Rosemary Rice — The Quiet Side That Earns Its Place at the Table

Columbus Day weekend and Patricia organized a dinner for the extended neighbor group — Ted and myself and Bill Fenton from the lower road and his wife, six adults around the table in the farmhouse dining room that has not been used for a proper sit-down dinner since Ted's wife died. Patricia made a butternut squash soup, a roasted chicken, roasted root vegetables, and a wild blueberry buckle for dessert — the last item from Helen's 1987 notebook recipe, which she had found on the blog. She told me this while we were washing up and I was moved by it. The recipe had traveled from Helen's notebook to the blog to Patricia's hands to the farmhouse table two hundred feet from where Helen had lived and cooked for thirty years. That is what a recipe does when it goes out into the world correctly.

The foliage is coming down now, the peak passing over the course of the week, the colors muting from the spectacular to the residual. The bare branches begin to appear through the remaining color and the landscape enters its transitional state — neither the spectacle of peak foliage nor the stark clarity of bare November. October's in-between. I do not hurry past it. There are seven species of tree in the woodlot behind the house and they turn and drop in sequence over five or six weeks, the oaks last and most reluctant, holding their brown leaves sometimes into December. The woodlot is a calendar.

I made a lamb stew Saturday — shoulder cut, browned hard in batches, then braised with root vegetables and red wine and thyme for three hours. The first serious braise of the fall, different from the summer cooking in its fundamental demand: that you wait, that you give the collagen time to break down and the fat time to render and the wine time to lose its roughness and become part of the sauce. The stew was ready at four in the afternoon and I let it cool and ate it Sunday reheated, better by a day. Patience is the technique.

The lamb stew that Saturday needed something underneath it — something to catch the braising liquid and hold it without competing. Rosemary was already in the air from the thyme and the wine, and rice cooked slowly in good broth with a little butter and a sprig of rosemary is one of those preparations that seems too simple until you taste it next to something that took three hours to become itself. Helen would have understood the logic: the patient dish deserves a patient companion.

Rosemary Rice

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup long-grain white rice
• 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (for finishing)

Instructions

1. Toast the rice. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the rice and stir to coat, cooking for 2 to 3 minutes until the grains just begin to turn translucent at the edges and smell faintly nutty.
2. Build the base. Add the minced garlic and chopped rosemary to the pan and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Do not let the garlic brown.
3. Add the broth. Pour in the chicken broth, add salt and pepper, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring once to settle the rice evenly across the bottom of the pan.
4. Simmer covered. Reduce heat to low, cover tightly, and cook undisturbed for 18 minutes. Do not lift the lid during cooking.
5. Rest and fluff. Remove from heat and let sit, still covered, for 5 minutes. Uncover, fluff gently with a fork, and taste for seasoning.
6. Finish and serve. Scatter the fresh parsley over the top and serve immediately alongside the main braise or roasted meat.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 220 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 6g | Carbs: 37g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 310mg