Peas and Rice

As tradition built it

Peas and Rice

Serves about 15. About 20 minutes, then 45 minutes to an hour on the lowest heat.

Ingredients

• 115g bacon, chopped
• 2 large tomatoes, chopped, or a tin of diced tomatoes
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• ½ sweet pepper, chopped
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 720ml parboiled rice
• 1.4 litres water
• 1 tin pigeon peas
• 1 Scotch bonnet, finely diced, or chilli flakes
• to taste salt

Method

1. Put the bacon, tomatoes, onions, sweet pepper and thyme in a large pan over a medium heat. Cover and stir now and then until the tomatoes turn from bright to dark red and the whole has reduced by half, about 20 minutes.
2. Add the rice, water, peas, Scotch bonnet and salt and bring it to a simmer.
3. Cover and cook on the lowest heat 45 minutes to an hour, turning the rice carefully from bottom to top twice.
4. Fluff it and serve.

Notes

Quite unlike the lighter, coconut-sweetened Jamaican dish that shares almost the same name, which uses kidney beans in coconut milk rather than pigeon peas.

The recipe is Aunty Ruth's, written up by Gabrielle on Tines that Bind. The rice cooks with the peas. She notes the more usual Bahamian way goes in stages: the meat, then onion and thyme, then tomato paste, then the rice and peas.

What a modern chef changes

Separated Rendering, Separated Rice

Method

1. Render the salt pork slowly and separately, sous vide, before browning it hard in the pan, drawing out more of its fat without the risk of burning it before the rice goes in.
2. Dehydrate a portion of tomato before it is worked into the browning stage, concentrating its sweetness rather than adding further liquid to the pot.
3. Cook the rice separately by absorption in the seasoned stock, then fold the finished pea sauce through at the end, for grains that hold their shape rather than the softer, more stewed result the traditional one-pot method gives.