Sausage, Rice and Broccoli

The summer light is at its peak. The sun barely sets. The body confused, the kitchen washed in midnight gold. I work three twelves this week — the new normal, the boundary I drew after the floor. The ER in summer is activity-shaped: the bear maul on a trail near Eagle River, the boat collision on Resurrection Bay, the kid who fell from a four-wheeler and arrived with a helmet that saved his life and a mother who kept thanking the helmet as if the helmet could hear her. The helmet probably could hear her. The helmet had done its job.

Mia is almost two and has discovered "no." Angela called me at eleven on Thursday, exhausted. "She told the lumpia no, Grace. The lumpia." I told Angela this is good. Persons say no. The no is the beginning of the self. Angela said, "I don't want a self. I want a baby who eats lumpia." We laughed too long, the way sisters laugh when one of them is parenting and the other is watching, the laughter a small bridge across the distance.

I made pancit bihon this week. Lourdes's pancit. The thin rice noodles, the soy and calamansi, the carrots and cabbage. Pancit is the long-life noodle. You make pancit on Sundays. The blog post this week was about pancit. I wrote: "The noodle is long because the life is long. We don't cut the noodle. The not-cutting is the prayer." I thought about Reynaldo when I wrote that line. He used to slurp his pancit, loud, the way Filipinos slurp without apology. He died at fifty-three. The noodle was not as long as we thought. But we keep making the pancit. We keep not-cutting.

Joseph called from the boat. The fish are running. He is twenty-six and the youngest commercial owner-operator in his slip. He says he might come up to Anchorage in August for a long weekend. Lourdes is already calculating the lechon kawali she will make. The math is the love. The world is in its summer rhythm. I will take the overstaying. I will take all of it.

The pancit was Lourdes’s — the long-life noodle, the prayer of the uncut strand — and I could not have changed a single thing about it. But later in the week, when the leftover quiet of a post-shift kitchen still needed filling, I turned to something simpler and just as satisfying: sausage, rice and broccoli, the kind of dish that asks almost nothing of you and gives you everything back. After the bear mauls and the boat collisions and Angela’s call at eleven about a toddler who told lumpia no, I needed a meal that would not argue with me, and this was exactly it.

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

Ingredients

1 lb smoked sausage (kielbasa or andouille), sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice, uncooked
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups broccoli florets, fresh or frozen
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Salt to taste
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional)

Instructions

Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or wide pot over medium-high heat. Add sliced sausage and cook 3—4 minutes per side until lightly browned. Remove sausage and set aside, leaving drippings in the pan.
Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add diced onion to the pan and cook 3 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Toast the rice. Add uncooked rice to the pan and stir to coat with the drippings and aromatics. Toast 1—2 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the edges of the rice turn translucent.
Simmer. Pour in chicken broth and add smoked paprika and black pepper. Stir to combine and bring to a boil. Return the browned sausage to the pan. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook 15 minutes.
Add the broccoli. Nestle broccoli florets over the rice, replace the lid, and cook an additional 5 minutes until broccoli is tender and rice has absorbed the liquid.
Finish and serve. Remove from heat and let rest 2 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork, adjust seasoning with salt, and top with shredded cheddar if using. Serve directly from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sausage, Rice and Broccoli — The Week I Kept the Noodle Long