Pigeon Peas and Rice

“This is the traditional main dish in Puerto Rico,” says Saalik Cuevas. “If you don’t have it at your birthday, your wedding, or as part of a holiday meal, it seems as if something is missing from the celebration. It’s difficult to find these peas fresh in the United States, but you can find them canned. But in Puerto Rico you don’t even have to buy them. You just go in your backyard and pick them.”

NotesRice and pigeon peas, separately and together, are omnipresent in Caribbean cookery. But they reach their peak in Puerto Rican cuisine, colored with achiote oil and seasoned with sofrito, both of which are available commercially in Latin American communities, although particular cooks insist on making it homemade. Achiote oil gets its deep orange color from a steeping of annatto seeds and gives many Latin American foods an exuberant yellow color. You may get in the Latino habit of always using achiote oil in place of butter when you make rice.

Sofrito is an all-purpose seasoning mixture of cooked savory vegetables that has many uses beyond this dish. Try stirring some into scrambled eggs, or simmering some with a can of herbed tomato sauce as a quick topping for pasta. So, while this recipe for unassuming “rice and pigeon peas” may seem complicated, it surely isn’t—and you’ll get many meals’ worth of seasoning from making the achiote oil and scfrito as described here.

“You cannot cook Puerto Rican food without sofrito,” says Saalik Cuevas. “It is the base of the whole cuisine, kind of like the roux in gumbo. Likewise, you judge the quality of the Puerto Rican meal by the quality of the sofrito, When we were having pork chops or fried chicken, my mother would make very colorful yellow rice, which she, like all Puerto Ricans, would turn yellow by adding sofrito. In Ghana they use a palm oil to get that color, as they do in Brazil. But of course sofrito is not all color; it’s the spices that go into it. When I visited my mother after she moved back to Puerto Rico, I’d go into the garden to get the oregano and other spices used in it.”

One (16-ounce) can pigeon peas, drained, can be substituted for the cooked peas; skip Steps 3 and 4.

CostModerate

Total Timeunder 4 hours

OccasionBuffet, Casual Dinner Party, Family Get-together

Recipe Courseside dish

Dietary Considerationegg-free, gluten-free, high fiber, lactose-free, low cholesterol, peanut free, soy free, tree nut free, vegan, vegetarian

Mealdinner

Taste and Texturegarlicky, savory, spiced