Against the grain

It's time to see rice in its true colours, says Jenni Muir

As cooks get to grips with a growing variety of grains – maize, quinoa, buckwheat, freekah, to pick a few – rice has achieved an über-gruppen status that sets it apart from the rest. Several substantial books have been devoted to rice alone and as Sri Owen says in her classic Rice Book (Frances Lincoln), "Asians don't eat rice because they can't get anything else. They go to the enormous trouble of cultivating rice because, in flavour, texture and general satisfaction, no other staple food comes anywhere near it."

Yet it is only recently that we have begun to see rice in its true colours. There was a time when the only choice was brown or white, and usually white won out over the chewier and more virtuous brown version. However, a bright and glamorous new collection of colourfully coated rices is finding its way into food stores. Some are pure haute couture – traditional varieties previously cultivated only for aristocracy – while others are new designer models.

As rice becomes more popular cooks are looking to ring the changes in our choice of grains. "Rice is now nearly as popular as potatoes in the UK diet and comes from more than 80 different countries," explains Jeremy Blower of Unique Fine Foods. He imports Imperial green and Emperor black rices from China, as well as a red rice from the Kingdom of Bhutan, where the paddies are fed by glacial spring water. "Everybody is interested in health these days, but there is also a passion for food and the design of recipes. People want interesting, celebratory meals that look nice on the plate," he says.

Even many Chinese food enthusiasts are not familiar with these speciality green and black varieties, and their availability in China is limited. Legend has it that they were grown exclusively for royalty. The black in particular, sometimes known as "forbidden rice", is thought to be beneficial in traditional Chinese medicine, especially in the treatment of diabetes.

In Piedmont, Emperor black rice has been crossed with an Italian variety to produce Venere Nero or Black Venus rice, which is being championed by top restaurants such as Vissani in Baschi, Umbria, where it is boiled then tossed with fresh asparagus spears and a sauce of onion and garlic. Rice-grower Michele Perinotti of Gli Aironi, who sells Venere Nero and a wholegrain red variety (Rosso Integrale) via www.esperya.com, says the Italian interest in wholegrain rices is growing. Even his artisan "white" rices are "lavorazione morbida" or 'soft work', meaning a thin layer of seed coat is left on the grain.

"Besides the many nutritious properties (including antioxidants, selenium and fibre), there is a great deal of flavour there," he says. While the black and red rices take longer to cook than industrially milled white rice, they are easy to use and can be simply cooked, drained and tossed with sauce, or used cold for salads. Perinotti even grinds the black rice into flour to make gnocchi, pasta and biscuits.

In producing the Rosso Integrale, Perinotti was inspired by an old red-and-white-striped variety called Ostigliato di Mantova, which "has been around for ever but never really appreciated until now". Stray red rice has for a long time spontaneously appeared in fields and was seen as an intruder. "It wasn't nice to have a few red grains on your plate among the white because it looked rather like an insect or something horrible," he says. Then he and other producers realised that they could plant the red rice alone. Thus the "defect" was turned into an attribute, for which we are now being charged premium prices.

The turning point for French farmer Serge Griotto came as he walked in his fields one day and noticed one ear of grain significantly taller than the others. He opened the seed husks and saw that the rice was garnet-red in colour. The few grains he saved and planted became a crop of several hundred kilos within three years.

Mark Leatham of Merchant Gourmet has imported Griotto's rice from the Camargue since 1993 and believes it started the fashion for coloured rice. He has subsequently expanded the range to supply supermarkets with Nanjing black and Imperial red rices from the Jiangsu region of China, plus sweet-tasting Emperor green rice from Taihu Lake. Suggestions for using the romantically named grains in dishes such as mussels with Emperor's green rice and herbs can be found on the new Merchant Gourmet website (www.merchant-gourmet.com).

Every year we eat five per cent more rice. And as long as the colours are natural – and they are, whether by design or accident – interest in colour-coated rices can only flourish.

'A Cooks Guide to Grains' by Jenni Muir is published by Conran Octopus, priced £20