A long time ago in america, an Indonesian friend introduced me to the value of rice. Her mom made some really tasty Indonesian dishes, but they were extremely spicy. I learned that the whole point of the rice is to cool your mouth down.
I'm thankful for this lesson as it has allowed me to survive almost a decade in Taiwan where you pretty much eat rice everyday. When you eat food in Taiwan the choice everybody asks is "rice or noodles?" While noodles are the focus of the meal, I prefer rice cause the focus is the actual food, with rice just being on the side. Which means most times i don't even eat the rice.
But this can drive some people crazy. Many Taiwanese can not eat a meal without there being rice. There could be some succulent chicken and some nice veggies, but without rice, they just can't eat it. This is starting to change though, as more and more people view rice as just useless food to make you full, but not providing any nutrition. It's also starting to be linked to diabetes, and could be one cause why Asians have the second highest rate of diabetes.
But of course rice will never go away, nor should it. Other than just a bowl of rice, so many amazing other things can be done with rice. With enough ingenuity pretty much anything can be made from rice. The picture above is a great example. It's a japanese treat which is also popular in Taiwan, called mochi. It's a very sweet and glutinous food, that usually has some kind of flavoring added to it. Sometimes it can have things inside, which can range from sweets to meats (not tasty at all).
I will now leave you with a popular story about mochi. One time a guy was eating mochi and it got stuck in his throat. So his daugther went and got the vacuum cleaner and stuck it in his mouth and it sucked the mochi out. Apparently Asia doesn't have the Heimlich.
