Rice, the Pinay's staple

MOST of Asia and Asians eat rice. If we do the numbers we will come up with about 2 billion people who eat rice each day.

The Philippines is part of the South east Asia geographically, but many Pinoys feel a closer attachment to the West. So it is that frequently, diners in restaurants are asked if they prefer rice or potatoes or even bread to go with their meal.

Previously, no such question was asked. A bowl or a plate of rice is served with your order, whatever it may be. Recently, though, restaurants are beginning to regularly serve rice with the meal, coming to a full circle.

The origin of rice. Rice is probably the most significant and important cereal in the world and although its origin and history is obscure, it has been the staple food for eons of more for more than half of the world's populace. The grain must have originated simultaneously in both China and India, and slowly and surely spread over the world.

Wherever rice is eaten it is always revered and treated with respect and honour, because if the rice crop fails, famine-like situations arise.

Rice wastage is viewed with horror and is considered a breach in upbringing in societies and cultures where rice is eaten.. Again in rice eating cultures a special treat is the glutinous rice variety.

In the PHilippines this kind of rice is called malagkit, and the rice when ground, is callled galapong. It is from this malagkit and galapong where many, many wonderful Pinoy sweet treats come from. Galapong is made by washing, soaking and grinding the glutinous rice.

Then this galapong is cooked in coconut or banana leaf wrappers and steamed. These are called suman. Sumans are also frequently made with the whole grain, unground.

From these sumans a wide variety of sweet foods are made. All these sumans are eaten with grated coconut cooked in sugar, called coconut jam.

Usually a side to these many types of rice cooked as such is a ripe mango or bananas boiled and sweetened. The rice may be mixed with sugar, coconut milk, or many other kinds of mixes.

Then we have the bibingka, which is the generic term for sweet rice cakes, glutinous rice cooked with coconut milk. We also have the puto bumbong, a suman like sweet rice steamed in special containers with bamboo tubes, and served with butter grated coconuts sugar with toasted sesame seeds.

The puto bumbong though is made from a variety of glutinous rice called pirurutong and is violet in colour. Palitao, champorado, lugaw, goto, arroz caldo, all these are cooked with glutinuous rice or their variants. The ever popular Chines 'tikoy' is made with ground glutinous rice.

Finally, we have the bilo bilo or bingnit, sort of soupy porridge, with galapong shaped into balls and boiled with coconut milk, jackfruit, sweet potatoes, plantain, sago pearls. This is called ginataan.

In the Philippines, the price of malagkit is usually twice the price of regular rice. It is not cheap, and as mentioned is grown only in Southeast Asia.

For finicky rice eaters, who insist on good rice, one way of beating the price is mixing malagkit with the regular rice when they are cooking for the regular meal. The proportion which we use is one measure of regular rice to 1/2 to 3/4 measure of malagkit. You might want to try it.

Follows is a recipe for the most most basic of Pinoy rice cakes.

It is called biko and really is just cooking the sticky glutinous rice and pouring a topping and then enjoying the rice. This may be a dessert or a side, depending on your mood at the moment. Try it, and most Pinays know how to do this , but for the uninitiated we give you the following. You will need: • Half kilo of malagkit • 1/2 cup of white sugar or brown or muscovado or panocha to taste • 4 cups of 2nd squeeze coconut • 1/4 cup butter or coconut rendered oil (use butter for a more conveniently sourced ingredient) • 1/2 teaspoon salt topping • 1 tin condensada • 1 cup kakang gata Procedure: • Wash and drain water from rice. cook in a rice cooker with sugar and coconut squeeze (2nd for the no watch type of cooking) or in a regular pan.

• When done, but still slightly warm, spread in a baking pan rectangle (2) 8 by 5 or a large 9 by 13 rectangle.

• Bake in a 359 degree oven rice bakes, make the topping.

Make the topping by combining the topping ingredients. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes until slightly thickened. When thickened, pour over the rice and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes until topping bubbles. How about friend rice for brekky?

Doing fried rice, the perennial favourite for any meal is next on our favourite rice things. We have so many ways of having fried rice. Before we go to making fried rice, the major advice which we have to tell you, dear reader is this: Always use cold rice to make fried rice.

Bahaw, Killaban and Kaning Lamig. If you use hot or even warm rice to make fried rice, you will meet with disastrous results. Trust us.

That being said, we would like to let you know that there are many styles of making fried rice as there are cooks in the world.

There is the ever popular Pinoy way of garlic fried rice teamed with egg, and daeng or tapa, or what ever. That is the eternal favourite. Then we have the Chinese fried rice, again with as many variations as there are Chinese. That of course lies in the millions squared.

The very basic is the Pinoy style. We can do this 2 ways. The first way is the minced garlic in first till the garlic is beige colored, then rice goes in. Then we have the minced garlic in last, so there it is at the bottom of the pan, then covered with the frying rice.

That will give you the heady aroma of garlic and whet your morning appetite like no one's business. Finally there is the best of both worlds. You brown the garlic first, and then put in the cold rice.

After the rice is fried and heated through, you make a hold in the center of the rice and put in more minced garlic. Then you cover the hole and let the garlic heat through. that should give garlic lovers a feast. Then, when the rice is thoroughly heated and fried, you dribble some cooking oil on the edge of the frying pan and let the rice toast a bit. If you like patis, do not salt your rice, or just salt very lightly, to make it a sawsawan friendly dish.

Now that is heavenly. Of course, you serve the rice with egg, boneless bangus or tapa, or longganisa or even last night's paksiw. Give the dish a side of sliced tomatoes and slices of cukes or maybe you can add some pickles such as atchara. Patis is a given, of course.

Other versions of fried rice give the initial garlic an addition of finely chopped onion, (the sibuyas tagalog) the local small shallots will be just fine) then the rice is put in.

Then you have the local Chinese fried rice version. One scrambles an egg (straight into a oiled pan) amd tosses the egg until it has broken up before putting in the rice. Otherwise, you can do all of the above, inclulding the egg.

You can add chopped longganizas, Chinese sausage, shrimps (for shrimp fried rice) put in some green peas, then dribble a bit of Chinese soy sauce or Japanese soy sauce or oyster sauce, or hoisin sauce.

Always do top your fried rice with onion greens which are finely sliced. The greens add an aroma and a flavor to the rice.

Isn’t it wonderful what you can do with rice?

And that is only about fried rice. What about the rice porridges? You have the local champorado, the arroz caldos, the pospas and then yu have the Italian rissotos, you have the Western rice puddings, then you have the Mediterranean rice salads, served cold with raisins and grapes and other fruits in season. We could go on and on and on. Suffice it to say then, we Pinoys love rice.

Last words: never ever waste rice. Give the dog extra uneaten rice. Bon Appetit.