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Arroz Con Pollo (Rice with Chicken)
Carol
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2000 1:31am
This is a traditional dish in Panama. It's served at all kinds of events, including Christmas, weddings, quincinieras, etc.
- 2 frying chickens cut up, or equivalent in chicken parts
- 1 large can tomatoes
- 1 can tomato sauce
- 1 large handful chopped parsley or more if you want to decorate the platter with it
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 large sweet peppers, chopped
- Oil for frying (I like olive oil, but Crisco is fine)
- 1 can pimiento, sliced
- 1 cup stuffed olives, drained (Salad olives are fine, but the others look better)
- 1/2 bottle capers, drained
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/4 tsp. saffron
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Chicken broth, or hot water and chicken bouillon powder
- 2 cups frozen peas, cooked
- Cooked green asparagus, sufficient to decorate platter
- Rice, about three cups uncooked
Heat the oil in a large heavy pot, add chicken, and cook until golden brown. Take out, and put in onions and garlic. Cook over medium heat until transparent. Add tomatoes, peppers, and tomato sauce, and simmer a little. Add chicken, bay leaves, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, about 3 cups chicken broth (either homemade, canned, or bouillon powder and water), and saffron. Turn flame low and cook until chicken is tender. Take chicken out, and remove meat from bones, separating meat into medium size pieces or cubing it if you feel fancy. This part of the recipe can be done the day before.
Measure liquid (if you wish, you can remove bay leaves and run the rest of the sauce through the food processor or blender). Check the flavor; it should be rather salty. Heat broth to boiling. Use 1 cup of rice to about every two cups of liquid. (This is where you can really stretch the chicken, depending on how many you think you have to feed. Just adjust the amount of liquid and rice, using additional chicken broth and perhaps a small can of tomato sauce, but keeping the liquid to rice ratio at the old standby of 2 to 1.) I understand the traditional figure is 1/2 cup of uncooked rice per serving. This is a generous amount of rice by American standards, so you may luck out and have leftovers!
Heat some oil in a heavy frying pan or dutch oven, and add rice. Stir constantly over medium heat until rice is a nice warm tannish color. Combine rice with boiling liquid, and over high heat cook uncovered until the liquid has vanished below the rice. Add olives, capers, and chicken, but do not stir. Turn heat very low, and cover pot. Simmer about half an hour, lift rice and turn carefully, and continue cooking until rice is done. Just before serving, add about 2 cups cooked frozen peas, and about 3/4 of the pimientos.
Serve on a large platter, decorated with the asparagus and remaining pimiento strips, and some chopped parsley if the spirit so moves.Serve the remaining sauce to be spooned over the rice as needed.
This is obviously a wonderful buffet dish. It can be expanded easily, and looks lovely heaped on your best platter and artfully decorated. The color scheme makes it a great favorite for Christmas buffets, and the taste is a welcome relief after all that turkey and ham. You can stretch a little bit of chicken by using more tomatoes and chicken broth and cooking a lot of rice with the resulting broth. Or you can have a lot of sauce, if your guests are inclined to slop it on with a heavy hand. Kids usually like it, too, though there are always a few suspicious souls who pick out all the peas and capers. The major drawback is that if the pot is not heavy enough or the heat low enough, it tends to scorch down while cooking the rice. It warms up well, so leftovers are great to have around.