Mushrooms — Peas Rice Pilaf — The Foundation You Build From When Everything Else Falls Apart

The world stopped. That is not an exaggeration — that is a fact that I am living inside of, a fact that has a date (March 13, 2020, the week everything closed) and a sound (silence, the wrong kind) and a taste (fear, which tastes like metal, like the inside of your own mouth when you have been clenching your jaw for a week). Hartford is shut down. The schools are closed. The restaurants are closed. The stores are closed or closing. The streets are empty in a way that Hartford streets have never been empty, and I have lived here thirty-two years and I have never seen this city hold its breath like this.

The hospital is not closed. The hospital cannot close. I drive to work at 4:30 AM and the highway is empty — no trucks, no commuters, no one — and the emptiness is the scariest thing I have ever driven through, scarier than the ice storms, scarier than the blizzards, because the emptiness is human-made, the emptiness is a choice, the emptiness means everyone is inside and scared and the only people on the road are the ones who have to be.

I am fifty-four years old and I am essential. The word — essential — has a new meaning now. It means: you go to work while the world stays home. It means: you feed people while people are dying. It means: the cafeteria stays open because the hospital stays open because the sick do not stop being sick because there is a pandemic. My team is terrified. Half of them have children at home with no school. Three of them have parents in nursing homes. All of them come to work because the food does not make itself and the patients do not feed themselves and we are the people who show up.

Eduardo is terrified for me. He doesn't say it — Eduardo does not say terror, Eduardo performs calm the way I perform confidence — but I see it in the way he watches me leave every morning, the way he stands at the window, the way he has the coffee ready when I come home, always, every day, the coffee on the counter before I reach the kitchen. He is fifty-six and he works from home now — the insurance company sent everyone home — and he sits at the dining room table with his laptop and his reading glasses and his fear and he waits for me to come home.

I cook more than ever. The cooking is survival. The cooking is the thing my hands know how to do when my mind does not know what to think. Sofrito. Rice. Beans. The fundamentals. The foundation. When the world falls apart, you build from the foundation. You start with the sofrito. You start with what you know. You cook because cooking is survival. We survive. We cook. We eat. We keep going.

Rice is the foundation. I have said this my whole life and I believed it before March 2020, but I did not know it — not the way I know it now, not the way you know something that has held you up when your legs gave out. Every evening that spring I came home from the hospital, put down my bag, washed my hands longer than I had ever washed them, and I made rice. Not because I had planned it. Because my hands went to the cabinet and my hands knew what to do when my mind was still somewhere on the empty highway. This mushrooms and peas rice pilaf is the dish I made more than any other: simple enough for a person running on fear and adrenaline, warm enough to bring Eduardo away from the dining room table, filling enough to remind us both that we were still here, still eating, still alive.

Mushrooms & Peas Rice Pilaf

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup long-grain white rice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 2 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
• 3/4 cup frozen peas
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions

1. Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan or deep skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
2. Cook the mushrooms. Add the sliced mushrooms to the pan and increase heat to medium-high. Cook without stirring for 2–3 minutes to let them brown, then stir and cook another 2 minutes until they have released their moisture and are golden.
3. Toast the rice. Add the dry rice to the pan and stir to coat it in the oil and vegetables. Toast for 1–2 minutes, stirring frequently, until the rice smells slightly nutty and looks lightly opaque.
4. Season and add broth. Stir in the thyme, smoked paprika, black pepper, and salt. Pour in the broth and bring to a boil, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
5. Simmer covered. Reduce heat to low, cover tightly, and cook for 15 minutes without lifting the lid.
6. Add the peas and rest. Remove from heat. Scatter the frozen peas over the top, replace the lid, and let the pilaf rest undisturbed for 5 minutes. The residual steam will cook the peas through.
7. Fluff and finish. Uncover, fluff gently with a fork, folding the peas and mushrooms through the rice. Taste and adjust salt. Top with fresh parsley and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 265 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 310mg