Book Review Part 2

<Rice in Today>

Today, rice, wheat and corn are most important grains in the world and these are indispensable foods for everyone. About one third  of the world's population (more than 1.1 billion people) eat rice as staple food. Especially, it can be said that rice is essential for Asian and they eat it every day. 90 percent of yield of rice comes from Monsoon Asia and 64 percent of them are produced in East and Southeast Asia.


In Asia, there are mainly two types rice. First type of rice is Indica rice. The features of this are slender and long. Also, when it is cooked, it becomes separated. The other type of rice is Japonica rice. This has distinctions of short and rounded. When it is cooked, it became sticky.
Like this,  Indica rice is non-sticky grain and it is said that the taste is worse than Japonica rice, but many Asian countries prefer Indica. Particularly, Thai says the rice smells like jasmine. The reason why Japanese prefer more Japonica and other Asian countries prefer Indica comes from their cuisine. For example, other Asian countries use rice with other ingredients to boil or fry with oil. Then, if they use Japonica, it became more sticky with oil and its taste became bad. However, Japanese do not use rice with oil and they choose Japonica because Japonica is  suitable of making Sushi.


Rice produces the useful things for daily life except the role of food. For instance, Japanese reuse chaff as fertilizer and use rice as ash when they make animal bristle into brush in order to remove oil from animals in the past. Even more, Rice's husk is used as straw hats, sandals, tatami, rainwears and so on. These tools were important for them at that time. That is to say, rice is necessary for Japanese in the past and even now.



 I knew that Japonica is unique in Asia and other Asians prefer Indica before reading this section. But, I didn't know the reason comes from how to cook rice. I'm so interested in why Thai says Indica smells like jasmine because I don't think so. I didn't feel that Indica has a unique smell althogh  I have eaten Indica several times. I want to know it. Also, I was impressed that in the past Japanese use rice as food and tools exhaustively. Therefore, Rice has a lot of use and they utilize it to the maximum.