Ode to Rice

I cannot precisely remember when was the first time Mother asked of me to cook rice. Memory seems to not be as straightforward as everyone else’s in terms of recalling one’s own youth. What I can recall is that garish brick-red facade and the mossy, mosquito-ladened canal behind my home in South Florida and by then, I was likely just shy of ten-years-old, tasked with the responsibility of contributing rice to the dinner table almost every night. Mother, though never strict in the stereotypical sense of a “tiger-mother,” always seemed to stress the importance of my one responsibility. I would’ve swept the house, cleaned dishes, taken out the trash, or done the laundry had she asked of me; typical chores kids at that age might’ve had to do at some point, but even Mother took care of these herself, leaving the rice to me.

It seemed so abundant in my household. We stored ours in a repurposed 5-gallon soy sauce bucket which in hindsight might’ve been as old as I was judging by how faded the branding on it had become. I would uncover that bucket everyday and, with childish satisfaction, observe how the heap of grains would reduce over the course of a week until the container become light enough to lift up myself and empty out in a flowing stream of white, coarse granules. Afterwards, the process of replenishing that bucket by essentially deflating rice bags also felt very rewarding as a child. Like how other kids might’ve had fun with Play-Doh, I would always stir my hands in the container, grasping a small fistful to study how it dwindled through the cracks of my fingers.

But when it came time to truly handle the rice, Mother would instruct me to sluice it as if to crush the grains within my hands for as long as I could until the water ran clear. As naive as I was, I assumed that washing it this way felt more intentional and deliberate, like how scrubbing a surface with harder pressure results in a more cleaner outcome, but I could never actually know for sure. After those numerous repetitions of cleansing and flushing, she would tell me to press my palm flat onto the rice, imparting that the height just below my splayed hand would be the approximate level of water needed to adequately cook the rice. I would do so, seeing the water level barely swallow up my hands.

It was clear that my small, child palms could only grind rice a few minutes at a time. Cramps would arise every so often and afterwards, my fingers would even be reduced to little human prunes! One could say that it was uncommonly arduous for a child of my age but in my eyes, it could not have held a flame to how Mother’s hands appeared. If I considered mine’s sore, her’s would comparatively be considered broken. Her’s were like branches of a trees that had survived Winter, gaunt and gangly, and somewhat muddled with blue splotches of veins because her withered skin had seemed so paper-thin. I imagine she upheld the same duties of washing rice as I but through the dilemma of economic poverty, Mother would’ve required a more careful use of water than myself.

And there was another lesson in and of itself, that nothing should ever be wasted in vain; that every single grain of rice was blessing, that any and all life given up to food be appreciated in full gratitude, that nothing could be given without also having been given away. She was harsh in scolding me whenever I left several morsels in my bowl. Her directions ultimately became the basis of my values towards food, cooking, nature. It like how the saying goes: you can take the mother out of Vietnam, but you can’t take Vietnam out of the mother. To me, Mother was the first head-chef I’ve ever known for as fragile as her hands were, they were simultaneously firm upon me, her only son.

Now having spent over a decade in professional kitchens, seeing the economy of ingredients come and go so effortlessly, the production, fabrication, and elevation of such foods, now the reflections of Mother has become ever more present. What I owe to caring for rice are the modest principles of broader aspects in life; service and communion, understanding and compassion, respect, consideration, and acknowledgment. I may not have understood then why I was the rice-rinser of our household until I grew older and other chefs instructed me how they washed rice.

The difference in teaching couldn’t have been more profound. Their approaches largely lacked the kind of empathy toward such a lowly item, something that was seen by them as blank, pallid, and of uninteresting character. And in that moment of realization, it dawned on me as to why I could no longer care to endeavor in those kitchens. Things like edible gold, foie, or wagyu, masses of truffle that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, I never cared for. Let the starving bourgeois grope and scrabble with their wealth over it I always said, because no amount of caviar could’ve instilled in me the persisting exigency of famine, poverty, or starvation; how once those chefs attempt to heighten our cultural staples in such restaurants, it becomes detached it from its roots and is isolated further from those who’ve been nurtured by it all along.

And I saw myself in those grains of rice, without hyperbole nor exaggeration. Everything that I’ve taken on from Mother, I was begrudgingly compelled to bury those teachings from her and vacate room for what I believe now as a wasteful practice in higher-ended fine dining, in addition to divesting personal energy to cultivate a certain rigor in service for these privileged few and not the disadvantaged many.

How could I be so complicit in discarding so much perfectly edible food?

Upon entering these kitchens, many in this industry spoke of their food as a taste-transcendent  nourisher of souls. But dishes from these Michelin-starred restaurants had never intended to actually feed patrons but instead become the edible gouache inside likened art galleries where its highest concern was the elevation of pretentious niblets as self-expression of the chef, not the favor of food as sustenance for your diners. Real, true sustenance could only exist, in my belief, when it becomes an absolute necessity to the preservation of life and spirit, not the exploitation of it and likewise, it ought to be a restaurant’s primary endeavor to sustain the patron through its food, not exploit them.

So to bring this seemingly haughty delineation back to rice: a simple, plain bowl of rice used to be a poor-man’s food and now today you could say that poor-man could barely afford any side dish at any restaurant, let alone rice cooked with the love of a mother’s attention. Restaurants that’ve once been affordable has now followed suit in the inflation of prices, capitalizing on consumers’ general willingness to pay. Nowadays when I imagine the ideal of food, I return to an image of content and a recognition of what it took to make such an offering of kindly warmth and comfort. Rice has become synonymous to every definition, facet, and characteristic of that ideal ever since I was my mother’s sous chef. I don’t ever believe any delicacy, indulgence, nor rarity could ever surmount what rice has truly shown me.