Thursday, September 11, 2008

On a Tuesday’s post in Chow Times, Ben wrote: “Suanne and I simply need rice. If we go a few days without rice, we felt like we had not eaten at all“. Being Chinese, I think I understand that very, very well. Panamanians had a similar issue, where the staple day-to-day dish is rice, beans and beef, if they did not have rice, they felt they didn’t eat at all. (Consumption of rice in Panama is around 72Kg per person per year!).

For me, from a cooking perspective, rice is one of those ingredients that is not worth preparing small amounts, even with a rice cooker (even using a supposedly no-stick one, I still had some sticking to the “bowl”). As a result, ever since I moved to live on my own, I seldom cooked rice. During the first couple of weeks, I struggled and I overate to satiate that “void” created by not eating rice. But after a couple of months, I started to get used to other forms of carbs, mainly noodles and bread.

When I visited my parents in Panama last year and told them about my change of diet, they were, to say the least, perplexed. How could I not eat THE staple of both Chinese and Panamanian diet? That’s when I started to compare it to other cultures. In the case of other Latin country, the staple would be either maize/corn or potatoes. In the case of European cultures, we have bread, pasta (including couscous) and potatoes. So, there are other staples out there yet, what makes rice different compared to, say, pasta?
Read more…!