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Rice, Andalusian
This dish, which is one very commonly served in Spain and Portugal, is valued as a tonic during the heats of summer, and is also recommended as a preventative of intestinal indisposition: it is peculiar, but the taste for it is an easily acquired one. Warm in a saucepan half a pint of best olive-oil or half a pound of fresh butter. Throw in half a pound of picked rice, and one pound or one pound and a half of veal or poultry flesh, cut into neat squares. Add half a pint of tomato sauce, or three or four fresh tomatoes, one or two chopped onions, a table-spoonful of shredded parsley, a pinch of powdered saffron, and a little pepper, salt, and cayenne. In Spain a clove of garlic is always added. Stir these ingredients into the warm oil, and let them stew gently for ten minutes; pour over them a pint of stock or water, cover the saucepan closely, and let them simmer gently until the rice has absorbed the liquor. Throw the whole into a heated strainer for a minute to drain off any oil that may be left, and pile the rice, which will be a bright yellow colour, upon a hot dish. Hold a red-hot shovel or salamander over the top for a minute or two to brown the surface, and send the dish to table with cut lemons, that each guest may squeeze a little juice over his plate. Time, half to three-quarters of an hour to simmer the rice. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A saffron rice pilaf in the paella family, written for a Victorian British kitchen with imperial measures and an open fire. Nothing here is difficult, but the fat quantity and the finishing step both need translating.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pints are imperial: half a pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups, and a pint is 2½ US cups. Half a pound of rice is roughly 1⅛ cups dry.
- The oil is a period quantityA cup and a quarter of olive oil to half a pound of rice is far more than modern taste wants, which is why the recipe ends by draining the finished rice. Three to four tablespoons will brown the meat and coat the grains; if you keep the original amount, the straining step is not optional.
- "Picked rice"Rice sold loose had to be picked over for stones, husks and grit. A short- or medium-grain rice works here — Spanish bomba or Calasparra if you want the texture the dish is aiming at, otherwise Arborio or a plain medium grain. Do not rinse it if you want the grains to hold the oil.
- Liquid and timingA pint of stock plus tomato to half a pound of rice is about the right ratio; expect 18-25 minutes at a bare simmer, not the 30-45 the book allows, which assumes a slow hearth. Resist stirring once the liquid goes in.
- The meatCut veal or chicken thigh into ½-inch dice so it cooks through in the same time as the rice. Chicken should reach 165F/74C; diced thigh in simmering stock for twenty minutes comfortably does.
- SaffronA pinch of powdered saffron is easily overdone and Victorian powdered saffron was frequently adulterated. Use about 15-20 threads, crumbled and steeped in a spoonful of the hot stock, and add it with the liquid.
- The salamanderA red-hot shovel or salamander held over the surface is a Victorian broiler. Slide the pan under a hot grill for two or three minutes, or leave it on high heat for the last minute or two to build a socarrat on the base instead.
- YieldFive or six as the book says, but as a light main course rather than one dish among several. The lemon at table is structural, not a garnish — it cuts the oil.
Cassell's calls this "Andalusian" and locates it in Spain and Portugal, but what it describes is recognisably the family of one-pan saffron rice dishes that runs from Valencian paella to Andalusian arroz: rice fried in fat with meat and aromatics, then simmered in its own measured liquid until dry. Rice growing and saffron cultivation in Spain are both generally traced to the Islamic centuries in al-Andalus, and the yellow rice of the south carries that inheritance in its name and its seasoning. The framing is pure late-Victorian, though — a foreign dish had to be justified to the British reader, and here it is sold as a summer "tonic" and a guard against "intestinal indisposition," the sort of dietetic claim that attached to olive oil, garlic and spice in nineteenth-century writing about hot countries. The apologetic note that "the taste for it is an easily acquired one" tells you how unfamiliar saffron rice still was on an English table, as does the price: 2s. 6d. was a real outlay for a dish of rice.