David Tanis’s Jeweled Rice (served with seared chicken thighs)

 

"Best quality" that I could find

• 2 cups best-quality Basmati rice
• Kosher salt
• Unsalted butter, 6 tablespoons in total [I used 7]
• 1 large onion, diced small
• ¼ teaspoon saffron threads, crumbled and soaked in 1/4 cup hot water [see below] 
• Large pinch ground cinnamon
• Large pinch ground cardamom
• Large pinch ground allspice
• Large pinch ground black pepper
• Large pinch ground cumin [of these spices, I only used cumin, cinnamon, and BP; added nutmeg]
• ⅓ cup chopped dried apricots
• ⅓ cup golden raisins or currants [used black raisins]
• ⅓ cup dried imported barberries or goji berries, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes and drained (or use 1/3 cup dried cherries or dried cranberries) [used cherries and cranberries]
• ⅓ cup blanched slivered almonds
• ⅓ cup roughly chopped pistachios. 

My take on the directions:

1. [on the advice of a commenter] Soak the rice for three hours in a bath of salt water. Drain with a colander and run under cold water until the water runs clear. 

2. Parboil the rice: dump the rice in plenty of salted boiling water and boil for 3.5 minutes [reduced from Tanis's recipe because the rice has already absorbed some water]. Drain again and run under cold water.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat. When the butter is melted and sizzling slightly, add the onions. Cook until softened and browned [Tanis says 5 minutes, may take longer]. Add the spices and a tablespoon of saffron water, cook for 1 more minute, and then add the dried fruit.

 

The fruit/onion mixture

4. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Spread half the parboiled rice over the bottom of the pot. Spoon over the onion-fruit mixture, then the remaining rice. Leave the pot on the flame, uncovered, for 5 to 8 minutes to gently brown the rice. Do not stir the rice. Rather, "use your nose" to detect when the rice has browned. This is by far the most challenging part of the recipe.

5. Drizzle the remaining saffron water over the rice and put on the lid. Adjust the heat to very low and leave undisturbed for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and let rest at least 10 minutes.

6. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a small skillet over medium-low heat and gently toast the almonds and pistachios [Tanis says for a minute, but it took me a bit longer], taking care not to get them too brown. Set aside for garnish.

7. To serve, spoon the rice into a wide bowl or platter. With a spatula, carefully lift the bottom crust, placing the crisp side up. Sprinkle with the toasted nuts.

 

Rating: 4/5

Observations: Nytimes recommended this recipe as a Valentine's Day meal, for understandable reasons. The name of the recipe alone evokes luxury and romance, and the winter spices alone could bring a smile to the face of the sternest Puritan. There is some technique involved, however -- you have to know by scent alone when the bottom of the rice has formed the crust of crispy rice prized by so many cuisines. Go too far and you risk burning the rice; reduce the heat too soon and your crust will be patchy at best. Mine was patchy. I therefore had to scrape up the bottom layer of rice in pieces, which broke up with crunchy parts even more. Was it a delicious meal? Yes. But it was accompanied by pangs of disappointment.

I strive for honesty, dear reader, and so I must confess to you that after purchasing fancy basmati rice and other ingredients for this complicated meal I could not afford saffron. I replaced it with a combination of turmeric and water. We survived the substitution.

 By the way, why is culinary writing always so dogmatic? And why does it rely on "science-adjacent" language when very little of what we know about cooking derives from controlled experiments? How can be so sure that you're right about matters of taste? I pray that we will one day be wise enough to remember our own ignorance.

The comments: 

Linda Criss remarks: "Basmati rice is typically soaked for several hours in a quarter cup of kosher salt. It is then rinsed many times until the liquid runs clear. This is a customary technique in Persian cooking. Barberries are traditional fruit used otherwise it's really not An Iranian dish. It's like using kale instead of romaine in a Caesar salad."

As noted above, I took this advice and soaked the rice. I'm not sure that I made any tremendous improvements to the recipe by doing so. By the way, what exactly is so wrong with making a Caesar salad with kale instead of romaine?

JamieDNYC implores: "Hint: Avoid using the pre-ground spices! Grinding your own allspice, cardamom and pepper will make a world of difference. This is a very fragrant dish, and you won't be able to achieve the same results,  and won't be able to truly appreciate this wonderful dish"

I never grind my own spices and I like eating food just fine.

Mary-Ann adds: "One of the notes suggested adding a little yogurt to the butter at the bottom of the pot in order to get a really nice crust.  I tried it.  It worked.  I would recommend this."

Many of the commenters recommend adding yogurt to the bottom of the pan to allow the rice to brown more quickly. I'll certainly try this trick if I make the recipe again. They also recommend steeping the saffron in orange blossom water.

--

Questions that are occupying my thoughts these days: is there a social cost to excessive humility? How does one live a just life in an unjust world? 

 Quote of the day: "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation."

 Disco song of the day: Donna Summer, Love's Unkind. A track on the great disco concept album, I Remember Yesterday. 

 

Jennifer Steinhauer’s Slow-Cooker Butter Chicken (served with brown basmati rice)

Welcome to Colin Cooks Nytimes.com/cooking! Here I will post and review New York Times recipes, along with analysis of the comments section, observations on home cooking, and occasional musings and bemuse-ings.

