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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. It is likely, many folks will enjoy a rice dish of some sort today. It wasn't Thanksgiving in our household, if rice wasn't on the table. That was according to my grandma, Edna, who lived in Inwood, but was from, wait for it, North Carolina. Rice is a staple of food many depend upon for affordable meals, and also, for dishes that mark important events, whether it's a holiday, or family gathering.

Chef JJ Johnson who owns the local restaurant chain Field Trip has written a new book all about rice.

The cookbook is called The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes from Around the World for the Heart of Your Table. It includes recipes from different cultures, stories about his family's rice-centric recipes, as well as more about the grain's extensive history in human civilization. JJ writes in the book, "Rice is a simple grain with a complex history, a staple that not only nourishes, but also connects people to community, cultural tradition, and the land, in a sense, home."

A reminder, you will hear callers throughout this conversation, but this is an encore presentation, so we won't be taking calls today. I started by asking JJ about his grandma Bibi and what were some of her favorite rice-centric dishes.

JJ Johnson: I grew up with my grandmother making a dish called asopao, which is a soupy Puerto Rican rice dish. You didn't get asopao de pollo, you can asopao de camarones. She would make a big pot on the stove, this very aluminum silver pot that she would make, and that Asopao would last a week, and they would reheat it, and they would drink it out of a coffee cup.

They would walk around the house, and they would just drink it out of a cup, that was like pre-meal, like a amuse-bouche on Sunday dinner, and then she would do a arroz con gandules. She would have concón or pegao, which is a crispy bottom part of the rice in the middle of the table. She would do sancocho. She would do tons of these rice dishes at the table, and it was a celebration.

It was like everybody was always looking forward to this grandioso, amazing rice dish. It was like a debate between the week. I could hear my great-great aunts arguing about it. My mom, my aunt, my dad, my uncle, everybody was trying to put in their two cents of what it should be at the table. It connected us all. It kept us all going, and it made us feel very comforting at the table, even for myself as a little kid.

Alison Stewart: When you became a professional, a food professional, how did those images and those feelings and those moments of being around your family and rice, translate into your profession for you?

JJ Johnson: Early on in my profession, I didn't really cook any food for my family. I was cooking very Eurocentric food. Probably, the only rice dish I was cooking was risotto, which I talk about in the book. Not until I traveled to Ghana, that's when I found myself through food, and then I started to fall back in love with rice, because I started to hate rice early on in my professional life, because it wasn't something that was at the table.

It wasn't something that anybody-- You would see in a fine dining restaurant. Why should I know how to make my grandma's pot of rice? I was starting to look down on my own culture, and then when I went to Ghana, I was like, "Hold on, this food is delicious, and it's reminding me of somewhere." Oh, that's my Bibi [unintelligible 00:03:40] kitchen. Then, that's when I started to explore a lot of rice, and cooking the food of myself.

Alison Stewart: When you began to research the history of rice, what do you think is important for people to know about the early history of rice, and how it became, pardon the pun, ingrained in different civilizations?

JJ Johnson: I think that the most important part is that, there's two, I call the two yellow brick roads of rice. There was only one yellow brick road at a time, and that rice was cultivated and grown in West Africa. West Africa was shipping rice all around the world, and then for some reason, it got blacklisted. They then sold the seeds to the Chinese, and then they started to grow rice.

Then, they realized they didn't need their seeds anymore from West Africa, and that's why you see two grains of rice. You see glaberrima, which is a West African grain, and then you see glaberrima oryza. The sad part about is that when we think about rice, the first place that comes to mind is Asia, but it's really-- Your mind should be going to West Africa, should be going to the Caribbean, should be going to South America.

Those are places that also celebrate rice, or also are ingrained in the grain, and have very deep history. We really touch on that in The Simple Art of Rice. We talk about the history of the grain. We talk about how the grain has morphed, and you see it become Carolina Gold Rice in the American South, or Red Hill Rice and Trinidad. We start to talk about where you start to see the shifts of the grain.

Alison Stewart: My guest is JJ Johnson. The name of the cookbook is The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes from Around the World for the Heart of Your Table. We have got some calls already. Let's talk to Jaana calling in from Westchester. Hi, Jaana.

Jaana: Hi.

Alison Stewart: You're on the air.

Jaana: Yes. I just wanted to say that the subject of rice is one that's very near and dear to many Indian, and Indian American hearts. I am Indian, but never really loved rice. That's something that, right away is unusual. I always was more into all the Indian breads. There's one particular South Indian dish that I do love, and you won't find it in many restaurants. It's called puliogare, and it's a tamarind peanut rice. It's absolutely delicious.

