Eastern Promises

The branches of the casuarina trees bend under the warm tropical winds, just like the lithe bodies performing sun salutations in this morning’s yoga class led by Miss Saraswati. Here at Parrot Cay in Turks and Caicos – every day a perfect 27 degrees, every afternoon a massage amid the lush vegetation, every evening a glass of rosé in honour of the glorious sunset – tip-tapping away on a laptop is the last thing on one’s mind. However, as Poetry of Food never sleeps, one’s attention must return to last night’s meal: a fine mélange of vegetables and red rice.

Rice – red, white, brown, jasmine, basmati, baby-basmati, Arborio, wild, sticky – is found in many of the resort’s dishes. The proprietress, Christina Ong, a Singaporean billionaire, has created a chain of lovely properties – Como Hotels – all infused with an Asian touch. Every culture has its preferred staff of life: The French have their crunchy baguettes and buttery croissants, the Poles have potatoes, the Italians have pasta, the Americans have Wonderbread, the Canadians have Tim Hortons, and so on. Yet there is something inherently poetic about rice. It is delicate, fragrant, petite and feminine. Yin to the yang of, say, a baguette.

In addition to being a food, rice is a metaphor. Growing or cooking rice is simple if you respect it. Whenever I feel impatient, I tell myself  “You can’t make rice grow any faster.” I’m not sure when or where I picked up that saying, but it’s very useful for settling back into nature’s rhythm and away from the hysteria of the ego that wants things to happen when it wants them and not a moment later. When you put a pot of rice on the stove, you must leave it alone and let the rice channels form based on its own intelligence; you must not tamper with it – no stirring or adding more water  – under any circumstances. If left to its own devices, the rice will happily cook away until all the lovely grains are standing upright ready for you to eat them. Which gives rise to another good metaphor: Don’t unduly meddle and fuss with things. Let them be.

We do meddle and fuss, don’t we? This is a particularly Western habit. We are taught to believe that we have near-complete control over our destiny and the only thing that stops us from achieving (fill in the blank: success, love, power, wealth, health) is our power of will. By comparison, in the East, the role of fate is given more credence. Which way is best? Neither extreme works well. Some things respond to the application of will – weight loss, for example. Other things respond to the workings of fate – the lottery, for example. When it comes to beauty and aging, many of us believe what Mademoiselle Chanel once said: There are no ugly women, only lazy ones. If only we had bought more expensive skin serums, found a better plastic surgeon or dermatologist, taken less sun as teenagers, meditated every morning, etc., we’d look terrific. While some skin gurus, like Dr. Perricone, recommend eating large amounts of salmon, others are rediscovering the benefits of rice for health and beauty.

Rice is one of those all-purpose gifts to humanity. It’s nutritious: It’s a good source of vitamins A, B, D, E and F and contains trace elements of zinc, magnesium and iron and amino acids and fibres. It can also be pulverized to make a wonderful face and body exfoliant that helps to remove dead skin cells. SK-II, a company owned by Procter & Gamble and endorsed by Cate Blanchett, uses a by-product of sake for its purported anti-aging benefits. Many women swear by the company’s masks (Blanchett, Pat McGrath and Iman are big fans) for their moisturizing properties. A slew of beauty companies have added rice products to their offerings. My personal favourite is Dermalogica’s Daily Microfoliant, which uses rice powder to gently cleanse and exfoliate skin. Fresh has a delightful Rice Sake Bath that allows you to mimic the experience of going to a real Japanese bath. They also make Rice Dry Oil, which smells delicious with peachy notes. The French company L’Occitane en Provence has a line of red-rice products for oily complexions. Ojon makes a dry shampoo that contains rice powder as well as silk powder and Amazonian white clay. Rice-bran oil is gaining fans in the West. Used for centuries by Japanese women, this oil contains compounds that have been shown to act as a natural sunscreen and reduce the progression of pigmentation.

However you choose to use rice as a beauty treatment, perhaps its most potent variety is of the metaphorical kind: Do your best to look good, by all means, and then – just like making a nice pot of rice on the stove – let it be.

Photography Courtesy of COMO Hotels and Resorts