Sofrito Black Beans and Rice Skillet

Week one hundred. Two years of writing about my kitchen and my family and my food, and the kitchen is bigger now — literally bigger, we knocked down the wall — and the family is bigger now, with Jenny officially a Delgado-Ortiz and a baby on the way, and the food is the same, always the same, because the food does not change. The food is the constant. The food is the pole that the tent hangs on. Everything else moves — children grow, parents age, hurricanes come, islands break — but the sofrito stays in the freezer and the beans simmer on the stove and the pernil goes in the oven and the world rotates on the axis of the recipes that Abuela Consuelo taught Mami who taught me.

Mami is settling in. She goes to her apartment in the mornings, watches her novelas on the TV I bought her, takes a nap in the green recliner. At 5:30 she walks to my house — three blocks, four minutes, Eduardo times it because Eduardo times everything — and she sits in my kitchen and she supervises. This is her role now. She is the supervisor. She does not cook anymore — her hands shake, her grip is uncertain, the arthritis that has been building for twenty years has finally made chopping dangerous and she will not admit this so I do not say it, I just hand her a chair and a cup of cafe and I say, Mami, tell me if the sofrito smells right. And she tells me. She always tells me. She will always tell me.

This week I made the annual February trip to Puerto Rico — except this year, for the first time in twenty-eight years, I did not go to see Mami because Mami is three blocks away in a green recliner. I went to see Marisol. I went to walk the streets of Hato Tejas. I went to see the house, which is still standing, still damaged, still covered in blue tarp. I went to buy culantro at the market because the culantro tastes different when it grows in Puerto Rican soil. I went because the island is home even when my mother is not there anymore. The island is home because the soil is mine and the streets are mine and the memories are mine, and memories do not need a roof. They live in the open air.

Came home to Hartford with a bag of culantro and aji dulce that I packed the way Mami packed them — wet paper towels, plastic bag, smuggled into the suitcase like contraband. I brought them to Mami apartment and she opened the bag and she smelled the culantro and she closed her eyes and she was in Bayamon, just for a moment, standing in her kitchen with the roof still on, and the culantro carried her there the way food always carries us — backward in time, across the ocean, home.

I came home from Hato Tejas with culantro still damp in its paper towel and ají dulce smelling like everything I have ever loved, and the first thing I did — after dropping my bag, after hugging Jenny, after Eduardo told me exactly how long I had been gone in hours and minutes — was pull the sofrito from the freezer and get a pan hot. This skillet is not a fancy dish. It is a Tuesday dish, a “Mami is already walking over” dish, a “the beans are simmering and the world is in order” dish. I made it that night with the fresh culantro stirred in at the end, and when Mami sat down and took her first bite she said, eso sí sabe a algo — now that tastes like something — and that was the only review I needed.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 20 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup sofrito (homemade or frozen, thawed)
1/2 cup diced smoked sausage or longaniza, sliced into half-moons
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon sazon seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups cooked white rice (day-old works beautifully)
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons fresh culantro or cilantro, roughly chopped, for finishing
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Instructions

Build the base. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sofrito and let it cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes until it deepens in color and the kitchen smells the way it should.
Brown the sausage. Add the sliced sausage to the pan. Cook 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the edges get a little color. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more.
Season and add beans. Stir in the sazon, oregano, and cumin. Add the black beans and broth. Stir everything together and let it simmer for 3 minutes so the beans absorb the flavor.
Add the rice. Fold in the cooked rice and press it gently into the pan. Let the mixture cook undisturbed for 2 minutes so the bottom gets a little crisp, then stir and repeat once more. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Finish and serve. Pull the pan off the heat. Stir in the lime juice and half the culantro. Scatter the remaining culantro over the top. Serve straight from the skillet.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sofrito Black Beans and Rice Skillet — The Constant That Holds Everything Together