It's usually quite spicy, and it's something that also you can find in temples, because the priest will make it, and then it's considered, actually, almost holy rice. It's very special, and because the priests have made it. The other thing that I just wanted to mention is that South Indians don't tend to use that Basmati rice, which is very separate, and I love it. It's lovely, and it's light, but South Indian people use long grain rice, which has more starch in it, and is more sticky.

Alison Stewart: Jaana, thank you for calling. It's interesting just hearing Jaana talk about it, and talk about what it meant for her family, but also then getting into the history, and getting into understanding that individual cultures handle rice in individual ways, and it means different things in different cultures. Before we leave the West African discussion, I do have to ask about the Jollof rice.

JJ Johnson: Oh, boy.

Alison Stewart: This can be a [laughter] friendly debate. We'll say it's friendly about where it originated. When you think about Jollof rice, tell us your position, or how you think about it, and how it originated?

JJ Johnson: I'm going to take a deep breath. The type of Jollof rice that I cook every day in my restaurant Field Trip in New York City is Ghanaian Jollof. That's because I cooked in Ghana, and that was the Jollof I was taught to cook. My Nigerian friends tell me it's good, but I don't really try. I try to stay out the Nigerian Ghanaian Jollof wars, and that's why in The Simple Art of Rice, I wanted to highlight another culture around Jollof, which is Liberian Jollof Rice, which reminded me when I started to learn about it over the last two years of research, it started to remind me of jambalaya, and the rice a little bit more stickier together.

You have all these-- You have chicken, you have seafood, you have beef. You have all these things in it, and if I'm a person that likes to celebrate or set the table, or trying to change up my Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or any holiday, I can put this beautiful big pot of the Liberian Jollof in the middle of the table. The real reason is, when we think of West Africa, we are thinking of Jollof the same way when we think of India, we're thinking about Biriyani now.

It's cooked, there's so many different ways of Biriyani. I think Jollof Rice is the key to exploring West Africa more, and hopefully, people will turn the key to explore-- Using Liberian Jollof to explore another part of Africa.

Alison Stewart: What's unique about Liberian Jollof?

JJ Johnson: It has chunks of beef, it has chicken wings, it has shrimp. Typically, Jollof you eat, you just make your Jollof in the pot, and then you have your meat and everything on the side. This is all cooked together in the stage. The way that I've envisioned it, the way that I've seen it, that's what makes it different, and how I want people to celebrate it.

Alison Stewart: What are grandma grains?

JJ Johnson: Ooh, the grandma grains of the world?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

JJ Johnson: Those are the original origin grains. Carolina Gold rice, Midlands, Italian Pilgrim Rice, Black Tribune, Emperors Rice, or Jefferson Red, or really Red Rice AKA Jefferson Red Rice, those are the grandma grains. When we are buying rice in the store, we're just like, "Oh, we're getting long grain." "We're getting short grain." "We're getting instant rice." Nobody knows what that rice actually is.

I think when I want people to think about rice, if you're a coffee drinker, I want you to think about when you're like, "I want the Ethiopian on the left side of the mountain," or the right side of the mountain is coffee. That's the same thing of the grandma grains of the world. Carolina Gold rice is the grandma grain of America. That is America's rice, Carolina Gold, not Carolina rice, Carolina Gold rice. That is the grain of America. Basmati rice is the mother grain of India. Italian Pilgrim's rice is the mother grain of Italy.

Though that's what the mother grains are, and we really dive deep into that, we break it down and talk about heirloom grains the same way, but if you really are a rice connoisseur, or you want to up your pantry, you can go get some beautiful grandma grains right in your backyard. Especially, if you live in New Jersey, there's a grain farm in New Jersey called Blue Moon Farm that's great, that people were like, "Oh, my God, they're just five miles from my house. I never knew that even existed."

Right in upstate New York in Hudson Valley, there's a West African rice farmer. Anywhere there's irrigation, and somebody's growing rice, you just don't realize it, and that rice should be on your table. Even if you don't get The Simple Art of Rice, that rice should just be on your table anyway.

Alison Stewart: Two things, one, Up Your Pantry needs to be the name of your next cookbook. [chuckles] What is the best climate for rice, to grow rice?

JJ Johnson: I think people have figured out how to grow rice in many different ways. Remember, you can grow rice in rivers, lakes, anywhere water flows. I think the best way for me to describe it is, if you know a crawfish farmer, they grow rice. If you know a person that lived in Martha's Vineyard for a really long time, they were growing rice. The Dutch in Hudson Valley, they were growing rice.

