Rice: A Global History

Description

This is a detailed history of rice, from its origin as a staple food in Asian and West African countries to its ubiquitous place in meals across the world today. It explores rice in society, literature, music, painting and poetry. Containing an array of delicious recipes from around the world, Rice is an engaging look at one of our most enriching culinary ingredients.

Renee Marton is a former chef based in New York who has written widely on food, cooking and culinary history.

"Historical anecdotes and evocative descriptions of meals certainly whet the appetite for cooking up, or ordering in, rice for dinner. In broad brush strokes Marton recounts the movement of rice through the ages. . . . The book does a nice job of illustrating the long global history of rice and the many ways in which cultures have turned rice into a food and a symbol. It is an accessible source on the past 1,000 years or so of rice history, nicely illustrated with colour photographs of rice meals, tools, and historical depictions, from a sixteenth-century Persian sultan receiving rice to an 1866 rice harvest in South Carolina. If you have never really thought much about where the rice you eat comes from, then this book will open your eyes to how global and cross-cultural the story of rice has been and will offer some alternative recipes by which to try a taste of this history." -- "Nature Plants"