When a skilled chef roasts brown on the bottom of the pot, the grain will become a complex delicacy, a delicacy cherished by food cultures all over the world.
Scorching rice requires nerves to get a suitable crust at the bottom of the pot, that layer of grains cooked over time, bronze and crispy, but just to avoid burning; it goes too far. You can't see what happened. If you lift the lid, all you can see is the soft rice, fluffy and neat. But do not lift the lid and do not stir. Maybe you can put a towel around the rim to get a tighter seal to catch the condensed water droplets; maybe you push the flame up and lean there to hear the last rustle of boiling water, then turn off the burner and let the pot go. Sitting there, ticking in the fading heat. You have to rely on your sense of smell to recognize when the aroma of grilled meat is approaching its peak-when it smells of popcorn just bursting, grains turned over, or hot chestnuts on a street cart in winter, together with small black stones Throw it in the pot, then peel off their sleeves-save it before it ends in bitterness. Your reward: the dark side of rice, its other self, the grains are hardened and sealed together, chewy, crunchy and delicious.
In almost all places in the world where rice is eaten, people named this precious crust, including xoon, tahdig, com cháy, socarrat, pegao, nurungji, hikakeh, graten, kanzo, guoba, concón, cocolón, okoge, raspa , Kerak nasi, bun bun, tutong, dukot, cucayo and bay kdaing. Some of these names come from different words indicating the location of rice (in Persian, "tahdig" literally means "bottom of pot", and in parts of Africa, English has been incorporated into the terms "bottom pot" and "bottom pot"), The toughness of rice sticking to the container ("dukot" comes from a Cebuano verb meaning "too long"), so it must be taken away by force (Cuban "raspa") from Spanish "raspar", "scratch ") and the act or state of burning ("socarrat" is believed to have originated from the Basque word sukarra or "fever"; "com cháy" is usually translated from Vietnamese as "cooked rice").
-Tracing the history of Mexico through the contradictory relationship with rice, rice is an inseparable staple food of colonialism.
-When a skilled chef burns the bottom of the pot, the rice will change from a plain supporting role to a rich and complex protagonist.
-Mansaf is a Bedouin lamb and rice dish. It is not only a national symbol of Jordan, but also a talisman for the home of Arab-American expatriates in the suburbs of Detroit.
-Compared with almost all other African countries, Senegal, whose per capita rice consumption (mostly imported) is trying to restore indigenous varieties.
The language of burning is poetic permission, or it should be: no one wants to eat rice that has actually been burned. 52-year-old Andrea Nguyen is a chef and writer in Santa Cruz, California. His most recent recipe is "Vietnamese Food for Any Day" (2019). He pointed out the difference between com cháy in Vietnamese, which literally means " Rice on fire"-the rice has not yet succumbed to the flame during the burning process-and com khê, the rice is completely burned, giving off a pungent ash smell, and it is inedible. Traditionally, in Vietnam, people would grow their own rice and thresh it. Some people put it in a clay or metal pot and boil it over the fire over the remaining straw. "Our pot is so thin that the fire cannot be controlled," she said. In this case, no matter how careful and skilled the chef is, it is difficult to cook rice evenly. The crust that forms at the bottom is not a delicacy or a wish; it is a mistake, and people have to live with it, especially if they cannot waste any food.
Therefore, although com cháy may be loved by people now, it also reminds us that rice or even a whole meal can easily deteriorate. Historically, in order to satisfy our hunger pangs, how much effort we need to put in to keep ourselves alive . "It used to be this almost inferior thing, second-class rice," Nguyen said; you have to rake it out of the bottom of the pot ("it's more like prying it out"). This is a kind of food, its position on the table is related to limited resources, such as French fish soup, fishermen's stew made from waste materials that cannot be sold in the market, and coq au vin, a recipe originally designed Do not show plump and juicy hens, but soften an old and strong rooster (and drink wine that is not worth drinking). Both dishes are now on the premium menu. American barbecue also has humble roots, as a means of dealing with cheap and hard meats, smoke them for a few hours, and then grill them until they yield, tremble, and are chopped.
But the automatic rice cooker eliminates the risk of burning and makes it possible to cook rice almost without thinking. (When Toshiba Japan developed the first such machine in the 1950s, Japanese women told traveling salesmen that they thought cooking was more difficult than washing clothes because they had to wake up at dawn every morning and spend most of their time. During the day. Monitor kamado, a traditional stove fueled by wood or charcoal; as Helen Macnaughtan, a Japanese research scholar based in London, has reportedly been The custom of keeping the same-not entirely in favor of making a machine to save all time and labor, believe that "a woman who wants to sleep instead of cooking is a failed wife.") With today's rice cooker, you add water to the Set the line instead of dipping the finger and measuring to the first knuckle, then you can forget it and let it steam quietly in the corner. Most cooking utensils automatically include the necessary rest time. When the heat is turned off, the rice sits in the last bit of warmth, intact, and the moisture continues to absorb and settle until the same polishing and swelling of each grain appears: beautiful and surprisingly perfect.