Anywhere where water is flowing, people have figured out how to grow rice. The perfect irrigation, there's a debate on that. I think what we're all learning is, enough for me to start geeking out with you-

Alison Stewart: It's okay.

JJ Johnson: -and that we're all learning that the rice that-- The way that most rice is produced in America right now is giving off the same carbon-neutral that cows are giving off. When I talk about the grandma grains of the world, we're going to start seeing more grandma grains, because that's the way we should be producing rice, and it should have never stopped.

Alison Stewart: In going back to the original way.

JJ Johnson: To the original way of milling and growing rice. It should have never stopped. That's a whole another conversation that we can get into on the reason why that stopped.

Alison Stewart: Tell me real quick.

JJ Johnson: Well, I mean, agriculture is the foundation of America. Enslaved people were the ones growing rice. When enslaved people were free, they just wanted the land, and nobody wanted to give them the land, and they stopped growing rice. Rice was a cash crop, it stopped being a cash crop. It was a cash crop like gold and cotton. That's when the art of rice was lost.

You go back in history, that's when Parboiled rice came in effect. That's when the government was injecting rice, B5 into rice to make it gold, because nobody knew what it looked like.

That's why in certain labels, you just see "Carolina" because it was a marketing tool. There's a lot into the whole reason of why rice is the perception the way it is right now.

With the book, The Simple Art of Rice, it will change that for you. It will change your kitchen table because you'll be realizing, "Rice, this is my Swiss Army knife. I can cook many dishes," or you'll start to learn the history of saying, "Oh, wow, I didn't know this." That's the greatest thing about rice. The individual grain of rice will teach you history about folks and places just here in our country, or around the world.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a couple of calls. Matthew is calling from Montclair, New Jersey. Hi, Matthew.

Matthew: Hi, how you doing? First, I would say, nice to hear you're back, Alison, and doing well. First, that's that. Second, I just wanted to call this conversation about rice. My father immediately sprung to mind, is that he was from Iran, from Tehran. Growing up, in our house, he refused to really eat pasta ever. I never saw him eat pasta once. Everything was rice, and had to be Basmati rice.

My mother, who is a really splendid home cook, would make chicken cacciatore or Bolognese or beef bourguignon. It was never pasta, it was always over Basmati rice. No egg noodles, no pasta, Basmati rice and chicken cacciatore is a pretty solid memory for me growing up, so.

Alison Stewart: I love that you described your mother's cooking as splendid as well. [chuckles] Let's talk to Anne from Brooklyn, who wants to go down the road of history a little bit. Hi, Anne. Thank you for calling in.

Anne: Thank you. It's boring, but I'll tell you that I'm 75-years-old, so I remember things a little longer. My mom explained to me that the enslaved women, African women would carry seeds in their hair, as they travelled.

JJ Johnson: Correct

Anne: They commonly would go from place-to-place, they had the watermelon seeds, and they had the rice grain seeds. It wasn't like it was traded off a ship, or something like that. In South Carolina is where they started to cultivate rice, the Geechee and the Gullah. For a very long time when we were young, we ate some rice, and people would say, "Oh, your family must be from South Carolina, or Louisiana," because those were only states where people ate rice.

The people who cultivated in America, the British, the French, the Irish and the German, were all potato cultures, potato soup, potato salad. They did not eat rice. Those seeds and the growing of seeds, that was because of enslaved people who brought-- The women brought the seeds in their hair, and they taught America how to grow, and cultivate rice. I just wanted to say that. I love your show. I've been to the gentleman's restaurant, and his rice dishes are fabulous. Thank you.

JJ Johnson: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Anne was-- That was a full plate from Anne. We got some history, we got a restaurant review. You were nodding your head in agreement about the women?

JJ Johnson: Oh, yes. I think the biggest thing when we were writing this book, is like you talk about-- Anne was talking about the women braiding their hair with rice seeds. People were like, "Well, JJ, are you sure you want to write about that? There's nothing in the history books." I'm like, "Black culture is hymns and whispers." You just heard it.

Alison Stewart: Oral tradition.

JJ Johnson: That's in the book, we talk about it. I think that's the greatest thing when you look about the culture, and with the rice, where the people went, the rice followed. We know they didn't go there because they wanted to, but the rice grains came with them. A fun fact is, red rice was banned from the table in America, because they knew that it pointed back to West Africa.

Thomas Jefferson put Jefferson in front of the name, and called it Jefferson Red rice, and then it was allowed on the table. He saw it as a cash crop, and he was figuring out-- In American history, rice is a part of a lot of it, and it just makes me excited that it's exciting people, exciting your listeners when they're calling in.

