When Andrea and I were first married, one of the earliest and biggest cultural divides we had to contend with was the starch that would be served with a meal.
For one of our first major holidays as husband and wife, Andrea prepared a legit feast. I surveyed the spread, taking in the sight and smell of the roast, casseroles, and various sides, and asked nonchalantly, "Where's the rice?"
She stepped back and regarded me with the now well-known raised eyebrow side glance. With a gloriously sarcastic flourish of her hands, one by one, she pointed out the garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yeast rolls like one of Bob Barker's ladies presenting a showcase. Knowing the effort she put into the meal, I deemed it unwise to mention, "Yeah, but there's no rice."
In Filipino culture, the staple starch is, of course, rice. It's what makes the meal. It doesn't matter if you belly up to a 3X super-sized combo with dessert and bottomless drink refills. If it doesn't come with rice, it's not a meal, it's a snack.
This disconnect surprised me since Southern cuisine is replete with rice-based dishes: gumbo, jambalaya, Cajun dirty rice, and the OG southern rice dish, red beans and rice. Part of the problem, apparently, was the difficulty in getting a good, consistent pot of rice. Over the years, I've talked with many a southern cook who likened crafting a batch of tender fluffy rice to invoking a swamp land voodoo incantation. To me, that was a headscratcher, because cooking rice for family meals became part of my chores when I was barely out of kindergarten. The not-so-closely-held secret in the Filipino community was an automatic rice cooker.
A standard stovetop recipe for rice involves waiting for water to boil, adding the rice, taking it off the heat, letting it steam undisturbed, and finally fluffing with a fork. By contrast, with a rice cooker, you toss rice and water into the cooker, turn it on, and wait for it to ding, signaling your rice is ready. This implement is so basic in the Filipino kitchen, that when I left home for college, Mom and Dad kitted me out with a phone card, a credit card, and a rice cooker.
"But, Wayne, the Alton Brown school of thought says uni-taskers in the kitchen are bad."
But they're not just for rice. I've seen them turn out soups and light stews as well. Listen, if at least one weekly meal involves rice, do yourself a favor and get an automatic rice cooker. While a high-end Zojirushi can set you back over $500 dollars, a basic model will cost less than a tenth of that.
With the method of cooking now addressed, another problem is the kind of rice. Admittedly, this can be overwhelming. The two types you'll come across are brown and white. However, within both of those, you'll find short, medium, and long grain. A rule of thumb is, the shorter the grain, the stickier the rice. Any medium-grain rice, white or brown, will cover 90% of all recipes. The one type of rice to stay away from would have the portrait of a kindly, black gentleman on the box.
In the days after Dad's funeral, Andrea and I stopped by my old church to thank the pastor for officiating and the staff for the flowers they'd sent. As we were leaving, I mentioned to Andrea our next stop was the grocery store because, with family in town, we were short on supplies, including rice. Someone in that church office had their ears perked up because a few hours later, they dropped by the house with a box of Uncle Ben's.
I was touched. They heard we had a need and stepped in. It was a gracious act, and kind of adorable. I told Andrea it was like a little kid walking into a jewelry store with a bag of pennies expecting it would be enough to buy a gold necklace for his mom.
These days, I have no issues with meals without rice - especially if the starch du jour is Andrea's garlic mashed potatoes. For her part, Andrea can kick off a batch of fluffy goodness in the rice cooker like a native of Baguio City.
Not surprisingly, there's a huge scarcity of classic rock songs that focus on the most consumed staple in the world. There's this gem, but I prefer CCR and their cover of this pre-first-generation rock classic with a fantastic rice-centric menu.
Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Jambalaya"
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