Greek Gastronomy
Grains of Plenty: Greek Rice
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By Diana Farr Louis Photography: Vassilis Stenos / Food styling: Tina Webb It’s hard to imagine the Greek kitchen without rice. Rice dishes – from soups to pilafs, stuffings to desserts– are so much a part of our daily diet that we take them for granted. But although the precious grain that keeps well over half the world alive was known to the ancients, it did not appear in Greek cooking pots until some two millennia later.Like so many Eastern novelties,rice entered the Hellenic world as a result of Alexander the Great’s conquests.When his armies slogged past Persia into northern India, they encountered the plants growing in the southern foothills of the Himalayas, along the rivers where Basmati still grows today. Perhaps a bowl of rice stuffed their bellies and fueled their urge to march. In any case, through them knowledge of this new food reached Athens and eventually Rome but made no appearance at symposia or Lucullan banquets. Too expensive, too rare, it entered the medicine cabinet instead. Anthimus, a 6th-century court physician at Ravenna, valued its soothing qualities. He routinely prescribed rice boiled with goat’s milk until soft for upset stomachs and colics, as we still do today.  In Greece, “lappá” – plain, boiled mushy rice – is universally recommended for intestinal problems and for children and old folks with irritable digestive systems. It would take several more centuries for westerners to be introduced to its culinary potential, while only in the modern era have scientists understood how its complex carbohydrates and minerals provide our bodies with nutrition and energy, its full complement of amino acids builds muscles, and its fibers reinforce the immune system. The wide range of rice varieties that grows in Greece each has its unique place in the kitchen.  Meanwhile, though Asians and Indians had been surviving and thriving on rice since time immemorial, it took Mohammed to make the West aware of it as food. Rice drizzled with clarified butter was the Prophet’s favorite dish, so naturally his followers acquired a liking for it, too. With the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century, the cultivation and consumption of rice – along with many other now common plants like lemons and bitter oranges, artichokes, spinach and a host of others – began to inch its way around the Mediterranean. By the 10th century, Spain and Sicily were exporting rice, by the 15th Italians in the Po valley were making their first risottos. Rice must have come to mainland Greece from the East, with the Ottoman occupation, at around the same time. While some food historians believe that the Byzantines invented dolmades – the technique of using vine, cabbage or other leaves as wrappers for a rice stuffing –they would not have had access to rice until the 10th century, when it began to be widespread in the Holy Land, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The Turks, however, placed rice at the heart of their kitchen, and the sultans, regardless of period, continued to emulate Mohammed in their infatuation with pilaf – itself a Persian word. Rice being imported by the overlords, considerable time must have elapsed before privileged Greeks were preparing it themselves, longer still before the average country person even tasted it. As a result, rice acquired a mystique. Rice dishes were served only on special occasions – at weddings as in western Crete or stuffed into an Easter lamb as on Samos or Andros. Its grains came to symbolize fertility and prosperity. But few families would have been wealthy enough to supply sackfuls of the precious food for guests to throw at newlyweds, a universal practice nowadays.  The Rice Revolution Almost everyone has read about the Green Revolution, whereby thanks to genetic manipulation and sounder farming practices yields have soared in places where rice is the staple for hundreds of millions of people. Yet few people, even Greeks, know that something similar occurred in this country. Until 1960, Greece imported most of the rice it consumed. While it still imports some short grain rice, it now ranks fifth among European producers in terms of exports – mainly of long grain rice. Annual harvests total 220,000 tons, 120,000 after processing, with 50 percent shipped abroad. The figures are negligible when compared with those of the giants – India (which accounts for one-third of the world’s rice), China and Indonesia – but nevertheless contain a fascinating tale. At the turn of the last century, the southern Peloponnese – Laconia and Messenia – began to cultivate rice, but the fields literally dried up as the area’s rainfall diminished, and now account for just a few thousand tons. By midcentury, agriculture in Greece had virtually ceased, thanks to almost a decade of war. The Nazi Occupation and the Civil War left rural districts unfarmed and under-populated. The country was starving, dependent on foreign aid. Early in 1949, an American agricultural guru, part of the post-war relief effort, paid a visit that was to set off ripples of change. He headed not south but north to the dusty salt plain of Anthili, where the Persians had camped in 480 BC before defeating Leonidas’s 400 Spartans at Thermopylai. But Walter Packard wasn’t thinking of the past. In the village café, he told the farmers how, with the help of American bulldozers and tractors, they could turn the Sperchios river delta green with rice shoots. The TIME magazine article of June 21, 1954, which reported the event, goes on to describe how 40 landowners allocated more than 100 acres to the project, farmers worked their hoes for $1.50 a day, and US machinery diverted the course of the river. The villagers nicknamed Packard “Pappou” or Grandpa, and under his guidance expanded the 100 acres to 1,000, then 2,000 and by 1953 to 4,000 acres. As the article concluded, “The gain to the Greek economy on an original U.S. overseas-aid investment of $43,000 was over $10 million. More important, perhaps, was the fact that the farmers of Anthili for the first time in human memory were prosperous and selfsupporting.” This success story repeated itself alongside almost every river in northern Greece, with the exception of the Evros, which forms the border with Turkey. Although some rice is grown at the mouth of the mythical Acheron in Epirus and in the Acheloos delta near Agrinio (Aitolia), the bulk of Greek rice comes from Macedonia, with 75 percent from around Thessaloniki.  