Rice and reckoning
Rice is never just rice
A contract, a captain and a pot of rice became unlikely mirrors for what women are asked to prove. Nesrin traces the weight carried inside a single grain.
Years ago, my father and I made a strange agreement.
It went:
"You are not to marry before thirty-five."
In the corner of the world we come from, that was almost absurd.
So, in accordance with the terms of the contract, I concentrated on my work.
I have worked since I was sixteen; becoming a career woman was, after all, a promised destination.
On the other side of the world, there is a saying in Turkey:
A woman who cannot make rice stays home.
That is to say: she cannot marry.
A woman whose greatest ambition in life is to serve her husband perfectly separate rice — should she fail to learn it in time, she is condemned to remain unmarried.
So it goes.
In the old days. Perhaps still, in silence…
If you cannot make rice (pilav), you cannot make anything at all.
But thanks to the agreement my father offered me,
I believed I had time.
So I did not worry much about rice.
Years passed.
At university, studying gastronomy and culinary arts, they taught us to cook rice once or twice.
But because no one treated it with the reverence afforded a French dish or an Italian risotto,
the art of rice was never properly discussed.
That knowledge slipped naturally through our fingers.
Perhaps the dean had his own difficulties with rice. Well…
I was twenty-four when we set sail on a Turkish boat.
Not the owners, but an old-fashioned captain who announced:
"On this boat, we eat chickpeas and rice every Sunday."
Oh no.
I was meant to have at least ten more years.
Beans were fine, but… rice made me anxious.
I could not bear the weight of centuries of whispering:
A woman who cannot make rice cannot cook.
She is useless.
She will remain unmarried.
I could not say: "I am not particularly good at Turkish pilav."
Then I remembered the improvised method.
My grandmother used to cook the rice thoroughly
and then pour melted butter over it.
She knew other ways to prepare rice — this was simply one technique.
So I made a light, Aegean-style rice:
no tomato paste, fresh tomatoes, mild chickpeas, something that might suit the sea air and the conditions on the boat.
One should not eat heavily, for God's sake.
Oh God.
My culinary career trembled.
That day, the captain reportedly said behind my back:
"This girl understands nothing.
She cannot cook."
One may have made hundreds of dishes, but if one cannot make rice
(or cannot make it the way his or their mother did),
even if one is sailing in the Caribbean — if there is a Turk on that boat, take care.
Crushed beneath these heavy, layered cultural edicts,
I felt worth less than a single grain of rice.
After this tragic episode I could have said that I went to Japan and spent twelve years learning to cook rice — that would have made a more interesting story —
but instead I enrolled as an apprentice under my mother.
My mother, who married young and served my father meals of three to five courses with rice every day for years, accepted me as a student, though she was surprised I did not already know.
And so I learned.
But by then the agreement with my father had been forgotten.
Even though I married at thirty,
I still carry a fear of rice.
Of course I can make rice now. I know which grain will take how much water,
what conditions it requires,
the grain's own emotional tides and moods.
And still a cold sweat runs down my forehead every time I make it.
As though all the mothers and aunts and, of course, the insufferable captain are standing behind me, clicking their tongues in judgement. Cık cık cıkcık cık…
Culture is a strange thing.
The other day, while patting myself on the back — "Well done, Nesrin" — and boasting to a Turkish friend at an event, I began to think.
Again and again.
When the lid is lifted from the pot, is it only steam that escapes? Or is a woman's worth, her patience, her capability measured in that same moment?
Rice.
Merely a dish of grain.
And yet never just rice.
It became the symbol of a woman's "domestic competence" — her suitability for marriage, her patience, precision and obedience.
A woman judged not as a person,
but through performance.
Good woman = good rice.
A formula passed down quietly from generation to generation.
Ask anyone today and they will laugh it off.
"It's just a joke," they say.
"Women who can't make rice still get married."
But the psychological pressure beneath is unmistakably clear.
Not a threat — presented as "proper upbringing."
These words are rarely shouted.
They are delivered with a smile,
wrapped in "this is how we were raised,"
which makes them seem harmless.
But the message is precise:
"Your place here depends on your ability."
That is conditional worth.
What has rice done to deserve this?
It is not masculinity that is tested — it is femininity.
When the rice fails, the man is not considered inadequate.
"He's a man, after all," they say. Expectations were low to begin with, for some reason (!)
When do we stop turning domestic skills into examinations of womanhood?
This is not intended as a dismissal of women who cook well or take pride in domestic work. It is about giving words to the silent expectations that rest on women.
If you are a woman who unconsciously strives for the world's cleanest windows, think of rice not as food, but as evidence of how easily a woman's worth is made conditional.
And remember this:
If you ever find yourself caught between sticky rice and a mind that clings even more stubbornly to criticism, remember…
If the rice is not grain by grain (also known as tane tane), the problem is neither the rice nor you — but the culture that normalised the sentence.
With love to my captain, to wonderful people who cannot make rice, and to seasoned rice-makers everywhere.
May rice's abundance be with you — sticky or not.
Yours sincerely,
Nesrin Eren
Tips for impressing your mother-in-law or your captain
· Soak short-grain Baldo or Osmancık rice in generously salted, hand-hot water for 30 minutes.
· Drain and rinse until the water runs clear.
· Sauté slowly in butter over a low heat until the grains separate.
· Add just enough water or stock to barely cover the rice.
· Bring to the boil with the lid on for 2 minutes,
then reduce to the lowest heat.
· Cook for 20 minutes, then turn off the heat.
· Place a tea towel between the pot and the lid
and do not lift it for a further 30 minutes.
· Wrap the pot in tea towels, so every grain feels loved.
