Chicken Flavored Rice Mix

Late January. The apartment has been mine for six months now and the surfaces are wearing my fingerprints, the shelves are learning my preferences, the kitchen is calibrated to my rhythms. The miso is on the second shelf, left side. The kombu is in the cabinet above the stove. The chipped bowl lives on the shelf above the sink, at exactly the right height for my hand to reach without stretching. The apartment is a body I am inhabiting, and the body is starting to fit, the way new shoes fit after you've worn them through one season.

I made amazake again — the sweet fermented rice drink, the February survival food — and drank it warm in bed with a book and the sound of rain and the absolute, complete peace of being alone and warm and fed and reading. The peace is not the absence of anxiety. The anxiety is there, murmuring in the background, the refrigerator hum. But the peace is louder than the hum tonight. The peace is winning.

The writing is coming faster now. The blog posts are sharper, more confident, less apologetic. I notice the change the way you notice weight loss — not in the mirror but in the clothes, in the way the sentences fit differently, in the way I no longer hedge and qualify and soften every observation with "I think" or "maybe" or "it seems." I know. I know what miso soup means. I know what Fumiko's kitchen smelled like. I know what it feels like to be the Japanese daughter and the American daughter and neither and both. I know. The knowing is the confidence that four years of writing have built, and the confidence is the scaffold, and the scaffold is holding the book, and the book is holding me.

I started outlining more seriously — the full book, not just the chapters I've written. The outline has twelve chapters. Twelve courses, like a kaiseki meal: each one complete in itself, all of them part of a larger narrative. The first chapter is miso soup. The last chapter is miso soup. The book begins and ends in the same place, the same bowl, the same practice, but the woman holding the bowl at the end is not the woman who held it at the beginning. She is the same woman. She is a different woman. Both are true. Both are the point.

Amazake gets the credit for the peace — and it deserves it — but the meal that kept the peace going was this rice, simmered slow in the kind of brothy warmth that doesn’t demand anything from you. When the writing is finally flowing and the apartment finally fits and you just want something that holds you without fuss, a bowl of chicken-scented rice hits the same register as a warm drink and a good book: it says you’re home, you’re fed, you’re okay. I’ve made this on the nights when the outline goes well and on the nights when it doesn’t, and it is honest and reliable in exactly the way a good staple should be.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 cup long-grain white rice
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste

Instructions

Combine and heat. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the chicken broth, butter, bouillon granules, garlic powder, onion powder, parsley, salt, and pepper. Stir and bring to a gentle boil.
Add rice. Stir in the rice. Return the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to low.
Simmer covered. Cover the saucepan with a tight-fitting lid and cook on low for 18–20 minutes, until the liquid is fully absorbed and the rice is tender.
Rest and fluff. Remove from heat and let sit, still covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Flavored Rice Mix — The Warm Bowl That Holds You