Gute Essen

Who Wrote the Book of Love

Sunday, April 20, 2008 | Leave a comment »

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One day when bears rule over the human race, the bearded man will be king amongst the hairless.

Who wrote the book of love? Because I'm pretty sure this is the opening chapter.

So, as you may have noticed on the occasion that I post a weekly menu up here, that Julie and I go to my dad's house for dinner every once in a while. One of the holy-grail-you're-still-the-master-cook dishes my dad makes is arroz con pollo. Now, I know. Arroz con pollo isn't hard. No, not really. I mean thow some chicken, rice and water into a pot, throw that shit in the oven and bam -- you've arroz con pollo. But my dad's is something else. I've had a lot of them in the Dominican and Cuban joints that used to dot his neighborhood and I'd say on average his is better than all of those.

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Who the fuck measures rice in metric? Yes, measure out just over a half liter of rice.

So, obviously, I felt like the gauntlet had been slapped down. I mean, seriously, I'm like a younger, smarter, more handsome version of my dad. I can totally rip off his recipe.

And I did. And it was glorious. The real trick -- what separates his dish from others out there is the chorizo. No. Not that he includes it. That's, from what I can understand, very traditional. It's the fact that he renders it out first. Why? Because chorizo is to grease what fire engine is to red. Like breakfast sausage is fatty, but chorizo? So greasy. If you're going to put it anything you gotta render out some of that fat -- especially since you've also got some good schmaltz going on in there too.

So what is the secret? There's no secret as far as I can tell; just a good selection of ingredients.

  • 1 whole chicken, cut into 10 pieces (2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 wings (no tips!), 4 breast pieces)
  • 1 quart chicken stock. STFU n00b! Homemade FTW.
  • 2 cups of rice. Medium or long grain please.
  • 2 red peppers, diced
  • 6 jalapeños, diced (seeds or no seeds. Some like it hot.)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup green olives, roughly chopped (pimento stuffed!)
  • 1 can green pigeon peas
  • 1 dried ancho chili
  • 1 pinch saffron, ground
  • 2 tsp ground toasted cumin
  • 2 tbls tomato paste
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 1/2 chorizo sausages. Fresh if you can get it.
  • 2 bay leaves

  1. Lightly season the chicken with and brown well on all sides in batches if you have to.
  2. While you're browning the chicken, put the chorizo in another pan and cook under medium heat until it gets crispy. Drain and blot with paper towels. Seriously, you'll be so much happier if you do this.
  3. When the chicken is browned, pour off some of the chicken fat and then add your peppers, jalapeños, onions and garlic an reduce heat. Just a small pinch of salt on this. (There's a ton of salt in the chorizo and if you're using store-bough broth you got some there too buddy.)
  4. Sweat these veggies out until they sort of falling apart. Add the tomato paste and let it rust a second. Stir in, add the spices and the chicken stock (that includes the chili pepper). Bring water to a boil.
  5. While you're waiting for the water to boil, turn your oven on to 300°F.
  6. When the water is boiling, add the rice, the chicken, the chorizo, the peas and the olives.
  7. Place in oven and cook for an hour or so tightly covered until the rice is done (the chicken should be just done as well -- you might want to check that too!.)

categories: arroz con pollo

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