October 18th

Challenge Accepted

I asked the Facebook world for some recipe recommendations and my friend Belinda challenged me to make Puerto Rican rice.  I have to say, I was a little intimidated by the recipe, but after taking a few shortcuts, it really wasn't that hard and was well worth the effort!

Salsa Chicken and Puerto Rican Rice with Plantains
rice recipe from: http://delishdlites.com/holiday-recipes/arroz-con-gandules-puerto-rican-rice-with-pigeon-peas-recipe/

I couldn't have gotten a worse picture of this, but let me explain to you what's going on here.  First of all the salsa chicken...
It doesn't get easier than this.  I put a couple chicken breasts in a pan, covered them with a jar of salsa, put a lid on the pan and cooked the chicken in the salsa until it was cooked through.  It turns our so flavorful, no one will ever believe how easy it was to make.
Next, the plantains...
If you haven't had plantains, they look like bananas, but you want them to be brown before cooking them.  The browner the peel is, the sweeter the plantain with be.  All I did with these was slice them on an angle and fry them in a pan with a little oil.  They get so soft and sweet and amazingly delicious.
Finally, the star of the dinner, the Puerto Rican Rice...
This was much more involved than the side dishes I typically make, but it also was much more delicious.  I think the work (and really there wasn't that much work) was very much worth it because the end result was so delicious!  There are a few shortcuts I took to this recipe.  First, I used store bought Sofrito which I thought would be hard to find, but actually it was really easy to find in the Mexican aisle of Jewel.  Second was the Sazon.  I also found that easily in the grocery store.  The third thing I changed wasn't really a shortcut, but I used brown rice instead of white rice.  Watch out though because that brown rice takes a long time to cook.  That was the only problem I had - the rice was taking so long to cook that everything else was ready and the rice still wasn't done.

Grades:

Megan - A (This dinner was restaurant quality.  The components of the dinner all went together really well and the rice was fantastic.  So full of flavor and so perfect with the chicken and plantains!  I will be making this rice again!)

Noelle - A (Noelle kept asking me if there were beans in the rice [I think because she is used to mexican restaurants that serve rice and beans together].  She ate all her rice and seemed to love it, except when she got a bite with an olive in it.  She hated that.  After I assured her that I took all the other olives out though, she finished it all.  She said, "I'm just going to sit here and eat all my food the whole time because I love it! It's so yummy!"  However, she only ate about half of her plantains.  But hey, that's better than last time she had plantains and she wouldn't eat any of them!)