Hi, welcome back to Eat For A Week.
Today we'll be making chicken pilau.
This is a dish from Trinidad.
I can't claim creation for this.
A friend of mine from Trinidad, Federico, actually taught myself and a bunch of friends
how to make this last time he was up here visiting us.
We're going to use a whole head of garlic, just for the record.
This is a clove of garlic.
This is the thing that comes off of the head.
Yeah, that big whole thing.
Use that.
Large onion, chopped pretty fine.
A bunch of green onions.
Just chop up the fuzzy little root end.
Okay, root of that.
And chop the onion up into small pieces.
I think I neglected to mention this, but all the stuff you're cutting up should go altogether
in a big bowl.
This is going to be the marinade for the chicken.
Chop up a bunch of parsley.
It's probably really more than is necessary, probably only need about half of this, but
I'm probably not going to use it before it goes bad, so I'm going to go ahead and use
the whole thing.
Chives.
I'm just going to use some scissors and cut them right with a bowl.
I think it's faster.
Make sure you don't make the same mistake I just did, which was to use a bowl that's
too small.
Realize after I got all this stuff in there, there's no way the chicken's going to fit
in there with it.
Habanero pepper.
They're hot.
Very hot.
Federico thought they were a different kind of pepper when we went shopping, and we ended
up using six.
Not good.
I use one.
Don't use the ribs or the seeds, because that's where those are even hotter than the
flesh.
And this, you definitely want chopped up super small.
Be sure to wash your hands really, really, really well when you're done chopping it up,
because if you touch your eyes or rub your nose or something, those oils will transfer
and it will burn.
I speak from experience, don't do it.
Wash your hands.
Wash, wash, wash.
If you're concerned about the spiciness of the peppers, go ahead and try maybe half of
one.
I don't care for super, super spicy food myself.
How did I grow up in Arizona, and I don't like the hot, hot, spicy, I don't know, I'm
afraid.
It's pleasingly hot, you know, a nice little just heat in the mouth, but it's not going
to drive you to drink, you know, a gallon of water for one serving of this stuff.
Three tablespoons of white vinegar, about a teaspoon of Cajun seasoning, a couple of
tablespoons of black pepper, a couple of teaspoons of chicken and garlic bouillon.
If you're sensitive to MSG, you'll want to be careful about the bouillon you buy, because
it often has MSG.
You can read the labels, like sensitive to MSG, and not a label reader, except for things
like that.
Three teaspoons of dry ginger, mix that all up together, it doesn't look white enough
to me.
More vinegar.
You want to buy a big pack of chicken legs, about ten or so.
First you want to peel the skin off of all the chicken, it's personally not so fun.
You can look for skinless chicken legs, otherwise you'll need to be able to skin off yourself.
Now comes the fun part, take your chicken leg, chop it in half, I'm a big loose when it
comes to this kind of thing, I'm afraid of chopping off my fingers, so use a rubber mallet,
you don't want to use a hammer on your cleaver, because that could damage your cleaver.
When you're done chopping up the chicken, you want to be sure it rinsed really well,
because there can be really sharp bone shards in there, which will not be pleasant to find
coating around your full out.
Don't have a cleaver or don't want to deal with cutting up chicken bones, chicken legs,
you can't always just leave them whole, or if you wanted you could also just make it
with boneless chicken breast inside meat.
Chicken is rinsed, goes into the marinade for ten or fifteen minutes, be careful not to
cut your finger on the sharp piece of bone.
As always wash your hands well after working with raw chicken.
Give this a good mix, and just let that hang out.
All you need for this one is a big pot, that's it, put over medium high heat, put a quarter
inch of vegetable oil on the bottom of the pan, wait for that to get hot.
Once the oil is hot you want to add about a tablespoon and a half of brown sugar, stir
this until the brown sugar starts to get melty, don't splash hot oil on yourself.
Brown sugar will not actually combine with the oil, just so you know.
Start to smell a little bernie, take it off the heat for a couple of minutes, ooh I kind
of like that.
Once that's done go ahead and dump in your chicken mixture, stand back because the vinegar
fumes can give it a bit of a coughing fit, and return it to the heat.
Don't worry if the brown sugar hardens on the bottom with the cold ingredients as it
heats back up, it'll loosen up again.
See the pot's pretty crowded, but I want to try and get some color on the chicken.
It's not going to get crispy brown or anything like that, but it will start to look less
raw, and that's what you're looking for.
Less raw.
At this point you want to add enough water to cover, and that's what it looks like after
you add the water.
And now you want to add raw rice, give that a good stir, and I just want to let it go
for about 20 minutes.
Stir once more just to make sure the rice isn't burnt into the bottom.
This is what it looks like for 20 minutes, a quarter cup of butter, about a third of
a cup of ketchup, and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste, get those incorporated, needs
more ketchup.
You get this stuff in there, it should look like this, you can see already it's reduced
quite a bit.
Add about another half cup of water, put the heat at a pretty low temperature, and let
it reduce until it's pretty dry and gloppy looking, well it's pretty much reduced, looks
like that, throw in now a one pound bag of frozen peas and carrots, no need to thaw them,
just throw them in, they're small, they'll warm up.
I've let it go for another 15 minutes or so, and I think we're ready to call this done.
That's what we got.
I should probably taste it for seasoning, could use some salt, remember we haven't actually
added any salt, there will be some in the Cajun seasoning, and in the bouillon, I just
put in about a teaspoon or so.
Here's your final product, thanks again, enjoy.
