Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity

1 Rice

15 1 | Rice In Puerto Rico we are used to a diet centered on rice, and so accustomed are our digestive systems to it, that on a day when we miss rice, it seems as though we haven’t eaten. —elías gutiérrez, Superintendent of the San Sebastián Demonstration Farm, Agricultural Experiment Station, 1938 Perhaps the most effective introduction to the topic of rice is a personal anecdote . One night in July 1989, while I was staying in Sisikon—a town in the Swiss canton of Uri—it turned out that my only option for having supper was the restaurant of a local hotel. A first look at the hotel confirmed that winter, not summer, was presumably its busiest season. An attentive waitress led me to the dining room, where—lost among the wooden posts and columns of a large hall—four couples were enjoying their meals. Detecting that I was a foreigner, the waitress went out of her way to wish me a pleasant evening and to warn me that the restaurant offered only a single , fixed menu for dinner. In response, I asked her if it included rice, to which she replied, quite cheerfully and encouragingly, that—yes—it did. To this point, everything had unfolded with the propriety and customary orderliness of a Swiss restaurant that catered to locals. However, when I proceeded to inform thirty-five students—who were waiting in the entryway for tables to be set up—that the first course would consist of rice, the atmosphere of quiet decorum instantly dissolved. My news set off a buzz of commotion, and as the students spilled into the dining hall, exclaiming “at last, at last”—for they had spent weeks eating regional dishes accompanied by vegetables, greens, pastas, and whole wheat bread—they expressed the hope that the rice might also be accompanied by stewed beans. Ever since, this vivid spectacle—the students’ fervent reaction—has keyed many of my questions about the history of Puerto Rican food and culinary customs. 16 Rice The sentiment quoted at the beginning of this chapter dates to 1938, but it is still frequently voiced by Puerto Ricans of all ages. Rice continues to be an essential part of the daily intake of food for the majority of the Puerto Rican population. A new breakdown adopted by the island’s Nutrition Assistance Program (pan) in fact recognizes rice as a basic food in its promotional graphics. These show a plate of food, split into two parts, which together illustrate how the 429,000 families that, as of 2001, were program recipients should expend the funds provided them for the purchase of food: of the monies awarded to individuals, 25 percent is to be used for meat and vegetables, and 75 percent for rice and beans.¹ In the most venerable little eateries and restaurants of metropolitan San Juan, or of the city’s Tejas de Humacao neighborhood, it is enough simply to read the menu to assure oneself that Elías Gutiérrez’s dictum still applies. Gracing the menu are white rice, rice with salted cod, rice with sausages, rice with pig’s feet, rice with fatback, rice with chicken, rice with land crabs, and rice with beans. Or similarly, one could flip through the recipe books for the cuisine known as puertorriqueña de navidades (traditional Puerto Rican Christmas treats and dishes) and find: rice with coconut, rice cornmeal pudding, rice pasteles, and rice with pork and pigeon peas. In addition , although they are remnants of an older fried cuisine, one will also encounter granitos and almojábanas (fried rice flour infused with cheese, and cheese-flavored rice flour fritters, respectively) in certain Puerto Rican municipalities . Such is the predilection for rice that servings of it will even be accompanied by “pega’o,” for which there is usually a craving at the moment it is cooked. All of this leads one to ask, why does it occupy such a central position in our diet? Why do we have these expectations of it? Why—given all the smart, clever ways we now have to shape our diet, do we continue preparing rice with fatty pieces of meat in it? Furthermore, why do we expect that a portion of rice must in itself be a major part of meals, while at same time thinking of rice as indispensable for turning a serving of food into a true “meal?” But what in a way is most curious and compelling...