A recipe for rice and peas that cures depression
Rice and peas heals me. Every mouthful holds memories I eat to hold on to the love my body wants. Rice and peas the best way my mother had to show love.
First, soak half a pound gungu peas in water overnight. The only meals worth your spit form their identity between midnight and sunrise.
"Handrew," my mother with the extra H.
"Handrew, come taste the rice and peas deh, tell me if it too peppa. It hot so blow on it."
No. Scotch bonnet peppers punch the facts of life into my eyes and tongue so I'll take more because I need that. Rice demands spice like my cells demand love. Like my bloodstream needs reminders to push life along and pepper sounds that siren. Pepper warns other flavors not to get ahead of themselves. Pepper only defers when it wants to, and just enough. Fire from the molten blast that formed Jamaica from under the sea lives on in pepper seeds. Pepper heats up my belly and loins from underneath so my lover asks why I'm like that, fuming always. A source of passion and danger.
Next, chop a ripe, hard, brown coconut into chunks. Your mother, grandmother, auntie, uncle or cousin will show you show to grate it. Watch carefully.
"Hold it pon the hairy side with your right hand. Then move the piece of coconut SLOWLY down and catch the piece dem in this likkle bowl over yahso. When you done with them two big piece, call me and we a-go squeeze them."
At the time, they had stronger hands: mom and grandma. So they picked up the grated coconut shavings, a handful at a time, and wrenched love out of them. Drained them of every part of life and love and satisfaction they held. Bulged their knuckle nerves and puckered the skin on their hands.
Find a pot bigger than your family. Fill the pot with the squeezed coconut milk, soaked peas, whole scallions, untouched sprigs of thyme, and salted butter. Do not measure.
They skipped rinsing the rice only when urgent. My cousins, their parents, and their friends, would all bring rice, though. Like, steaming, gigantic tin trays with rice and peas and specks of coconut pearling the top layer. So it was never really urgent or necessary to make that much at home. Rice to us functioned as pillows did: you can't have too much comfort.
To know the amount of rice needed, first count off:
- The weeks you've been depressed and unable to speak love back into existence.
- The number of lovers you cooked rice and peas for in the last decade.
- Divide that number of lovers by the amount of dishes you broke in fights with them.
- Add the bullshit you've been dealing with and then double the total.
- Subtract the times you should've told your family you loved them but didn't.
Bring the pea-and-coconut base to a rolling boil. Add unreal amount of rice. Reduce heat to low and let simmer. Set water aside.
Patience. The pot handle ingests the brewing flame so it would be crazy for me to touch while the rice and peas was cooking. Dutch pots are all metal and conduct heat from the ancestors. That didn't stop me from grabbing at love before it was ready.
CLANG!
"Me know seh you nah eat mi dinner before it done," from the other room.
Gently closed pot cover like who am I kidding. A softer rattle as the lid hit the steam again. Love is my watched pot. I'm afraid it won't boil and the heat will explode fury on me, leave me raw and bruised.
When I make this recipe, I accept that rice and peas fattens me to protect. I'm made of a hard rice belly, yams and fish parts. I'm made of land and sea animals who both needed the other. Goat and snapper. When I am sad, and feel disconnected from who I am because of who I think I want to be, I look up a recipe for rice and peas in my thoughts.
My mother made that dish a million times but the rice fluffed different ways, or the crust holding it to the pot tasted better when the rice went un-rinsed, or her sister was mad at her, or her father died and there was extra memory in it.
Add water, 1/4 cup at a time, to simmering rice and liquid. Make sure to avoid full boil. Close pot.
I've found my place in the world through rice meals. India sent curry to Jamaica, and my Black mothers and Indio mothers boiled their strife and power in. Nourishment comes rarely when you're poor but love and fulfillment flow by the potful.
The rice naah done; it cyaan done. Eventually, I will eat rice until I fall over full with it, so stuffed that my organs can't move. One day they will find me in a casket with a dutch pot lid crooked in my arm, and a sticky spoon in hand, crusted lips.
And they can say I loved at least once.