Persian Roasted Chicken with Jeweled Saffron Rice

So I had used the macadamia nuts Oh! Nuts had sent me, but not the dried red sour cherries. I vaguely remembered some rice dish studded with dried fruit, and when I looked it up I found many recipes for Persian jeweled rice, a rich rice dish with dried fruits, nuts, and a crapton of butter. Clear winner.

The recipe I settled on included instructions for roasted chicken with a simple marinade consisting of cumin, olive oil, onions, and saffron. I don't think I used 1/4 cup olive oil since I used less chicken, and I halved the amount of cumin, otherwise everything was the same. I also didn't toss out the onions when the time came to roast the chicken since it would add more flavor to the broth.

The rice. I love the stuff and would eat it everyday if I made it that often. However, I rarely venture outside of the typical manner of preparation. Sure, I've made sushi rice and mango coconut sticky rice, also risotto and rice puddings, though pertaining to side dish rices I stuck with the norm. One interesting aspect in the preparation for jeweled rice is that you parboil the rice first, as it will continue to cook on the stove or in the oven after being layered.

Let me talk about boiled rice. Typically, you would steam rice, using just enough water to be fully absorbed by the rice by the end of the cooking time. With this method, prepared as you would pasta, the rice is boiled in salted water until tender (or in this case, less than al dente). The salt seasons the rice, and the rice comes out tender, separate, and perfectly cooked. The first recipe I used says to parboil the rice for 5 minutes, and it can be left to sit until you're ready to use it, drained and covered. (During which, it practically finished cooking itself by the residual heat.)

Did I mention that it took a mere 5 minute to reach an almost cooked state? That would mean a few minutes to 5 minutes longer would have resulted in completely cooked rice, which is half the time it takes when steamed. I remember reading about this in a thread on Chow.com, I think, and some people swore by this method. And to think I never would have tried it had it not been for this recipe.

So, the link up there says to cook it for 10 minutes, and if you're not going to let it sit for a 1-3 hours, you probably should. Otherwise, 5 minutes would do. I'll post the second link below.

Also of note, I used jasmine rice since I didn't have basmati and it came out fine.

When ready to assemble, crushed saffron gets mixed with water, then tossed with the rice. The saffron I used came from a Mexican store, and it wasn't very expensive. Maybe it's a sub-quality saffron or a different type that produces more from each crop, I don't know. It didn't really color the rice much, so possibly old saffron loses its dying ability or I just needed more of it.

Next step is to melt the butter with the dried cherries and sugar. I used 1/2 cup dried cherries and a 1/4 cup packed dark raisins.

This used a lot of butter -- 1 stick plus 2 tablespoons. I was tempted to reduce the amount to half a stick or 6 tablespoons, but the idea of the excess richness intrigued me enough to give it a go and see if it was worth it.

Separately, I toasted 1/3 cup pepita seeds for 3 minutes in a 350 degree oven (if you hear popping, stop).

The rice gets layered in a 2-quart baking dish with two layers of the butter-plumped dried fruit and toasted pepitas. Once you finish with the last layer of rice, the butter gets poured on top.

How this recipe differs from the one I was going to try is that this is baked, whereas the other recipe tells you to cook the rice during the second stage over the stove, which helps the rice develop a golden crust on the bottom that gets broken up afterwards. I would follow this recipe for ingredients and the other recipe for the cooking method next time, as it would taste exceptionally good with the crispy crust pieces.

The chicken came out incredibly moist and very tender. I skipped the broiling step, as the chicken actually cooked 5-10 minutes longer than the recipe said (I didn't start the layering of the rice soon enough) and the skins were already crispy and golden.

THE RICE was incredible! Just on the verge of sweet, and very buttery and rich. The sweetness and flavor of the cherries with the taste and crunch of the pepitas made the dish unique. Although it was a little sweet, it was a great pairing with the chicken. I also ate some leftover rice for breakfast this morning with milk and fresh strawberries.

But I cannot express enough how incredible this rice was. Not very difficult to prepare, even with the many steps, and since the rice can be made ahead of time it helps to break the steps up so you don't have to do everything at once.

