immediately or let it stand for a while. The only real change is that the water is heated using gas bottles rather than firewood.
Rice remains extremely popular, no doubt in part because it’s so versatile. With recipes that range through fried rice to soups, salads and finally desserts, rice continues to enthral taste-buds everywhere. Is there anything more typically Asian than a simple bowl of rice?
Dimitri Waring