Spanish Rice
Cover one cup of rice with cold water; heat to boiling point and boil two minutes. Drain in a strainer, rinse well with cold water and drain again. Cut four slices of bacon in shreds, crosswise, and cook until crisp. Remove bacon, add to rice. Cut onehalf of a green or red pepper in shreds and cook in bacon fat until soft, then add pepper and bacon fat to rice. Cover with three cups of well-seasoned chicken broth, season well with salt, cover and let cook until rice has absorbed broth and is tender, then add one cup of thick tomato purée and two-thirds cup of grated cheese. Mix well with a fork and let heat through over boiling water. Serve with roast veal or breaded veal cutlets.
A straightforward pilaf-style dish that needs only a few translations for a modern range. The one thing to watch is the liquid: three cups of broth to one cup of rice is generous, and the rice has already been parboiled.
- The parboil and rinseTwo minutes at a boil, then a cold rinse, strips surface starch so the grains stay separate. It also means the rice will absorb the broth faster than a raw start, so begin checking at 12-15 minutes rather than 18-20.
- Liquid ratioThree cups of broth for one parboiled cup of rice will leave the pan wet if your rice is a modern quick-cooking long grain. Add two cups first, then more as it is drunk up, and stop when the grains are tender; a soupy base will not carry the purée and cheese.
- Which riceAn American kitchen of this period would have meant plain white long-grain rice. Use long grain; converted rice will not soften properly after the parboil, and arborio or short grain will go sticky.
- Thick tomato puréeThis is not modern canned tomato paste, which is far more concentrated. It means tomatoes cooked down to a heavy sauce -- passata reduced by a third, or a good thick tomato sauce, is the right substitute.
- Grated cheeseA firm dry cheddar or Parmesan both work; two-thirds cup of grated cheddar melts more smoothly into the rice, Parmesan gives a sharper finish.
- "Heat through over boiling water"A double boiler, to warm the cheese in without scorching the bottom of the pan or breaking the sauce. A heavy pan over the lowest heat, stirred with a fork rather than a spoon, does the same thing.
- Bacon fatFour slices of bacon will not always render enough fat to soften the pepper. Add a spoonful of oil if the pan looks dry, and cook the pepper gently rather than browning it.
- YieldServes four to six as the starch alongside a roast, which is how the recipe directs it be served.
"Spanish rice" in American cookbooks of this era rarely had much to do with Spain: it is generally traced to arroz rojo, the tomato-and-onion rice of Mexico and the Southwest, which northern editors labelled Spanish much as they labelled chili powder and tamales. By the early twentieth century a recognisable formula had settled -- rice, bacon or salt pork, sweet pepper and tomato, with cheese in some versions -- and dishes of this kind turn up in domestic-science writing as a thrifty way to make a small amount of meat flavour a whole side dish. Its appearance here, served alongside roast veal, suggests how readily a regional dish could be absorbed into a standard middle-class repertoire once it could be written down in cups and slices.