11/08/2016
The paella of Cullera de Boix, one of the best restaurant in Barcelona, drawn mostly from the variety bomb. It is estimated that there are over two thousand varieties of rice around the world. It can be cooked in a thousand ways and is the most widely consumed cereal.
After its discovery in India more than seven thousand years ago, it became the staple food of the population living in the East, who consumes it as a side dish at all meals. However, it is also an essential ingredient of our diet and a necessary complement to many of our treats, be they from the sea or mountain.
One of the Japanese fashions that has made it further is sushi, a dish whose main ingredient is usually raw fish or shellfish, but which would be nothing without rice. To make this fashionable product and, above all, to prepare the classic mochi cakes, japonica rice is used, a quite sticky short-grain variant.
Long-grain rice, however, is part of the Indian family and is a variety that requires more water and longer cooking, as is the case of basmati rice. Aromatic and tasty, this grain is typical of Indian and Pakistani cuisine and is ideal for recipes with chopped vegetables.
The expansion of rice-growing in Europe would not start until later, when it reached Persia and Mesopotamia. A few centuries later, the Greeks also adopted it, but rather for medicinal purposes, not as a consumer commodity, whereas on the Iberian Peninsula it began to be used with the arrival of the Arabs. At present, it is one of the basic ingredients of the Mediterranean diet; in Italy, for example, the signature dish madewith this cereal is risotto, which is typical in Milan and is prepared, in its classic version, with mushrooms and Parmesan cheese.
In our land, rice has become much more than merely the basis of many recipes: it is a tradition to eat it on Sundays and a delicious excuse to gather around the table. We cook it with meat, fish or vegetables, we make paellas and «rossejats» (paella with short angel hair pasta) and have adapted many varieties of this universal cereal to the idiosyncrasies of our kitchens.
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