Its flat expanses, heavy rainfall and the presence of great rivers like the Axios, Loudias, Gallikos and Aliakmon create ideal conditions for rice. There are four basic methods of rice cultivation: upland or dry, hillside plants like those eked from poor soil in South America; rain-fed, shallow paddies, as in South Asia; deep water, grown in estuaries that may be flooded up to 15 feet; and irrigated, as practiced in China. In Greece, rice seeds are sown in April/May and are harvested in October/November. During this time, the fields are flooded for four days and left to dry for another four. Rice plants are happiest in shallow, slow-flowing water that can be regulated by irrigation. Botanists estimate that some 100,000 varieties of rice exist, of which about 8,000 are cultivated in 110 countries. Fortunately, this unbelievably complicated plant can be squeezed into two basic types: oryza sativa Japonica and Indica, in other words, short grain and sticky or long grain and separated. A third type, Javanica, is less known in the west. Cooks also know their rice by function, i.e. Sushi rice and Risotto rice (Arborio, Carnaroli, for example), which belong to the Japonica category; Basmati to the Indica variety, while Carolina, a most popular all-purpose kind, medium grain and somewhat sticky, is also Japonica.  One can also classify rice by color, place of origin, processing (as in parboiled), and so forth, but Greeks have the following names for their home-grown varieties: Glassé – a white, medium-grain sticky rice used for soups and puddings. This is the rice we add to our favorite avgolemono (egg-lemon) chicken or fish soups, the Easter mageiritsa made with lamb’s innards, but also to the nursery treat, rizogalo, rice milk or pudding, that kids adore and for which many adults harbor secret longings. This is the rice grown in the Sperchios delta mentioned earlier, the Acheloos delta, and near Thessaloniki. Blue Rose – white, medium grain but less sticky, which is perfect for Greece’s huge range of “yemista” or stuffed dishes: stuffed peppers and tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, artichokes; fillings for chicken, turkey, lamb; and dolmades, whether made of vineleaves, cabbage, chard, lettuce, zucchini blossoms. It shares the same growing region as Glassé. Carolina – chalk white, medium grain, creamy, this variety grows near Serres in Central Macedonia, around the Strymon river delta. Some producers recommend it for yemista and yiouvarlakia (simmered rice-meatballs); others suggest using it for oven-baked casseroles and risottos, which Greeks are beginning to enjoy thanks to the proliferation of Italian restaurants in cities and islands. Though a ship from Madagascar allegedly brought the first grains to South Carolina in the 17th century, it has since spread far beyond the US Eastern seaboard. Nyhaki – white, long grain, this is the best rice for pilafs, because its grains remain, as the Greeks say, spyroto or single, never mushy, never clumping. In a pilaf, the rice is sautéed first in butter or olive oil before the cooking liquid (broth or water) is added. Pilaf is as versatile as pasta. It can be combined with just about anything one desires or eaten plain. Dishes like spanakoryzo – spinach, spring onions and dill tossed with oil and simmered with the rice in water seasoned with lemon juice and tomato paste – rank high as comfort food, easy to cook, and delicious. At the other end of the spectrum reign the luxury pilafs, spiked with mussels, shrimp and/or lobster. Home cooks whip up splendid concoctions with leftovers like roast lamb or chicken, plus a handful of raisins and pine nuts; poor households used to thrive on pilafs mixing two or three starches, such as rice and lentils or rice, bulgur, and angel hair pasta. But the most lavish pilaf of all must be that made for Cretan weddings. Served at the western end of the island to guests numbering as many as one thousand, vast quantities of rice are boiled in an enormous cauldron with broth made from at least six yearling lambs or kids. And because it’s cooked over an open fire in military amounts, this is man’s work. And so tasty that, in these affluent times, guests usually eat their fill and ignore the spitted lambs presented as the main course. Parboiled – bonnet rice, pale yellow, long grain. All rice must undergo some form of processing to render it edible. Most rice is milled and polished to remove first the husk and the outer covering of bran. This leaves the grains an attractive white but ironically destroys some desirable fibers and B-group vitamins. Cooking in turn breaks down the cells, releasing the starch inside, and making rice both digestible and nutritious – especially when combined with vegetables or meats that add essential proteins. In the case of parboiled rice, the grains are also immersed in boiling water and subsequently steamed. Although the processing takes up to 72 hours, rice treated this way cooks faster and because the grains remain separate, it is good for pilafs and salads. Brown rice – unmilled, bran-coated, long grain – contains all those nutrients removed from white rice. It takes considerably longer to cook and has more flavor, but is decidedly more “rustic” and does not keep as well. Preferred by health-food fans, it is a fairly recent newcomer to the Greek market. Organic rice – Another recent arrival, the first domestically grown organic rice appeared on Greek shelves in 2004, processed by Argyraki Bros, Inc (SABE?) under the Trofino label. Just two years later, the firm began exporting to the EU. A Kastoria-based company, Arosis, also markets organic brown, parboiled bonnet and nyhaki rice. At present, organic rice accounts for about 1 percent of the crop. Finally, Agrino, with origins in Agrinio and factories in Athens and Thessaloniki, leads the Greek industry in conventionally grown rice and has the distinction of being the first rice company in Europe to follow the Good Agricultural Practices program, aimed at protecting the farmer, consumer, and the environment. Not only are the grower and district mentioned on the packet for purposes of traceability, this also means that “nothing is wasted”: The burned husk ash is used in heavy industry, steam from parboiling is converted into electricity, covering three-quarters of the factory’s needs, and the processing by-products end up as rice flour for desserts, pet food, and even pharmaceuticals. Things have progressed indeed since Walter Packard’s visit in 1949. The Sperchios River delta went green with rice shoots in the 1950s. Since then, almost every river in northern Greece has repeated that success. Just a few of the ways Greek cooks use rice: as filling in dolmades, as a powdery starch for making loukoumia, and in soothing rice and vegetable dishes, such as tomatorizo (tomato rice). |
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