And because I have speeded up things a touch, I like to use a lot of thyme and bay, just to build up an extra layer of woody and aromatic flavour in the background. You could use the latter, also straight out of a jar, but I find that these tart, scarlet teardrops provide a lovely contrast against the inherent creaminess of the rice and resulting broth.
The twists come in the form of using sweet drop peppers, rather than roasted red peppers. Equally, the onions can be stir-fried and caramelised in a flash, just so long as you keep an eye on them and add a drop of water if they are beginning to catch. That said, you don’t want to boil the chicken bones either but a 30 minute gentle simmer will do the job. There really isn’t much to be gained from stewing for hours on end. The first being to break down and joint the chicken for pan frying and I actually believe that you can make a decent chicken stock quite briskly. So I have made a few nips and tucks to this recipe and added a couple of tweaks along the way. Which is no good for a midweek dinner, when you’ve got just a small window of opportunity, before scooting back out to deliver children to Brownies and Cubs. All in all, it can take up to three hours to put this together.
And the onions have to be cooked for no less than 45 minutes, so that they become sweet and decadent. A healthy, rich stock needs to gleaned and formulated from the carcass to provide backbone. The chicken needs to be roasted whole, so that precious juices can be collected afterwards. But once you begin to break things down, it soon becomes apparent that a bleedin’ awful lot of work needs to be done. The easy translation is ‘rice with chicken and red peppers’ – which sounds fairly straightforward. I have made arroz con pollo y pimientos a fair few times now, having been introduced to this Andalusian dish by Claudia Roden, one of our most revered food writers.
FRESH SWEETY DROP PEPPERS FULL
Of course, sometimes (well, actually a lot of the time) we often have to produce something quick for the table and short-cuts have become a necessity of life, and this recipe is full of them. Even if you do wake up with your head stuck to a sodden pillow, because you’ve spent the best part of the dawn chorus dribbling in your sleep. The smells alone that permeate the house in the early hours have to be the best alarm call ever. An afternoon in the kitchen, chopping and whittling vegetables down into their smaller constituent parts is time well spent and braising joints of meat overnight in the oven always yields the best results. Ordinarily, I am always up for injecting a bit of patience and time into proceedings when cooking.
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