WEST AFRICAN DISH OF RICE AND VERMICELLI STIRS MEMORIES OF RICE-A-RONI

It is infinitely surprising to me the connections you can make through food.

I grew up as a committed omnivore in rural central Florida in the 1980s, and I wouldn’t have necessarily expected to be hit with a visceral taste memory as I was flipping through “Vegan Africa: Plant-Based Recipes From Ethiopia to Senegal” by Marie Kacouchia. But I made a hard stop when I saw her recipe for Vermicelli Rice With Spinach and Cashews. Initially, it was because carb-based dishes always earn my undivided attention. This one kept it.

Kacouchia talks about how the dish was a favorite of hers growing up in Ivory Coast in West Africa and says she added spinach to the rice-vermicelli mix when she started making it for herself.

I’m going to warn you, the connection may seem tenuous, but here is where her story immediately took me:

When I was in high school, my mom started working outside the home. As the oldest of three kids, I was tasked with cooking dinner for my siblings a few nights a week. At least once a week, that meant I made what became my specialty: chicken with barbecue-flavored Shake ‘n Bake with sides of canned spinach (doused in vinegar) and a box of Rice-A-Roni.

If you’re not familiar with RiceA-Roni — well, I’m pretty surprised, because I considered it one of the major food groups until I was about 20, but here’s a primer: It’s rice with broken vermicelli in it. You saute them for a couple minutes until the pasta browns, then add a seasoning packet and water to cook it. Pretty simple.

The nights I made that meal, I always thought the chicken was fine, but I loved the rice, and I used to mix the spinach into it on my plate. I knew virtually nothing about cooking or the cuisines of various cultures, but I always liked how the texture of the pasta was a little different than that of the rice, and then how the spinach added a different dimension to the pairing.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a can of spinach, much less a box of Rice-A-Roni, but reading this recipe put the taste of that combination in my brain in a way that left only one option: I had to make it.

You can guess where this is heading. It was terrific. Kacouchia, who writes that the dish she enjoyed as a child originated in Lebanon before being adopted through West Africa, doesn’t call for browning the vermicelli, so I tamped down my impulse to do that. Curry powder and ginger add personality to the broth, and wilting the fresh spinach into the rice codifies the personal preference I developed decades ago.

The cashews fill the protein role from the chicken in a way that makes a lot of sense for the way I like to cook lately. I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve even considered embellishing the roasted nuts with a dry barbecue seasoning, and maybe hitting the final dish with a dash of vinegar, slightly bending Kacouchia’s memory just enough to meet my own.

Maybe I’ll do that sometime when my brother and sister come over for dinner.