Food fads are strange, unpredictable social phenomena that influence restaurant menus,

supermarket shelves, farmers' growing plans and our own cooking. Pasta, that wonderful, highly

versatile, good-tasting and inexpensive side dish took off on a meteoric rise that carried it to the

top of the "in" food list in North America. Why not rice? It is just as versatile, just as tasty, also

nutritious and inexpensive, and lends itself to any course on the menu—just as suitable for

appetizers and salads as for desserts. You can permeate it with any flavor or spoon any kind of

sauce over it with equally good results.

Is it because Italian cuisine has been a favorite international food for generations? Is it

because pasta is easier to present on a plate, or it holds better once cooked? Which is always a

consideration for restaurant and catering chefs. Or is it simply that many chefs lack the

experience of cooking rice to perfection? The French admit it in their bible, LaRousse

Gastronomique, that rice cooking is one of their weaknesses—in fact rice is an uncommon item

on French dinner tables.

I think the main reason for rice's third placement in North American kitchens (also taking

a back seat to the all-American potato) is the ease cooks can ruin it. Latitude for error in rice

cooking is small; pasta is not nearly so vulnerable. The trend of adding a rice cooker to standard

kitchen equipment may increase rice's popularity in American kitchens. A rice cooker offers a

foolproof routine to consistently present perfect rice. Rice cooker may be great, but the only

equipment a good cook needs to cook the perfect rice is a pot with a lid.

Rice Facts

How it all began

Archeologists traced rice cultivation back to long before Arabs or Chinese invented pasta.

Findings from a Thai excavation pointed to rice cultivation dating back to 5500 years ago.

Recently, however, archeologists found an even older rice-growing area at a Chinese site which

existed 1500 years before the Thai site. The first confirmed pasta making was much later, about

2500 years ago, interestingly, also in China (see pasta history, under Pasta).

Some believe that the rice plant originated in China, others that it started in Northern

India around the Himalayan foothills. It may have been native in both places. Explorers brought

rice to Europe about 2300 years ago, though it was much later, in the 900s, that Spanish growers

first cultivated it.

Rice was one of the first crops in the early days of North American agriculture with the

first commercial production on the wetlands near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1694. By the

1700s, this region produced more rice than available cargo ships could handle to transport it to

England. The next major step in rice production was in 1884, an attempt by an Iowa farmer to

grow it on the higher and drier prairie lands of Louisiana and Texas. These areas allowed the use

of heavy equipment for planting, growing and harvesting. Such mechanization was not possible

on the original marshy lands of South Carolina.

Rice farming spread throughout the southeastern states in the next two centuries and

skipped to California in 1912. Rice loved California and the state is now one of the best and

highest yielding rice-growing regions in the world, producing superb rice. Even the Japanese,

who are extremely particular about their rice, accept California rice as equal to their own.

Serious Kitchen Play