What you lose is the contrast, the impact of the crunchy bottom of the pot on the soft, impeccable grain on top, and the bittersweet impact from the browning. In many Asian cultures, bitterness is seen as a necessary condition for a balanced life and can teach people to persevere and appreciate sweetness. The rice is usually reassuringly bland, and the soft background allows the intensity of other foods, but the charred rice has deeper, more complex characteristics, similar to the thick, malt husk of a loaf of bread. (Both are the result of the dramatic transformation that occurs when amino acids and sugars meet at high temperatures, called Maillard reaction.) To obtain this texture and flavor, Vietnamese people cook the rice afterwards and scoop it from the rice cooker. Out and compact it into a disc in a pan. Some rice cookers even provide a scorch setting, although it is not foolproof and requires a certain degree of modification to the controls to achieve sufficient gold plating.
Nguyen said: "Now, we have got some perfect rice." "We miss the burnt rice."
The origin of rice cultivation is uncertain. West African farmers living in the inner delta of the upper Niger River (now Mali) turned a species, Oryza glaberrima, into a domesticated crop more than 3,000 years ago. This is the rice that was brought to the New World by the enslaved people and planted in the southern United States before the arrival of rice in the late 17th century. Rice is a fast-growing, high-yielding species from Asia that now dominates the world. In the history of rice, researchers have discovered burnt grains in the upper Ganges plains of northern India that date back to at least 6400 BC; rice phytoliths, the microscopic silica structure of primitive plants, are located in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in southeastern China , About 8000 BC; the age of rice husks in the peat soil of Soro-ri, a Paleolithic site in South Korea, has been determined by radiocarbon to be about 12,500 years, although some people question whether the rice was grown there or shipped from the southern region .
By the 12th century BC, rice had come to Mesopotamia, and from there it spread to the Fertile Crescent and later the land of Persia and Arabia. The Arabs brought it to the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century, so the Spanish "arroz", the cousin of the English "rice", was borrowed from the Arabic "al-ruzz"-and the most famous Spanish The rice dish, the saffron paella from Valencia in the Mediterranean, originated from the ancient Persian polo. This fragrant golden rice became the favorite of Macedonian King Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. He conquered the Persian Empire after the Persian Empire. Liss, indulge in the saffron bath, drinking saffron tea, and then make sure to bring a Persian chef in his future battles.
From that golden rice was born a kind of crust called tahdig, which is a complete genre in Persian cuisine. Cut potatoes into thin slices, lettuce leaves, sour citrus or whole fish: any of these can be placed on the bottom of the pot, under the rice, to make it crispy. But according to 49-year-old Naz Deravian, rice tahdig is a gem. He is an Iranian-born actress living in Los Angeles and the author of "The Bottom of the Pot" (2018). Her suggestion is: first, cook the rice in salt water and drain; spread oil and butter on the bottom of the emptied pan; take a layer of rice, if you want tahchin, you can mix egg yolk and yogurt, it can be compared The tahdig is soft; then put the remaining rice back into the pot and let it steam.
"Tadig is moody," she said. "You have to know your pot and your heat source." When she grows up and her family has guests coming over, "There is always a nervous energy, worrying about what the rice will become." Part of the drama is legend. Medium flip: You put a plate on the pan, and then flip it quickly. "I tightened my abs," she said. When the rice falls, "you will hear whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh". But it does not matter. If some of it sticks to the pot, you can put the Tadig aside and break it into pieces for everyone to argue with.
Or, as a chef’s privilege, you can hoard for yourself. Delavian remembers her mother standing in front of the stove, eating the stubborn residue left in the pot: "The crispest, most oily, and most delicious part."
Among West African dishes, such as Senegal’s thieboudienne, a pot of rice, fish and vegetable feast, and Nigeria’s party rice, the sunset red of tomatoes and red sweet peppers, which are stung by the Havanese and stewed in a large pot to feed a large group People, the bottom pot gets extra flavor due to the addition of other ingredients cooked with grains-palm oil, earthy flavor and lush greenery; fermented seeds with a thrilling taste; tomatoes decompose and their juice is sticky It's thick again; the onions have been browning for too long and they passed out in their own sugar; the memory of the brine in the smoked fish. Nigerian essayist Yemisi Aribisala wrote in her "Longthroat Memoirs" (2016): "Anyone with taste buds knows that the bottom of the pot, which is the part that has experienced all the heat, best reflects Flavor." She condemned the appearance of non-stick pans, insisting: "If the food sticks together, it will taste better."
