Arroz Con Pollo

Also, my first ever attempt at using bone in chicken - SUCCESS! As with all things I don't have a clue about, I looked up a how-to cut up a chicken vid. I used this one from the NY times.

Looking for something exciting to cook for my parents. My dad is strictly a meat and potatoes kind of guy and only veggie he doesn't mind is peas. I know. In an effort to find a dish that wasn't boring to me to cook and acceptable to my dad's palate, I cam across Arroz Con Pollo in my "How to Cook Everything App". I used a variation of Mark Bittman's Arroz Con Pollo recipe, and a hybrid of several other recipes and tips from googling "Arroz Con Pollo". Many recipes call for saffron but who has saffron? Came out really great and I got over my fear of butchering a chicken. Here's what I did...

Broke down the chicken into pieces. Also, cut each of the breasts in half to have similar size pieces of chicken throughout.  OK, so I did have a little help from the grocery here, as I bought a halved bone, in chicken. One day, I'll break down a whole bird. Baby steps, baby steps.

Arroz Con Pollo
Makes: 4 servings
Time: About 1 hour



3 cups chicken or other stock, or water
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large or 2 medium onions, sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups short-grain white rice
1 tbsp cumin
3/4 tbsp ground thyme
1 whole chicken, 3 to 4 pounds, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 8 pieces, or any combination of parts
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
Chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish
Lemon or lime wedges for serving

In a large skillet, add some olive oil and brown the chicken pieces. Set pieces aside.

Warm the stock while you cook the onions. Put the olive oil in a large skillet with a lid over medium-high heat. Add the onions and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions soften and become translucent, 5 to 10 minutes.

Add the rice to the onions and stir until it’s coated with oil, a minute or two; add cumin and thyme. Nestle the chicken pieces in the rice, and pour in the warmed stock. Bring the mixture to a boil; adjust the heat so that the mixture bubbles gently but steadily.

Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed and the chicken is cooked through. Add the peas. (At this point, you may keep the dish warm over very low heat for another 15 minutes, and it will retain its heat for 15 minutes beyond that and still be good warm rather than hot.) Garnish with parsley and serve with lemon or lime wedges.

This dish was a hit! Chicken was moist and fall-off the bone tender. I'll be making it again.

Pasta Prima-Nesca with Chicken

First, a fun fact...

Spaghetti alla puttanesca (literally "whore's style spaghetti" in Italian)

...what?

Anway. After finally going to the grocery store and stocking up on actual food, this is what I made. It's a hybrid of Pasta Primavera and Pasta Puttanesca. I used chicken beeeecaaaause I had a lot of frozen chicken.

Ingredients:
1 lb Thin spagetti (why? b/c that's what I have in my pantry and b/c angel hair is my fave)
2 chicken breast, sliced into strips
1 zucchini, chopped
1/2 a bag of frozen squash (or 1/2 a large fresh squash - I happened to have frozen on hand) - cook according to directions and chop
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tbs chopped garlic (more or less depending on how much you love garlic - i LOVE garlic)
1/2 jar of pre-made tomato sauce (again, in the pantry already)
9 or so chopped green olives (I used ones with pimento b/c I had them leftover from bloody marys)
2 tsp powdered thyme
2 tsp dried basil
a small container of flour for dredging the chicken
olive oil for cooking
salt & pepper

I like to prepare the pasta first, to let it cook while I'm cooking other things. So, I put on a pot of water - brought it to a boil, salted it and dropped in the pasta and let it cook to al dente.

I put some flour into a small dish and seasoned with salt and pepper and the thyme, then i lightly dredged the chicken in the seasoned flour. I heated up a skillet with some olive oil and cooked the chicken until golden brown and cooked through. I love the way this smells. I hate how the oil pops at me! After this was finished cooking, I put it aside to rest.

I added a little more oil to the same pan, then sauted the onions and garlic til they just started to get soft, then I added the zucchini and then the squash (if your squash is pre-coooked like mine was, I added it at the very end of cooking the other veggies). Once the veggies are soft, add the pasta sauce. I like to add a little water at this point to loosen up the sauce (also, I think this is habit from learning to cook with my depression era Grandmother - always makes the sauce go farther! and really, with pre-made sauce, you can water it down a little and all the flavor is still there. I personally think premade spagetti sauce is a little thicker than I like my tomato sauce anyway).

I cut the cooked chicken up into a little smaller chunks to match up to the chopped veggies and I added it into the sauce with the veggies.

VOILA! Sauce and pasta done!. To plate, I tossed the pasta in the sauce and then topped the whole thing with the chopped olives and a little bit of the Parmesan cheese.

About 4 servings made. 

Result: a tasty and hearty meal with a bunch of random stuff I had in my kitchen. Variations: Probably canned tuna would be a great protein to go with this - also anchioves too! Would be an even quicker cook with these rather than the chicken.