Make your rice happy

Spanish Rice

Around here the rice du jour is brown. It’s tasty, yet slightly nutty flavour is good enough and it’s very healthy. But let’s be totally honest, some days you don’t want good enough. Some days you want super, over- the-top, lick your ten fingers never mind the company, or colonic benefits good.

On those days we make Spanish Rice or as I like to call it happy rice. Any meal with this as a side dish is sure to involve gargantuan portions and joyful noise. From back yard barbecues,  to beach limes, Sunday lunches and even weddings, you are looking at the rice that gets invited to all the happy occasions.

I don’t know that there is anything Spanish about this rice other than the fact that it looks like Paella. Unlike Paella which gets its intense yellow colour from expensive saffron, this popular rice dish is coloured with turmeric and is a heck of a lot easier to throw together. In fact with just a few meat and or seafood additions you can have yourself a terrific one-pot meal.

Spanish Rice Recipe

1 ½ cups cooked long grain parboiled rice

¾ tsp turmeric

Salt

2 tbsps vegetable oil

¼ cup bacon, diced

1 large carrot, finely diced

1 red and 1 green sweet pepper, diced

1 can whole corn

½ cup olives

¼ cup raisins

½ cup chives, chopped

Wash rice until water runs clear and is no longer cloudy. Washing your rice will ensure that your grains are not sticky. Add the rice to the pot with 3 cups of water and ¾ tsp of turmeric and salt.(to your taste) Bring to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes at a rolling boil then simmer over low heat until all the water is absorbed (about 20 minutes). Try not to lift the lid while cooking.

Add oil to another large pot and cook the bacon. Add carrots and cook until tender but still a bit crunchy. Add sweet peppers, corn, olives and raisins. Cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the cooked rice to the vegetables. Add the chives to the rice while it is still warm and mix thoroughly.

Caribbean Jerk Rice

I have had jerk every which way, on every kind of meat and fish and I can't believe it's only recently that I got the idea to try it with rice. We served this with stewed chicken. I used a mild jerk because of the kids but you could certainly go hotter if flames shooting from your tongue hot, is your thing. This was made with parboiled white rice only because we were out of brown rice. One of the healthy food changes I have made over the years is to cook with brown rice as much as possible and not the 'fake' Uncle Ben stuff that looks very polished.

It looks like what the gourmet folks would call wild rice. Around here it's what we lovingly call 'nasty rice'. It took some getting used to, but by mixing it with parboiled white or Uncle Ben's brown we gradually grew to enjoy it. I can tolerate ( note I did not say enjoy ) a meal of 100% brown rice. The most the kids will tolerate is a blend of 75%brown and 25% white. We all agree that we can enjoy a 50/50 blend and we are unanimous about the fact that while you can get us to eat it, Pelau with brown rice is just wrong!

Ingredients

* 1 cup chicken broth
* 1/4 cup raisins
* 1 1/2 teaspoons jerk seasoning
* 1 1/4 cups rice
* 1 tin pigeon peas
*water

The jerk seasoning has salt so I don't add any additional salt. If you don't have access to a good commercially prepared jerk seasoning you can make your own.

Directions

1. Combine chicken broth, raisins, and jerk seasoning in medium saucepan. Cover and bring to boil on high.
2. Stir rice mix into boiling mixture.
3. Cover, return to boil, and cook 2 minutes stirring occasionally.
4. Reduce to low and cook for 20 minutes covered, without stirring, or until rice is tender.
5. Stir in peas cover and cook 5-6 minutes until peas are heated.