Pegao

Puerto Rican Rice Recollections

My mom although not Puerto Rican, loved cooking Puerto Rican food, most notably arroz con gandules. She used the same beat up, black crusted pot over and over, although she referred to it as “well seasoned.” There was also an old dented worn metal shaker that she use to infuse the annatto seeds with lard. It looked like one of those old seasoning shakers, aluminum probably, dented, dinged, scratched, but still usable. A new one wouldn’t have cost a lot, but my mom had a fondness for things that were broken in, gently used. She would put the annatto seeds into the shaker, pour hot lard over them and screw on the top, letting the deep red color of the seeds bleed into the lard, creating achiote. I distinctly remember watching her do it as a kid, seeing the hot lard hit the seed, bubble slightly, and the resulting reddish brownish liquid that it created. The achiote is what gives the rice its dark yellowish brown color.

My mom never measured anything and I remember asking her questions and she would often shrug and say “I don’t know, I just know by how it looks” Years later when I was learning how to cook and working in professional kitchens I asked her what her water to rice ratio was and I remember hearing her laugh on the phone, for a long time. She laughed with her whole body , so the phone was shaking too, and I got one of her standard lines “ oh Mark”. I got a lot of those growing up. It’s getting harder for me to remember her face now, although I can see the laugh lines around her eyes, they sparkled when she laughed. She had a certain look when I did something wrong or did something stupid. She would squint with one eye because of the smoke from her cigarette, that was dangling from her mouth, and frown and look at me kind of sideways. It could be unnerving.

The achiote went into the black pot first, then the rice, and she would toast the rice in the lard for a while, until it smelled like roasted nuts, sort of. Then she would add sofrito, sazon, gandules (pigeon peas) diced pork ( sometimes) water, and salt. She used to put olives but she got tired of me and my brother’s protests so she started leaving them out. She always made her own sofrito but then, when we were older, she got tired and used store bought. I know she was uptight about it because I mentioned it one time and she told me I should mind my own business.

The rice had a certain earthy smell as it cooked. Sort of a garlicky, porky, oregano perfume. When I visited my Puerto Rican relatives in Humboldt park, that’s how their houses smelled too. For awhile that smell reminded me of home, my parents, the tiny kitchen in the house where I grew up, but then as I got older I came to resent it. I went through this shameful phase of being embarrassed by my parents, they were just so different from my friends folks. Needless to say I had some hangups. I was a confused kid.

There was a lid my mom used on her black pot, she lost the original. It was white with red trim, it didn’t really fit too well but my mom liked it , and again, it was worn in, so she went with it. My mom made do with a lot, I didn’t know it at the time but we were a lower middle class family just getting by, although it didn’t feel that way most of the time.

When the rice had finished cooking, she would transfer the rice to a serving dish and then she would call out to me and my brother, asking us if we wanted the pegao. So, because her rice pot was so well seasoned, and my mom was a rice pro, a crust of rice would build on the bottom of the pot as the rice cooked. In Spanish the word would be pegado,or the leftover, the remains etc. But Puerto Ricans drop their ds when they speak, so my mom said it just like my dad had told her. Now this crust as it just so happens is fucking delicious, the rice gets crunchy, toasty, from the lard and from cooking in that magical black pot. So my brother and I would rush to get some of the pegao, often pushing and shoving each other to get at it. My brother usually won, he’s a lot older than me, but I always got some. And it always made me happy.

When my brother got married and moved out of the house I had the pegao all to myself. And to be honest it wasn’t the same. I found I liked the struggle to get at it almost as much as I liked eating it. Funny how that works. There were even times my mom wouldn’t tell me there was pegao and just clean the pot. I figured as she got older cooking wasn’t as much fun as it used to be for her, and she just wanted it to be done. It’s one of the reasons I started cooking, I felt like maybe she needed a break. I would surprise my mom with dinner when she got home from work. The surprise was that most of the food was inedible because I didn’t really know what I was doing but she always seemed overjoyed that I tried to cook for her. She also usually ended up cleaning the kitchen after the mess I had made. Which tracks, as a chef I am spoiled by having cooks and dishwasher clean the kitchen every day.

I was making a batch of rice at work, more or less the same way my mom did. I get my lard from a local farmer instead of using Crisco, my sofrito and sazon I make myself, buts it’s basically the same. As I moved the rice to a sheet tray to cool down, I noticed the pegao at the bottom of the pan. I scraped some off and tried it, it wasn’t nearly as good. I used a nice stainless steel pot, how could it even come close to my mom’s? It also occurred to me that my mom never ate the pegao herself. But when I thought about it, I thought I understood. I don’t really enjoy eating food I make either, it’s a thing.