 

I started this blog as a distraction from writing my doctoral dissertation. I hope it will be useful to someone who wants to add new meals to their weekly repertoire. As an entirely untrained “chef,” my approach to cooking is simple and pragmatic, and geared toward maximizing caloric and flavor performance in relation to price (the Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis). I tend to avoid garnishes, decorative flourishes, and high-priced ingredients (but I put either parmesan cheese or fish sauce in almost everything I make) This orientation toward cooking requires modifying many New York Times recipes, which tend not to be written with the average person’s grocery budget in mind. I usually cook only with the ingredients I can find at Trader Joe’s and Mariano’s (pronounced Mary-yeah-nose).

 

I plan to update this blog every time I have a new Nytimes recipe to share, about 7 times per month. I will always put the recipe first, then the commentary. This isn’t the kind of cooking blog that will make you scroll through seemingly endless pages of auto-ethnography.

 

https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/locations/tsa-evanston-food-pantry/

 

 

Jennifer Steinhauer’s Slow-Cooker Butter Chicken (served with brown basmati rice)

 

Busting out the slow cooker!

 

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons grated ginger [I chop the ginger]
• 1 tablespoon garam masala [I use pre-blended “curry powder”]
• 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs [I use 1.5-2 lbs w/ same proportions]
• 1 teaspoon lime zest
• 1 tablespoon lime juice [or maybe 2-3; see note]
• 1 cup coconut milk  
• ½ cup chicken stock [I use Minor’s chicken base]
• ¼ cup cilantro leaves, for garnish (optional)

 

Additions: more garlic, black pepper, fish sauce (haha), more curry powder (to make up for the stale spices), red pepper flakes

 

 My take on the directions:

 

1.    1. In a Dutch oven, heat up the vegetable oil. Add chopped onions and ginger and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the onions soften (it never takes me the same amount of time to soften an onion twice). Add the garlic and garam masala and cook, stirring often, for two minutes. Add tomato paste and salt and cook until the tomato paste turns a dark red color, about two minutes. (Here’s where I add the fish sauce and black pepper). 

 

Beautiful mustard hue

 

2.     Add the lime juice and scrape the bottom of the pot to remove the browned bits.

3.    Put the chicken in the slow cooker and add the tomato paste mixture from the Dutch oven, lime zest, coconut milk and chicken stock. Stir together. Steinhauer has you cut the chicken thighs into pieces before you add them to the slow cooker, but I find that it’s much easier to do so at the end of the cooking process.

 

 

4. Set the slow cooker to low and cook for 4.5-5.5 hours. It generally tastes about the same in this range. Open up the slow cooker and separate the chicken into chunks using a wooden spoon or two.

5.     If you want to make it look nicer, add some chopped cilantro a la Steinhauer.

 

 

 

Rating: 4/5

Observations: I make chicken dishes with a slow cooker once a week, and this is one of the recipes in my slow-cooker rotation. You could probably make this recipe in a Dutch oven, but the advantage of a slow cooker is that you don’t have to tend to the pot.  It has all the elements of a great butter chicken that you might get at your local Indian restaurant – saltiness, butteriness, spiciness, acidity. It’s not quite as good as restaurant curry, and not only because my spices aren’t as fresh. The flavor dissipates too quickly in your mouth, and I’m not sure why. On the other hand, this is a very easy and filling recipe that produces a beautiful aroma. I recommend it. I also added extra lime juice today, and it improved the flavor greatly, melding with the tomato juice to produce an initial sensation of sharp acidity followed by the unctuous coconut milk.

 

 One time I accidentally made it with “coconut cream,” or highly concentrated coconut milk. The extra fat content gave the sauce more staying power on my tongue, and the result was splendid. Something to consider.

 

 Should you get a slow cooker? There is nothing you can do with this appliance that you can’t do in a large, thick-bottomed pot. But they are relatively cheap these days, and because you begin most slow-cooker recipes in the early afternoon you can spend more of your evening listening to jazz or Kylie Minogue with a drink in your hand. Another thing to consider.

 

I typically use this in lieu of chicken stock

 

Just came in the mail!

 

  

The comments:

 

Tracy J. opines, “I will NEVER understand why people think that critiquing a great recipe or offering alternatives that are not positive is acceptable.  Be positive or be quiet.”

 

 Really, Tracy? Are recipes to be above criticism? Is the New York Times cooking site the last sacred idol to be smashed by the anonymous cruelty of the internet age? Pleasantries be damned: You will not silence me, Tracy J., despite your comment receiving an astounding 977 “thumbs up.”

 

Then again, in Tracy's defense, this was the remark that raised their hackles:

 

S: “5-7 hours in a slow cooker?  Just, no ...

Just use a pressure cooker or Insta Pot: you can sautee and finish cooking right in the same pot; the cooking time comes down to less than an hour. In this day and age, who has time and planning  for several hours of slow cooking?” 

 

In this matter I’m with Tracy. Slow-cooker recipes were made for slow-cooker people (see: above) – that is to say, slow movers and slow thinkers such as myself. An end to the InstaPot tyranny.

 

Katje comments: “FYI, you can store whole ginger root in your freezer. It makes it really easy to grate, and you just pop it back in to await the next meal!”

 

I have tried this before and find the texture of the ginger takes on an unpleasant, water-logged quality. Perhaps grating it before freezing would help?

 

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Here in Evanston it has been extremely cold. I look out my window to see sidewalks lined with giant boulders of ice.  What is the effect of all these enormous piles of snow on the soil underneath, especially as they accumulate dirt and detritus? What must the worms think?

 

Quote of the day: “The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital.”

 

Disco song of the day: Kelly Marie, “Feels Like I’m in Love” (1980). Written for Elvis, and it shows!