Tonight I made one of my favorite dishes, Spanish Chicken with Saffron Rice. I use a simplified version of this recipe from Epicurious.com that I got at A Southern Season. They were selling saffron that day, and this recipe is as good a reason as any to splurge on some.

The changes my recipe made to the Epicurious verson were: using 3 lbs. of chicken breast instead of a whole chicken and omitting the peppers and peas. My version also didn’t specify that you were to cook the rice in the sauce, so I’ve been “mistakenly” adding already-cooked rice to the sauce. (This is how you can tell I’ve been married to an Asian guy for almost two years — I see the word ‘rice’ in a recipe and automatically throw a couple of handfuls in the rice cooker!) Looking at the picture on Epicurious, I realize the dish is supposed to consist of large chicken pieces atop dry, seasoned rice with a lot of vegetables in it.

But, you know, I like saucy, stewlike foods (yes, I’m a big fan of Indian cuisine, and I won’t say no to a risotto), so I’m going to stick with my version. I even swapped out diced for crushed tomatoes tonight to amp up the stewiness factor. And it was good.

Though in the pictures the dish looks like some kind of Indian curry, the aroma and taste are very different. The bitterness of the saffron, the tang of the tomatoes, and the salty-savoriness of the olives combine in a piquant way that gives the sauce a lot of character — there are multiple, harmonious flavors going on in every bite.

Next time I make this, though, I’m going to cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces or maybe shred it. Even with lots of salt and pepper and being browned in olive oil, those chicken breasts were bland. They need burying in that aromatic sauce to be palatable.

Posted via web from Chicken Feet & Clam Chowdah