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| James Rice |
You don’t need to be a real chef to whip up something amazing in the kitchen. All it takes is passion, plus a little boldness in experimenting with the ingredients at hand.
Our mothers surely did this with the dishes that make reliving our childhood a pleasurable experience. Nowadays cookbooks come in handy, but some of the best dishes around must have come from mothers who tested and re-tested recipes shared through generations.
Such was the experience of James Rice, an American lawyer and professor, and a fierce advocate of human rights in Hong Kong, who has been concocting several dishes of his own.
James’ cooking skills may not be as well known as his advocacy for the rights of the underprivileged like the migrant workers, but he does get a lot of compliments for dishes he basically cooks armed only with passion, and a sense of what goes well with what.
Recently, his wife Cris brought a large box of a delicious chicken and rice dish that he cooked to share with some friends for lunch, and it left everyone impressed.
James says he never really got the recipe for what he calls his Brazilian Chicken Rice from a cookbook or any published source.
“One time when I was a kid, my parents and I were invited to a neighbor’s house for dinner. They served something like this dish, and I loved it. Years later, and after I had moved to Hong Kong, and was living in Discovery Bay, Cris and I were sitting in the Plaza and thinking about this dish. I tried to reconstruct the recipe in my head.”
Obviously, he nailed it.
James, who is fondly called “Manong” to Cris’ “Manang” by their Filipino friends, often takes to cooking to relieve stress from his daily work routine, which could be heavy. Apart from his teaching job at Lingnan University, he has worked extensively in support of refugees and asylum seekers, as well as migrant workers.
He has written several books on these concerns, including “Take Your Rights Seriously”, a guide for migrant workers on their rights in Hong Kong. (this book can now be freely downloaded as and app. “MyLaw411” on Apple Store or Google Store).
