Rice story(3)The Rest of the world

It is difficult to chart exactly how and when the cultivation of rice spread beyond Asia.In the Middle East and the Mediterranean,wheat was initially the main crop,while in America,maize was by far the most important cereal.Rice was not known here until the spanish introduced it in the late 16th century.Rice is enjoyed in many Middle Eastern countries,and basmati rice,in particular,has a special place in people's affections.Today,the Middle Eastern repertoire of rice dishes is wide-ranging,but it clearly wasn't always so.Rice was probably introduced via northern India and afghanistan through conquest,expansion and trading.However,even in the 13th century,rice was still regarded as a luxury item in Baghdad.Rice came to Europe by various routes.Its popularity was determined not so much by its versatility,but by whether or not the crop could be cultivated.Unless rice could be produced locally,the cost of transporting it made the price high,and limited supply and demand.By the middle of this century,the cost of transporting foodstuffs became relatively cheap and foods such as rice ,once thought of as exotic,became affordable to the majority and not just the elite.In Spain,rice was introduced by the Moors,who ruled that country for about 300 years,from the beginning of the 8th century.It was the Moors who built the irrigation canals around Valencia and in the hills around Murcia,which are still used today for rice growing.The Arabs introduced a dry or upland rice to Sicily,and shortly afterwards there is evidence of paddy fields in northern Italy,around Piedmont and on the Lombardy plains.Here ,a wet short grain rice was cultivated,which most scholars believe was introduced not via the south of the country,but from Spain,where another short grain variety of rice had long been grown.Either way,from around the 14th century onwards,rules around Pisa and Milan became aware that rice was a good alternative to wheat as a staple food.After a series of devastating famines,they began in earnest to encourage the cultivation of rice.In the 18th century,piedmont rice was of such high quality that Thomas Jefferson ,then US Minister in France ,smuggled some out of Italy and sent it to friends in Charleston with instructions for its cultivation.(this was the same Thomas Jefferson who had written the Declaration of Independence and who was later to become the third president of the United States.) In parts of Europe where cultivation was not an option,rice was often regarded with suspicion,and there appears to have been some resistance to eating it.In Britain at least,it has taken many years ,notwithstanding the ubiquitous rice pudding,for rice to become truly accepted.However,rice was not totally unknown in England;in the 13th century ,knights returning from the Crusades brought back rice along with other Arabian products such as sugar and lemons.........To be continued !.