Chicken and Rice made Quick and Easy

Today's recipe is all about infusion. No. We're not cooking at warp speeded on the starship Enterprise. We're adding flavor in a very special way.

Boiling is an easy way to cook. But the drawback is the loss of flavor into the boiling water. We can overcome this by adding flavors and concentrating them in the cooking liquid. Cooks call this...infusion.

Chicken and rice are both mildly flavored foods. Boiling dilutes their gentle ways even more. Today's chicken will slowly be infused with the enriching flavors of garlic salt and bay leaf. I've slowed down the cooking process to encourage this re-invigoration of taste into our chicken.

The rice will also enjoy some infusion as we use water, vegetable liquid and seasonings to ratchet up the flavor.

We start our cooking project with what will be the most time consuming...the chicken.

Buying in bulk will save you money. I try to select cuts that are priced right and easy to use.

When buying chicken I compare the prices of whole fryers, legs and quarters. I love a bargain. Don't you? When chicken is under 89 cents a pound I swoop in and buy a month's supply.

Freezing just the amount you need for a meal is so helpful. Every chef can appreciate how convenient this is. I separate chicken parts into freezer bags. This gives me the perfect amount for each meal.

Thawing is safe and easy. Just remember to use cold water. Never hot water! A typical bag of frozen chicken will thaw in as little as 30 minutes. Hot water is NOT faster. But it does encourage bacterial growth. Yuck! Very large, thick pieces may take longer.

Just fill the bag with cold water and sink it. I use the pot I plan to cook the chicken with. Why create more dishes to wash? This method is better than leaving the mass of chicken floating in water. You'll notice immediately...the water can do it's job much more efficiently this way. There's no reason to fear the loss of flavor.

After thawing, be sure to rinse the chicken to remove anything loose from the parts. Todays butchers aren't as careful about odd chunks of fat or bone fragments as the chef might like.

Prior to cooking I decide whether to leave the skin or remove it. Legs are usually cut at the joint to encourage faster cooking. I carve away the chunks of fat. Sometimes I will use these for stock, other times I just discard them. Fat can be fried. This melts it for use as a flavoring ingredient. Maybe in the rice? Or save it to make chicken soup or just stock. It's up to you.

For today's recipe we will boil the chicken. Boiling removes fats and allows the water to enter the chicken meat....dulling the flavor. Add salt and seasonings to the water. Salt makes the water boil at a lower temperature (it shortens the cooking time). I use two tablespoons per quart of water. I've also added two bay leaves to the pot, the same proportion.

Any chicken recipe will have a list of seasonings. Be brave or just curious. Use those spices in the cooking water. You can save the resulting broth for re-use as stock, soup or sauce.

OK. The chicken is on the stove. Yes. I put the chicken in the water. I want to infuse the flavor into the meat. So I'm slowing this cooking process (making it take longer).

Why use salt then SLOW the cooking process? Good question. Part of cooking is timing. I have an hour and a half until serving time. There's no rush. The salt will still season the meat. Typically you want to bring the water to a boil...THEN add your chicken parts. This is the method I recommend with chicken... Do it fast. The usual cook time would be thirty or forty minutes to done and one hour to falling off the bone. I have an extra half an hour to dinner today so I slowed things down.

I'm using instant rice today. It's the only rice on my shelf (so all you rice "purists" can calm down. Just pray for the author, lol.). Depending on your microwave (gasp! Did he just say...MICROWAVE?) Yes. I microwave instant rice. (Gosh. Get OVER these stereotypes about food.)

Instant rice has been cooked once already. Then it's dehydrated and sold for use. All it needs is water. You heat the water to bring the rice to table-serving temperature. Oils and butters are flavoring ingredients. But the main purpose of an oil is to separate the rice..keep it from clumping into a tightly glued starch-ball. It's the same principle as motor oil. We don't want the parts to stick together so we use a lubricant.

Too much oil will make the rice greasy. Let's try to lubricate the grains without letting it sink in, shall we? That means we should add the butter AFTER cooking and just before serving.

Follow the box directions for how much water to use. THEN cut it back slightly. The oil you add will make up for it.

Flavor the water. That means vegetables and spices. I'm adding canned peas (get over it, please). The peas are packed in a sweetener called, high fructose corn syrup. It's a form of sugar. Use the pea liquid in place of plain water.

I've diced some onion to contrast the sweet of the corn syrup. When adding vegetables to a food we either cut them to match the size (same size as the rice grain) to blend with the flavor...OR we cut the vegetables larger ( to give a bite of this and a bite of that flavor).

I'm going plain-jane on the rice. My chicken is the star and I want the rice to be a mild, non-competing flavor.

My vegetable is another story. We're spicing it up so the flavors jump out and steal your tongues attention. Why? Well frankly, chicken has a mild flavor. Cranking the flavor of chicken honestly...just means turning up the volume on a particular seasoning.

Where's the chicken flavor NOW, man (sniff)? OK. I'm ok.

So my trick to serving chicken and rice...two foods with mild natural flavors...is to add a third item (the vegetable)... and make it shout! Wine lovers might select for a mild or a middle of the road flavor here. A powerful rinse agent (did he just say, rinse agent, OMG!) will challenge the next bite to be heard over the powerful flavor of a port or brandy. But this is just my own opinion.

Searching the refrigerator for today's leftovers, I found some peas and some corn. Both have our lovely corn sweetener, lol. I sometimes tilt my foods to the sweet by using their "juice".

The tongue can distinguish hundreds of flavors. The simplest way to categorize flavors are... sweet, salt, bitter and sour. Because flavors "take turns" being noticed, we can enjoy different parts of a given food as salty then sweet then bitter then sour...in a variety of orders.

Seasoning is about exciting the tongue and mixing up the order and strength of these "categories". It is a fallacy, of course, that the tongue has four separate areas to detect four separate categories of flavors. We're discussing categories here as a convenience.

The photo at the right shows the Mediterranen spices I chose. You might select other ethnic favorites. Yes?

The rice is out of the microwave after four minutes; enough time to heat the water and rice to serving temp.

I want to add some color and pattern to the rice. So. We found some leftover olive slices in the fridge and put them to work.

Olives are not a strong flavor. Their black color will stand out in contrast to the rice's white. It's near time to serve. So we add a lubricant to the rice kernals...margarine (another salt flavor).

When someone said we eat with our eyes they weren't far wrong. Looking at a picture of food...we salivate OR NOT! Some of this depends on how the food looks. If it's nasty and moldy and yucky...we may notice this BEFORE the smell arrives and choose NOT to salivate.

This is the main reason why colors and food textures are so very important to chefs and hungry guests.

Ah, the lighting has set the mood and the rich, deep colors of the table setting only add to our anticipation. Yes. Color matters. Lighting does too.

Most fruits and vegetables that grow above the ground are brightly colored primary colors like green, red or yellow. Foods that grow beneath the ground are often earth colors, variations of brown. Meats are often variations of red.

Our table setting; the plates, napkins and other accessories should highlight or contrast the colors of our meal.

Blues, being rare in nature, can provide a beautiful foil to pastels, or other, very light food colors. Metals bring out the gloss and shine of the meal.

Harmonizing your table's color is an art well received by the guest at table. Usually the reward is a complement to the chef...for the appeal of the presentation...and the appetizing beauty of the meal.