It’s the evening before we head down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and to see our people (Denny, Kettye, Jack and Olive), so we’ve got to have something tasty to regenerate up our airport mana and kick off the trip.
Obviously, we shouldn’t buy anything because it will rot in our storageless “Frat Haus†micro fridge (all it really does is freeze things anyway). So we’ll eat whatever we can forage in the apartment.
It’ll be gutter (“guttahâ€) but we’ll try to take it to an HNL (“hole n’othah levelâ€).
My one purchased indulgence, a bottle of La Crema (2004 Chardonnay). More expensive than I’d like for a garbage night ($17.99, that’s at least $3 of New York City F-U tax; I can find that same bottle for $14.99 anywhere outside the 5 boroughs), but so tasty and sometimes the lads just need to have a little chardonnay time.
–A day-old roasted chicken from Jefferson Market that miraculously escaped my clutches last night due to circumstances beyond my control.
–Just enough nice bacon (my prostate sent me a beautiful thank you note for keeping away from the nitrates).
–An onion
–Some garlic
–Arborio rice (not pictured)
All of the above and anything else I rummage up along the way is going to end up in the trusty rice cooker.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Arborio rice is too starchy to go in the rice cooker and I’ll end up with a kind of burnt bottom and uncooked top of dish, right? Well, here’s my angle… I’ll use much less rice than I would were I making a RICEY dish. The proportions will end up feeling less carb-y, the onions and chicken will really shine through and if I give it a good stir and scrape every 15 minutes, I’ll be able to integrate the toasty flavor of the bottom rice into the rest of the dish.
Foreshadowing: it comes out nicey, spicey and not too pricey as they say in New Orleans.
On to the cooking. Pour yourself a nice glass of the La Crema. But take it easy, tiger, you’ve got to make it last because wifey may want a glass and you’d probably like a little when you’re actually eating dinner. [insert tiger growl mp3]
Everything in my tiny self-centered universe starts with onions, but if we’re going to use the crack of meats, bacon to give the onions a smokey porky nastiness, we have to start there. So roughly chunk up the bacon and toss it in a skillet on medium heat.
and roughly chop up those onions…
After the bacon has given up it’s magical adipose goo, toss in the onions and some crushed garlic (if you’re feeling as lazy as I am, or finely chopped if you’re a good person. (Oh, the way I abuse my garlic sometimes… It’s like Abu Ghraib for vegetables.)).
As the onions cook, it’s time to clean the chicken. When we get a roasted chicken, if I don’t clean it immediately and throw out the carcass, my lovely Adrien goes feral and gnaws on the bones in a way that sincerely troubles me. I pull off the wings and the butt (that foul flabby sac that goes over the fence last) and distract her with that while I quickly pick off the meat and dispose of what’s left. Voilà !
Combine all the ingredients, including a juice glass of arborio rice and 2 juice glasses of water, in the rice cooker with a cube of vegetable bullion and anything else you find in the fridge. In this case I found a pack of frozen peas. Woo-hoo!
Mix a bit and let cook, stirring and scraping every 15 minutes. Total coking time about 40 minutes. I finish and serve with salt, black pepper, lots of Chipotle Tabasco (seriously, 2 teaspoons is perfect) and sesame oil, which goes wonderfully with the generally sticky, nutty crusty nature of the dish.