Recipe: Rice with Wathafakavagot Sauce

When I got home from work tonight, I was soaked with rain from my bike commute through Antananarivo.

I got out of my wet shoes and clothes and into my slippers, a teeshirt, and sweatpants shorts, I made myself comfortable.

It was then that I realized that I had no food in the house.

Almost no food.

There is a little Malagasy neighborhood restaurant less than 100 yards away, but I wasn’t going to leave the house. I was dry and finally comfortable. I was going to make do.

Rice with Wathafakavagot Sauce

Ingredients:

• Red rice: 1/2 cup
• Mint Tea: One bag
• Water: 1 cup
• Tiny-ass red onions: 5, diced.
• Olive Oil: 1 splunk
• Peanut Butter: 2 (or was it 3?) rounded tablespoons
• Salt: 5 shakes. Crap. Is it clumping? Make it 8 shakes.
• Black Pepper: 4 big shakes, because you wish you had…
• Cayenne Pepper: None. Try not to think about it.

Make a cup of mint tea. Don’t drink it.

Pour the tea over the red rice in a saucepan and then cook the rice in the mint tea.

Shut up. Just do it.

In a frying pan, heat up the olive oil way too hot and then throw in the onions. Watch them turn black before your eyes. Oh shit. Stir.

Throw the peanut butter into the frying pan and stir it into the onions as it melts.

Add salt and pepper to the gooey mess. Prepare for the worst. Taste.

Could be worse.

About the time that the onion-peanut mixture starts to turn into a thick sludge, check the rice. Still a bit crunchy? Who cares? Dump it on a plate.

The rice should taste a little bit minty, which will counteract the bad breath effect of the onions. Not that anyone will notice.

Scoop out the onion-peanut sludge onto the rice.

Get a beer out of the fridge.

Eat. Drink.

Variation: To turn this into a traditional Malagasy dish, quadruple the amount of rice and use a different sauce.