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Rice with Peas
1 cup boiled rice 1/4 cup canned peas 1/2 cup liquid from peas 2 tablespoons flour 4 teaspoons melted butter Put half the boiled rice in bottom of baking dish, then a layer of peas, and the remainder of rice. Rub the butter and flour together; heat the liquid, and pour over the butter and flour; boil five minutes. Then pour over the rice, and bake ten minutes.
A small, plain baked dish of rice bound with a pea-liquid sauce. Two details need attention before you start: the oven temperature is never given, and the sauce as written is nearly a paste.
- Oven temperatureThe original assumes you already have a fire going. Since everything in the dish is cooked and the ten minutes only serve to heat it through and set the top, use 375-400F.
- The sauce is too thick as writtenTwo tablespoons of flour to half a cup of liquid gives roughly the consistency of stiff paste. Use one tablespoon of flour for half a cup of liquid, or keep the two tablespoons and increase the liquid to a full cup. It should coat a spoon, not stand up in it.
- Making the sauceThe recipe calls for melted butter rubbed together with the flour, with the hot liquid poured over; the method works but lumps easily. Whisk constantly as the liquid goes in. Five minutes of simmering is not excessive here -- it cooks the raw flour taste out.
- Liquid from canned peasModern canned peas are packed in salted water, and the volume of liquid in a small can is limited. Drain and reserve everything you get; make up the difference with vegetable stock or milk, and salt only at the end.
- PeasA quarter cup of peas to a cup of rice is a very thin showing. Half a cup to a cup of rice is a better dish, and frozen peas work perfectly well, though thaw them before layering, since ten minutes in the oven may not heat them through from frozen.
- SeasoningThe recipe specifies none at all. Salt, black pepper, and a grating of nutmeg or a little grated hard cheese over the top before baking bring it up to something worth eating.
- YieldAbout two modest servings as a side dish, or one as a supper. The quantities scale directly.
Books titled Meatless Cookery appeared around the First World War, when American and British households were urged to observe meatless days so that meat could go to the armed forces and to allied populations. The recipe's economy is thoroughgoing -- even the canning liquid is put to work as the base of the sauce, and the butter-and-flour paste stretches a quarter cup of peas across a whole baked dish. Rice and peas in various forms are far older and far more widespread than this particular version, from Venetian risi e bisi to the rice-and-pigeon-pea dishes of the Caribbean.