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Recipes

Persian Roasted Chicken with Dried Cherry-Saffron Rice ~ I followed this recipe exactly, though I prepared the rice according to step one from the recipe linked below.

Jeweled Rice with Dried Fruit ~ Here, I used the their method of preparing the rice ahead of time. Next time, I would follow these instructions for preparation and cooking method of the entire dish. I will note that the inclusion of the sugar is vital to the taste of this recipe, though you can leave it out if you'd rather.

Coming Soon: Wayfair Product Review

Hey again. Just a little teaser to let everyone know that I'll be reviewing a product (not chosen, at the moment) from Wayfair. I was contacted by the Wayfair team asking me if I'd like to work with them again, and since my experience in hosting a review and giveaway has been pleasant, I took them up on it.

If you haven't heard of them, Wayfair is like a mega-store, but on the internet. They sell items ranging from cookware, home furnishings, and bedroom furniture like twin beds and more, all adding up to 200+ stores located conveniently on one site. Take a look the next time you feel like shopping from home.

Wayfair also is active in the community side of things, and takes great pride in being able to do what they can for those who need help, which is pretty cool coming from a company like this.

So stay tuned and come back later to check out the review. If I can decide what it will be...

apple pie

Hello everyone. Hope you guys had a great 4th of July weekend! I'm going to talk a little about the pie I made for the 4th of July. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I planned, but the crust came out almost perfect.

So I set out to make an apple-peach pie, using Martha Stewart's mile high apple pie recipe as a base for the filling. However, the peaches were actually nectarines and was a complete failure. I kept telling myself that the skin on the "peach" didn't seem normal, but it took up to the point of trying to slice the "peach" when I resigned to the fact that I misjudged the fruit. The fruit segments wouldn't separate from the pit, and I ended up having to use my hands to squeeze the flesh off. This didn't even come close to stress relief because I kept calling myself names in my head throughout the entire process. Fortunately, the filling tasted good, though it needed more spices because the flavor didn't come out well in the end.

I've been having trouble with pie crust, and I've had my eye on Cassie's recipe for a while now, which I decided to make this time. The overall recipe yields enough for a double-crust pie, and includes baking powder. I think it might help to keep the crust from shattering. Both butter and shortening are used here, and since I've come to prefer a butter-shortening crust I have no problem with the inclusion of shortening. I definitely had really great success with this crust, especially considering that I made it by hand instead of in the food processor (I felt lazy). It rolled out nicely enough, though I didn't get it into a perfect circle.

Sometimes when I'm forming the dough into discs there are areas that look like a crack. When there are "cracks", the dough separates at the crack when you try and roll it out. It's fine if you can manage to keep the separated areas at the edges that can be covered with the top crust, otherwise you look like a failure. Or not you, but me. I get paranoid about overworking the dough so I stop handling it after a while.

Here is the pie with the filling. The dough was pretty easy to work with and tasted really good. I eat the pie scraps because what else am I going to do with them, so I can tell you firsthand that the raw dough was delicious. I did have one concern...

My concern was the rather large and conspicuous pieces of butter. I know Cassie said she had a mixture of fine, medium, and large chunks, though I wondered if someone it would melt and ruin the shape of the crust. I didn't really have to worry, though, because there wasn't much shrinkage except that the crust still lost it's crimp after baking.

I cut a star on top because I'm patriotic like that.

May I present you with a beautifully baked pie? I liked the even golden-browning and that the crust was decently thick and mildly flaky.

UNFORTUNATELY, I say in all caps, I seem to have this issue with the bottom crust not baking up and coming out like some saggy skin flap. Seriously. I don't really know what I'm doing here because I bake it in the bottom third of the oven, and on a baking sheet (which some pro baker said helps the bottom crust to brown). The only thing I can think of is that it needed longer time, or that the filling was too juicy.

As for the filling, it was lacking in flavor. Which is odd because it tasted good before I put it in the pie to bake, though maybe it needs to be overly good before being baked so it ends up as just good when it's finished. At least it looks pretty.