As a young boy growing up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, JJ Johnson distinctly recalls rice taking center stage at the dinners he shared at his Afro-Puerto Rican grandmother’s house every Sunday.
Those memories, he writes in his new book, eventually led him to the Culinary Institute of America and then to top New York restaurants. One thing he noticed at each of those stops was that rice was treated as an afterthought, never as a featured menu item.
Then in 2011, he was invited to cook with his mentor, the opera singer and acclaimed Harlem chef Alexander Smalls, for several months at a boutique hotel in Accra, Ghana. “No matter where I ate, from market counters to high-end bistros, rice was the staple and the star.”
He wondered why rice wasn’t cherished more in America, and set out to change that. Today he’s the chef and founder of the Harlem-based restaurants called FieldTrip, which highlight rice traditions from around the world. And now he has written a cookbook on the topic: “The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes From Around the World for the Heart of Your Table” (Flatiron Books, $34.99).
Johnson provides a helpful tutorial on handling dozens of rice varieties before showcasing them in recipes for every course and occasion: simple sides (Filipino Garlic Rice), hearty mains (Hainanese Chicken Rice), lighter fare (Black Rice Salad with Coconut Lime Dressing), comfort food (Vegan Turmeric Rice Soup), desserts (Orange Cardamom Basmati Rice Pudding) and drinks (Korean Brown Rice and Green Leaf Tea).
His writing partner, Danica Novgorodoff, a graphic artist who supplied the charming illustrations, learned to cook rice from her Chinese grandma and shares her personal perspective, as do several renowned rice historians and chefs.
Given that “without rice, whole civilizations around the world would be unimaginable,” Johnson makes a solid case that it’s a conversation we can all participate in — preferably at the dinner table.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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