Chicken and Rice

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One of the things I like to do to take my mind away from the daily grind is cook. I don’t like it being a routine affair — that’d kill the whole feel of it. What I like about it is that on one hand you have a recipe — which a rule set that you have to follow. On the other hand, you can try and do things differently — and end up with something totally differnt (good, bad or ugly) from what original had in mind.

Such was tonight, I felt ;ike doing a stuffed chicken and I had rice in mind as a stuffing medium. A quick search on Google has not returned anything of great interest aside from roast chicken stuffed with rice and vegetables, from which I took the inspiration for the followin recipe.

Ingridients

1             whole cicken, washed and patted dry
1 cup         uncooked rice -- I had some Indian (not Basmati) rice
1 cup         water
1 pinch       safran
1/2 cup       raisins
1/2 cup       pine nuts
1/2 cup       sliced carrot
1             medium onion, chopped
2 tbsp        vegetable oil
2 cloves      garlic, sliced
1 tbsp        melted butter
salt, spices  to taste

Method

  1. Heat the stove to 230C. Heat water in a pot, once it starts to boil add rice and a pinch of safran. Steer, cover, reduce the heat to low and set to simmer for 10 minutes or until all water has been absorbed.
  2. In the meantime, heat oil in a frying pan on a medium heat and. Add onion and fry until translucent (3-5 minutes). Add carrots to onions and continue to fry steering ocassionally for another 3-5 minutes. Turn off heat. Once rice has absorbed all water, add carrots and onions along with nuts and raisiins to rice. Mix well and let it cool a little.
  3. Pack stuffing into the chickens cavity. Close the cavity with a toothpick, tie legs with a kitchen string. Brush chicken over with melted butter and rub with salt and spices. Put any remaining stuffing into a waterproof container, cover and set aside.
  4. Place the chicken in the oven, uncovered. After about 10 minutes lower the heat to 180C. The chicken should take 45-50 minutes to cook from that point. 30 minutes before chicken is ready, put rice in the oven.
  5. Once chicken is ready, take it out of an oven, cover and let cool a little. Cut the bird up, take stuffing out and mix it up with the rest of rice. Serve.

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