"Xoon", sometimes spelled khogn, means "dregs" in Wolof. The 56-year-old Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam slyly calls it "in his cookbook "Yolele!" Scum". (2008)-noticed that these humble fragments are actually "a chef’s prize, an appropriate reward for a hard day’s work, she may or may not choose to share." For Thiam, he was in In New York (where he runs the Teranga restaurant and has branches in Harlem and Midtown), the time is divided between the Bay Area and Dakar. Nothing can compare to the xoon obtained through fire cooking, when the bottom of the grain Beyond gold to close to black. Scorching makes xoon not only a finish, but also an ingredient in itself, changing the rest of the dish, as the smoke enters the rice and enters every crack in a low voice. In Senegal, people with modern kitchens almost always put a wood-burning stove around, in the backyard or on the roof, “even if they live in high-rise buildings,” Thiam said with a smile.
When he was a child, someone told him half-jokingly that xoon was reserved for adults. Puerto Ricans also have a traditional hierarchy: 39-year-old Von Diaz is a journalist in Durham, North Carolina and the author of "Coconut and Kale" (2018). She recalled that pegao (from pegado, "Glue", also a slang term, refers to dancing tightly, skin to skin) is always offered to her father first as the man in the family. Later, she found out that she had done the same thing to a boyfriend from Colombia, handing him a plate of arroz con pollo and scooped rice-the spoon sank to the bottom to get it all, burnt and soft-and proposed So that pegao is on top and he can see it.
he knows. "There is a cross-cultural understanding," Diaz exclaimed. "This is a gift."
In the first few months of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, panic caused rice prices to soar. In India, the world’s largest rice exporter, a surge in infections has left factories and port workers at home, while the blockade disrupts the annual trek of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who venture north to plant rice fields each year. Other major rice producing countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar, have restricted exports to ensure they have enough supplies to feed their populations. Since then, to a large extent, exports have recovered and prices have stabilized, but this instability shows that it is dangerous to treat food as a commodity in an emergency: it is a basic human need.
In some countries, you may eat rice every day — “sometimes three meals a day,” Ruan said — and it’s not always voluntary. Well, burnt rice may be just a treat, because it is different, it is a less common rice; rice that violates the rules. Many cultures have found a way to maintain the charm of rice: the grains may be slowly roasted for a long time, and then ground into a powder, just like Thai kok, sifting a crack in the delicious dishes; after being beaten, it is translucent. Like the wings of a little angel, like poha in South Asia and ambok in Cambodia; or flattened and baked into crunchy confetti, sprinkled on desserts and filled with drinks, just like pinipig in the Philippines. The so-called broken rice, Vietnam’s com tâm and Senegal’s riz brisé-moved by the French from one colony to another in the first half of the 20th century-are composed of grains that are broken up when passing through mills and have been despised and low. Price to sell. Now, it is precious because the smaller particles and jagged edges make it cook faster and provide more corners for the sauce to gather and absorb.
The burned rice itself can be reused. Nicole Ponseca, a 45-year-old Filipino-American restaurant owner who runs a jeepney in Miami, remembers how her father scraped the tutong from the bottom of the pot and preserved it like a biscuit to eat a bite of burnt rice ; Or put in arroz caldo, a kind of rice porridge, as a crunch in the stickiness. To be precise, she never thinks tutong is a kind of enjoyment. "This is part of the cultural attitude," she said. "Make do, don't waste." This is also true in Japan, even the most high-end meals-carefully crafted formal kaiseki cuisine-will end before the dessert, which is almost burnt in small pieces, okoge, placed Fill the bowl with tea or fish soup, and then drizzle with kimchi. You mean to clean the bowl and finish each grain. In Madagascar, this goes one step further. Pour boiling water directly into the crusted pot to loosen the grains to make Ranovola, a tea that can be drunk hot or iced and tastes less than rice that has been roasted in the water itself.
Turning mistakes into virtues, recasting dross into bounties, gifting things that were once cursed and abandoned, an honor: Is it possible to say less about toughness, more about pure perversion-and generosity-humanity, it Make us seek goodwill in bad things so frequently, prefer the injured, and love defects? To some extent, cooking has always been a matter of trial and error, and a game of chance. On the jagged edges, we saw the chef's hands most clearly, and among the oil, butter, and scattered coke, we saw the work. Someone must learn to do this, brandishing knives and fire, risking scars and burns, to coax the taste from whatever is left in the storage room. Modern technology promises a world without errors. In this world, every result can be predicted and determined, and even the amount of burnt at the bottom of the pot can be calculated to the second by the fuzzy logic rice cooker. But we seized the opportunity; we danced with the ruins. Maybe we are not so interested in perfection and its calming effects after all.
Food styling: Young Gun Lee. Set design: Suzy Kim. Modification: Anonymous modification. Digital technology: Lori Cannava. Photography assistant: Karl Leitz, Scott Barraza. Assistant Food Stylist: Brianna Horton. Set Assistant: Sophia Kwan