Alison Stewart: All right, before we get into a couple of recipes, and a couple of tips, we've been getting a lot of questions about arsenic in rice. You said this is a conversation that's come up. Some of it is misinformation.

JJ Johnson: Yes. Arsenic is coming up around rice really heavily. Listen, arsenic's in the soil. It doesn't matter if you eat a carrot, you can potentially have arsenic on it. It's the real reason why I tell people, "Wash your rice. Wash your vegetables." There's arsenic in the soil, it just depends on how much arsenic is there. Yes, it's something we should pay attention to, it's something we should challenge, and it's something that we should push the industry forward, the rice industry forward.

If you're getting that many people dialing in or calling, or want to talk about it, it means that we need to change our rice consumption. We need to go to those grandma grains. We need to go to the farmers market. We need to look at who-- Getting shipped potentially Anson Mills' rice to your house, because those people are taking care of the rice. It's the same way like if you read labels in the grocery store, push the rice industry forward to get better rice for all because, yes, there's arsenic all around.

We touch on it in The Simple Art of Rice. It's something that made me worry, opening a rice restaurant like, "Oh, my goodness, am I feeding people arsenic?" I'm buying from sustainable rice farmers, and doing my homework as well.

Alison Stewart: All right. Here's a couple of-- We have to give people a little something to try. You talk about the finger trick, in terms of getting the right amount of water. Could you explain the finger trick?

JJ Johnson: For everybody out there that doesn't cook a good pot of rice, remember that rice doubles in size, so you need to have a pot where it can expand. I don't want anybody to follow a two-to-one ratio anymore with rice, I want you to put the two cups of rice in the pot, flatten it out, put your third finger on top of the rice, pour the liquid to the first knuckle.

Alison Stewart: Not all the way to the bottom of the pot, on top of the rice, a flattened rice.

JJ Johnson: On top of the rice. Right. Pour it all the way to the top knuckle, to your first knuckle, and then put it on the stove at medium heat. Put a top on it, and cook it for about 25 minutes, and you'll get perfect rice. Don't put salt in the pot, wait for the rice to be done, then add your salt, fluff, fluff, fluff. Put the pot top back on, let it rest. What the resting does, is it carries that grain over to explode. It also allows for everybody out there that hates cooking rice, because they don't want to scrub the grains off the bottom, all those grains that stick to the bottom will then come off naturally. A good pot of rice has rice that sticks to the bottom, and is crispy. If you're not having rice stick to the bottom of your pot and crispy, that means you were stirring the rice, shaking the pot, and those are big no's.

Alison Stewart: Leave rice alone.

JJ Johnson: Leave it alone. Let it cook. Go cook something else, while that rice is cooking.

Alison Stewart: Step back from the rice, everybody. You mentioned you're putting the salt on after. I thought, "Well, let me go see what are the spices that JJ uses in his cooking." I thought this was really interesting. Cinnamon-spiced lamb rice.

JJ Johnson: Oh, so good.

Alison Stewart: There's cinnamon there, there's nutmeg, there's cumin, there's pistachios as well. What is the cinnamon, and that cinnamon nutmeg profile? How is it married with rice? Why is rice a good delivery system?

JJ Johnson: First, cinnamon is one of my most favorite ingredients to use in savory cooking. I love making cinnamon chicken, one of my favorite things. The great thing about rice, it's a foundational ingredient. Whatever flavor bomb you give it, it will absorb it, right? People are like, "Oh, my God, rice is so boring." JJ's like, "Well, are you boring?" You got to give it some flavor.

When you add the cinnamon sticks, you add the nutmeg, you have the lamb fat in there. The rice is absorbing all that. Then, you finish it with the pistachios and the dates. It is one of those dishes that you reveal at your table, or when you go to taste it before everybody else tastes it, you're not going to want to give it to anybody. You're going to be like, "I spent all the time and the effort. This smells really good, and it also tastes so good."

Then, the grain of rice is going to be like pearls, and have a little bite to it. All that nutmeg, cinnamon, lamb fat will be absorbed in each individual grain that you'll be really proud of yourself. It just goes-- You could do that with any, you can put cumin, cayenne, turmeric, curry, you can put fennel seed, you can put fresh herbs. That's what's so great about rice. It just absorbs the natural flavor. I cook black rice with a little bit of apple juice, a little bit of orange juice.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

JJ Johnson: Once you get comfortable cooking rice, then you realize you could just do whatever you want.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with JJ Johnson, local restaurant owner, and author of The Simple Art of Rice: Recipes from Around the World for the Heart of Your Table.

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