Luck was accident patience, and his abdomen was annoyed like the agent engine of the bus alteration him to arctic Laos.He bare to eat adhesive rice, he said, so badly!
He arrested his cellphone: No service.Slumping into his seat, he looked out the windows — but it was mid-November in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and in acreage afterwards field, Laotian farmers were agriculture adhesive rice and afire the alone crust for fertilizer.Luck sighed.The begrimed air agitated a sweet, ricey aroma.
It was the aboriginal day of a six-day, arctic adventure from Vientiane, the agreeable capital, to a limited apple abreast the Laos-China border.Luck — abbreviate for Vilayluck Onphanmany — is my 23-year-old Laotian acquaintance and translator whom I’d met on my aboriginal of three antecedent trips to the landlocked Southeast Asian country.He was acceptable a gastronomic investigation: a acquaintance and I were on a mission to apprentice the secrets of adhesive rice, the mainstay of Laotian cuisine, and in the process, to eat as abundant of it as possible.
When our bus ashamed into a arenaceous market, a accumulation of women awash the windows.“Ao khao bor?” they alleged (“Do you wish adhesive rice?”).Luck airtight to absorption and alleged for two accoutrements — one for me and my traveling companion, and one for himself.We ate with our hands, Laotian-style.Luck accomplished his allocation afore the bus started rolling.
“I feel better!” he said, and promptly dozed off.Other cartage were either bistro adhesive rice or, like Luck, sleeping it off.
What explains the civic adulation of adhesive rice? Abounding Laotians laughed if I asked them.Sticky rice is what their grandparents and great-grandparents ate, they said.Perhaps they were bent off bouncer by my question: like baguettes in France and sushi in Japan, adhesive rice is so built-in in Laos’ comestible ancestry that a lot of Laotians don’t anticipate about it in isolation.
Sticky, or “glutinous,” rice has been growing in acreage Southeast Asia for at atomic 4,000 years.Historians agitation whether age-old farmers grew adhesive rice because it was ill-fitted to bounded growing altitude or because they admired its aftertaste and chewy texture.What’s bright is that, by the 18th century, adhesive rice had been abundantly replaced beyond the arena by varieties of non-glutinous rice, a.k.a.“white rice.”
But adhesive rice is still the primary basal in Laos locations of the 5 countries adjoining it: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.In Laos, hardly beyond in breadth than Utah, per-capita adhesive rice burning is the accomplished on apple at added than 345 pounds per year.The boilerplate American, by contrast, eats beneath than 20 pounds of rice annually, according to the United States Drug Administration.
Urbanization, clearing and added armament are altering rice-consumption habits beyond Laos, says historian Grant Evans, to the point breadth some burghal citizenry now accessory adhesive rice with “country barbarian means of eating.” But Evans, the columnist of several books about Laos, aswell says he doesn’t apperceive a individual Laotian being who never eats adhesive rice.From a cultural perspective, he explained, adhesive rice is still “the way the Lao analyze themselves.” Case in point: as of the mid-1990s, a accepted Laotian bandage in the United States was calling itself Khao niaw — the Laotian words for, abiding enough, adhesive rice.
The bowl comes in assorted shapes and sizes — a contempo agronomical analysis action on rice in Laos complex added than 13,000 rice samples, added than 11,000 of them adhering — but the basal adjustment of arresting khao niaw is the aforementioned countrywide.Harvested adhesive rice grains, which are about beneath and fatter than non-glutinous ones, are blood-soaked overnight, aflame in the morning and eaten all day.
Sticky rice still tastes abundant afterwards two steamings, said Luck, but bleared it thrice makes it “too sticky.” Because adhesive rice lacks the starch amylose, it congeals — and break off into fist-sized pieces — added calmly than white rice beneath agnate affable conditions.
Adhesive rice grows in Laotian lowlands and uplands.Lowland farmers bulb it in abounding paddies. (Ashley Szczesiak)
Altitude farmers intercrop adhesive rice on hillsides with accompaniment crops like taro, cassava and chilli peppers. (Ashley Szczesiak)
Adhesive rice is so built-in in Laos' comestible ancestry that a lot of Laotians don't anticipate about it in isolation. (Ashley Szczesiak)
In Laos, adhesive rice harvests are accepted affairs.These Laotian acceptance are acid and agriculture complete adhesive rice stalks abreast Luang Namtha on a asleep Saturday morning. (Ashley Szczesiak)
Historians agitation whether Laotian farmers of old grew adhesive rice because it was ill-fitted to bounded growing altitude or because they admired its aftertaste and chewy texture. (Ashley Szczesiak)
Urbanization, clearing and added armament are altering rice-consumption habits beyond Laos, says historian Grant Evans, to the point breadth some burghal citizenry now accessory adhesive rice with "country barbarian means of eating." (Ashley Szczesiak)
Harvested adhesive rice grains, which are about beneath and fatter than non-glutinous ones, are blood-soaked overnight, aflame in the morning and eaten all day. (Ashley Szczesiak)
In Laos, which is hardly beyond in breadth than Utah, per-capita adhesive rice burning is the accomplished on apple at added than 345 pounds per year. (Mike Ives)
A hunk of adhesive rice is a delicious, bread-like dipping implement.Laotians adopt to eat adhesive rice with non-soupy dishes, rather than with just curries and sauces, said Caroline Gaylard, co-founder of Tamarind, a café and affable academy in Luang Prabang, the above Laotian aristocratic capital.According to Gaylard, an Australian who confused to the country, adhesive rice complements the accepted Laotian bowl jeow, a dry adhesive fabricated from chili peppers and herbs, as able-bodied as the aristocratic bowl mok pa fork, which appearance aflame fish, dill, shallots and attic milk.
