Jamaican Rice & Peas

I'm pretty confident that I will never get tired of rice and beans. When I lived in Costa Rica for a month, that was a huge portion of my diet and it never got old - although the steady supply of avocados fresh from the tree in the backyard to serve alongside the rice probably helped. And hot sauce!

This is (my take on) the Jamaican take on rice and beans. Evidently it's called rice and peas because they use pigeon peas there, but I've only ever seen it with red kidney beans in the US. I also used a whole habanero pepper in place of a scotch bonnet pepper because they don't have scotch bonnet peppers in Giant Eagle (at least the one I went to). This is one of those dishes I remember making back in high school when I had no idea what I was doing, and everything still worked out fine!

Jamaican Rice & Peas

Adapted from Bobby's Flay's recipe on the Food Network

2 cups cooked red kidney beans (I slow cooked them a couple nights before)

1 can unsweetened coconut milk

4 sprigs fresh thyme

1/4 cup chopped green onions (and another tbsp or so for mixing in after cooking)

1 Scotch bonnet pepper (or habanero)

1 1/2 cups uncooked white rice

salt and pepper

Mango Chaulafan

When I studied abroad in Ecuador, I spent about a month of the semester living in the capitol, Quito, with a great host family. There were chaulafan places all over the city, literally on every block in some neighborhoods. Chaulafan is Ecuadorian-style fried rice - it's crazy easy and is a perfect comfort food.

A lot of the great flavor comes from cooking the rice in chicken broth. I made some homemade broth.

I made a big dutch oven full of the normal, typical chaulafan (at least as normal as it can be made by me in my Pgh kitchen!) for my birthday dinner (more than a month ago... I am very bad at blogging!), and it was all eaten up. But the next day I wanted more, so I made another batch for Britt and me. For the second batch, I substituted mango for shredded chicken since I had used all the chicken the day before. Britt liked the mango version even better, but I love it both ways. 

I made aji criollo, Ecuadorian cilantro-y hot sauce, to serve with everything, including chaulafan.

MANGO CHAULAFAN
Adapted from Laylita's Recipes

Want to make your own chicken broth to cook the rice in?

5 lbs whole chicken, or assorted pieces
10 cups water
1 white onion, diced
2 carrots
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
5 cilantro sprigs
Salt to taste

Boil it all up for about an hour or until the chicken is cooked through. Make sure you don't overcook the smaller pieces - you might want to take them out a little earlier and let the bigger pieces boil for a bit longer.

Remove the chicken and shred once cooled. Strain the broth and save for cooking the rice. There should be plenty left over. I had a couple bowls of plain broth, soooo good.

Nasi kuning (Indonesian Yellow Rice)

This version of yellow rice would make a great side dish or quick lunch. I got the recipe from an Indonesian cooking book that I bought on sale at Half-Price Books!

I haven't been cooking many new recipes lately - I've actually been using previous blog posts to cook some favorites, like Honey Wheat Bread, Pierogie Pizza, and Breakfast Quesadillas (not that you need a recipe). Too busy reading Game of Thrones for much fancy cooking. I did make these chocolate oatmeal cookies, but I didn't write them up. They were good!

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NASI KUNING
From Indonesian: Exotic Dishes from Empal daging to Nasi goreng for Creative Cooking

1 tbsp vegetable oil 

1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander 
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 3/4 cups long-grain rice
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup water
4 curry leaves (or 1 tsp curry powder)
1 cinnamon stick