Chicken with caramelized onions and rice, p. 184

I'm sorry we've been on hiatus: I was in the Netherlands (home of patties in grocery stores made out of bugs) (seriously, it's a thing) for three weeks, in NYC for a week, and so on.  It's been a busy winter.

And besides, it's hard to be blogging about food from latitude 32°N when you're in the coldest winter in Ontario history.

In fact, we had a frost last night.

But today, the farmer's market is full of early-spring veggies: ramps and rhubarb, asparagus and garlic greens.  This afternoon's walk was pleasant, perhaps even a little warm.  And though the weekend's real project is this three-day croissant recipe, I have been feeling guilty to you, gentle reader.  Plus, I was craving a little chicken-and-rice comfort food.

This recipe is the canonical one I mentioned in the previous post, which also has links to a pile of other ways you can get the recipe.  You lightly caramelize some sliced onion, start to make a highly-seasoned rice pilaf, and then cook it with some browned chicken parts.  It's served topped with herbs and some olive-oil mixed into yogurt.

In other words, it's crazy-simple comfort food.

So, why is it so good?

Seriously, this is an amazingly tasty dish: the chicken tastes really chicken-y, the rice is beautifully seasoned, and there's a mellowness to the whole experience.

I think the answer is, in part: it's an excuse to use a lot of salt and a lot of fat.

• You fry the onions in fat. 
• Then you brown the spiced chicken parts in more fat.
• This renders fat, in which you fry the rice.
• Then I cooked it in chicken stock, which (since I was making it with the back of the chicken I'd cut up to make the dish), was still in the process of cooking, so I certainly didn't de-fat it.
• Then there's the olive oil in the yogurt.
• The rice is supposed to be seasoned  
• Both the chicken itself, and the rice, are supposed to include a good teaspoon or more of salt.  I'd probably not manage to season the chicken that aggressively, if it hadn't both given a measurement, and also included it as part of the other seasoning (cardamom! cloves! cinnamon!) for the chicken.  

The dish is full of that wonderfully smooth mouthfeel that comes from all that chicken fat and olive oil.  It's pleasantly spiced, but not overpoweringly so.  The chicken isn't overcooked, but does come smoothly off the bone.  And because it's whole spices, different parts of the rice taste differently: here some cardamom, there some cloves.

Highly recommended, of course. 

In this case, I added some of the fresh spring garlic to the onions when I caramelized them, I used dried cranberries instead of the not-easily-found barberries, I used stock instead of water, and I added a bit of saffron to the rice.  Really, nothing that isn't within normal range.  I think this dish would be good with greens in the pilaf, particularly stronger-flavoured ones like chard or kale.  One of the times I made it, I put carrots in, which went well.

Happy spring!