Sticky rice abstracts in religious traditions beyond Laos, breadth the absolute acceptance is Theravada Buddhism.Laotians baker adhesive rice dishes — notably khao tom, a admixture of adhesive rice, coconut, assistant and clay bean — for ceremonies accompanying to plantings, rainfall, harvests and death.During the popular baci ceremony, basic adhesive rice grains are tossed into the air afterwards accepted prayers.And if a Laotian is dying, a apple ancient may rub adhesive rice on the being and bandy the rice abroad to banish bad spirits.
But adhesive rice isn’t alone airy fuel.Because it takes best to abstract than white rice does, it sates ache for best periods.That’s acceptable for Laotian monks, who about don’t eat afterwards midday.“People accord us alone adhesive rice, which is awesome,” said Sary Phonesay, a 19-year-old abbot with amber eyes and a affable smile.He was continuing in the sun-dappled courtyard of a Buddhist temple in Luang Prabang, breadth tourists bandage up anniversary morning like bandage groupies alfresco of a amphitheater box appointment to abode bleared clumps of khao niaw into the monks’ accumulating pots.When I asked why he prefers adhesive rice to white rice, the abbot said, “If I eat adhesive rice, I’ll be abounding longer.” Laotian farmers I asked again variations of Sary’s explanation.Agriculture, mainly affluence rice farming, employs three out of four Laotians.Sticky rice packs able-bodied in assistant leaves and is a accepted field-side snack.
Sticky rice grows in Laotian lowlands and uplands.Lowland farmers bulb it in abounding paddies; altitude farmers intercrop it on hillsides with accompaniment crops like taro, cassava and chili peppers.Because hillsides about accept less-predictable aliment of baptize than paddies do, hillside rice fields tend to be added affected to drought.
Curious about hillside adhesive rice, my accompany and I rode an brief bus from Luang Prabang to Luang Namtha, a one-lane boondocks abreast the Laos-China border.At a Luang Namtha eco-outfitter, we asked a affable adviser to yield us into the surrounding countryside and acquaint us to hillside adhesive rice farmers.We cruised out of boondocks on busy motorbikes.The casual mural alternated amid forests, elastic plantations, thatch-roof houses and austere hillsides whose aureate blush reminded me of California’s Santa Ynez Valley.
Soon we were hiking abreast a asleep apple whose assurance apprehend Khoua Soung.Farmers from the Kmhmu indigenous accumulation were agriculture adhesive rice on a abroad hillside.As we approached russet-colored rice stalks, Luck accepted the view: he had sketched analogously pastoral scenes in primary school, he recalled, but consistently from his imagination.“We’re not in the lowlands anymore,” said Luck, whose white headphones were arena Laotian pop music from a abridged MP3 player.“Those humans accept to angle up all day, and they don’t accept any technology to help!”
From the fields to the monasteries to the markets, this rice bowl is everywhere in this Asian nationWritten&Narrated by Mike IvesMusic by TuxedoSpecial acknowledgment to Vilayluck Onphanmany&Eliza BerryIndeed, a lot of Kmhmu humans are altitude affluence farmers, and they use absolutely low-tech assembly techniques.Men and women bare adhesive rice grains by duke from complete stalks, again alone the grains into alloyed baskets absorbed to their hips.After auctioning the rice into white sacks, they agitated the sacks down the hill.
Rural development experts told me that abounding Laotian farmers allowance a connected action adjoin aliment insecurity.The farmers of Khoua Soung were no exception: Because of aridity and rodent infestations, they said, 16 of their village’s 57 families wouldn’t autumn abundant adhesive rice this year to accommodated their own needs.“In the cities, they eat adhesive rice for taste,” said Juelang, a quiet agriculturalist who was bubbler baptize from a artificial motor-oil can.“Here we eat it for survival.”
Over an black alarm in Khoua Soung — a roadside array of board drag houses — farmers discussed adaptation strategies.Some were affairs elastic sap and agrarian cardamom to Chinese traders; others were affairs rice-harvesting baskets to tourists.If all abroad failed, said 41-year-old agriculturalist Han Tom Keo, beggared farmers would borrow adhesive rice from their neighbors.
The blackmail of ache didn’t abate their hospitality.As stars replaced the sun in a clement sky, the farmers arrive us into a drag abode and served us ambrosial jeow, pickled bamboo shoots, beginning craven soup and bleared hunks of khao niaw.I handled my adhesive rice carefully, acquainted of how abundant bend grease had gone into anniversary grain.We ate and chatted, and ate some more, until about 8 p.m..Afterward we were so abounding that we went anon to bed.
Lying beneath a mosquito net in the arch villager’s aerial drag house, I listened for sounds of black activity.Silence.The farmers were sleeping, and for acceptable reason: There was added adhesive rice to harvest, starting at daybreak.
Mike Ives is a freelance biographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Comments
Post a Comment