BOOM IN RICE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30216, 22 August 1963, Page 3

BOOM IN RICE

No Longer A Dessert (By a Reuter Correspondent) LONDON. While Japanese and other Asian nations are being urged to eat more bread, graineating Britons are being encouraged to “eat more rice.” Imports from the United States alone last year rose by 44 per cent, compared with 1961—from just under 27,000 tons to nearly 29,000 tons. Not only are Britons eating more rice—they are also learning to use it in many new ways. Recent demonstrations in London have been aimed at teaching hotel, hospital and school caterers, store buyers and, of course, the ordinary housewife, the numerous tasty ways of serving rice as a main dish, a dessert or a vegetable. Young British housewives today tend to regard rice rather as a vegetable than as a sweet. Forgotten are the days when rice was looked upon as the staple “pudding” of nursery and boarding school. Then, it was either baked in the oven with milk and sugar, or boiled and eaten with jam or syrup. Today housewives start with the continental risotto, then cross the Atlantic to seek all sorts of savoury dishes combining rice, tomatoes, mushrooms, curry powder, meat and eggs. They have discovered, too, that the flavour can be varied by cooking their rice in chicken or beef stock for savouries: or in orange or other fruit juice for desserts. Their breakfast tables feature puffed rice, rice crispies. sugared rice and flaked rice as often as the traditional corn and wheat cereals What most of them do not yet realise, however, is that there are as many different varieties of rice as there are of grain cereal flours. Moreover, each variety has its own special characteristics and quality which suit it to a particular use. Apart from imports from elsewhere, the United States alone exports over a dozen different kinds of rice to England. Long grain, short grain, round grain, brown milled rice, par-boiled rice, pre-fluffed rice and coloured rice (for desserts) are just some of them. Even the traditional coloured wedding rice, thrown at the bride as a symbol of fertility, has taken on a new look. It appears nowdays gaily coloured and packed in attractive little bags tied with white ribbon.