Dinner last night
May. 8th, 2003 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI made dinner last night. I'm extremely pleased with it.
I'd been planning to make meatloaf for dinner last night, but Trader Joe's didn't have ground turkey. I got a chicken in eighths instead, though I wasn't sure what I would do with it, exactly. I had a lot I wanted to do, though I wasn't sure I'd get through all my tasks for the evening. Chicken-and-rice came to mind, which would give me time to get things done before eating (somehow, I am much less likely to be productive after eating dinner).
I got the recipe for cooking chicken and rice, covered, in a low oven, a couple of years ago. I've used this a million times since then, adding a variety of different seasonings, depending on what I have and what I feel like eating. I like that it's easy on the cook, taking very little active time; just arrange, cover, and bake. The rice comes out nicely goopy, flavored by whatever else is added, plus the chicken, of course. I've put in onion, pine nuts, and preserved lemon, and that's been good. I've put in tomato paste, onion, and garlic, with some herbs, and that's been good too. Or carrots, onion, and thyme. Or salsa. Or... It's a pretty flexible template.
However, I've always used white rice for this. Last night, I realized all I had in the house was brown rice and wild rice (which, to be accurate, is really a misnamed grass, but whatever). I started thinking about how those might do, instead, and what I'd put with them. Tomato stuff didn't seem quite right, and I was going to be making a tomato salad, so that would be too much tomato for one meal.
After more thought, this is what I ended up doing: I put in half a cup each of brown rice and wild rice, then added about half a headworth of garlic cloves, peeled. I'd thought I had some dried cranberries, but it wasn't so: they were dried cherries. I added a handful of those, and sprinkled pine nuts over that. Just because I had them leftover from Pesach, I added dried garlic chips and onion slivers, then arranged chicken pieces on top. I added 2.5 cups of water (based on 2-1 ratio for brown rice and 3-1 ratio for wild rice), covered the pan with foil, and put it in a 300 F oven.
Almost three hours later it was done, and exactly what I wanted. The rice had good texture, and the other flavors balanced extremely well. I ate far too much of it last night, and am looking forward to the leftovers.
The rest of dinner was pretty good, too. I made a tomato salad, using yellow, orange, and red tomatoes (there was a sale on on-the-vine tomatoes in those colors), then adding scallions, black olives, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and some olive oil.
For dessert, strawberries in chunks that had had a little bit of sugar scattered over it.
I'd been planning to make meatloaf for dinner last night, but Trader Joe's didn't have ground turkey. I got a chicken in eighths instead, though I wasn't sure what I would do with it, exactly. I had a lot I wanted to do, though I wasn't sure I'd get through all my tasks for the evening. Chicken-and-rice came to mind, which would give me time to get things done before eating (somehow, I am much less likely to be productive after eating dinner).
I got the recipe for cooking chicken and rice, covered, in a low oven, a couple of years ago. I've used this a million times since then, adding a variety of different seasonings, depending on what I have and what I feel like eating. I like that it's easy on the cook, taking very little active time; just arrange, cover, and bake. The rice comes out nicely goopy, flavored by whatever else is added, plus the chicken, of course. I've put in onion, pine nuts, and preserved lemon, and that's been good. I've put in tomato paste, onion, and garlic, with some herbs, and that's been good too. Or carrots, onion, and thyme. Or salsa. Or... It's a pretty flexible template.
However, I've always used white rice for this. Last night, I realized all I had in the house was brown rice and wild rice (which, to be accurate, is really a misnamed grass, but whatever). I started thinking about how those might do, instead, and what I'd put with them. Tomato stuff didn't seem quite right, and I was going to be making a tomato salad, so that would be too much tomato for one meal.
After more thought, this is what I ended up doing: I put in half a cup each of brown rice and wild rice, then added about half a headworth of garlic cloves, peeled. I'd thought I had some dried cranberries, but it wasn't so: they were dried cherries. I added a handful of those, and sprinkled pine nuts over that. Just because I had them leftover from Pesach, I added dried garlic chips and onion slivers, then arranged chicken pieces on top. I added 2.5 cups of water (based on 2-1 ratio for brown rice and 3-1 ratio for wild rice), covered the pan with foil, and put it in a 300 F oven.
Almost three hours later it was done, and exactly what I wanted. The rice had good texture, and the other flavors balanced extremely well. I ate far too much of it last night, and am looking forward to the leftovers.
The rest of dinner was pretty good, too. I made a tomato salad, using yellow, orange, and red tomatoes (there was a sale on on-the-vine tomatoes in those colors), then adding scallions, black olives, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and some olive oil.
For dessert, strawberries in chunks that had had a little bit of sugar scattered over it.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-08 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-08 07:45 am (UTC);-)
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Date: 2003-05-08 08:19 am (UTC)taken care of. now, merely mouth-watering.