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Turkish Pilaf III
1/3 cup rice 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup canned tomatoes 1/2 cup cold cooked chicken cut in dice White Stock highly seasoned Salt and cayenne Cook rice in boiling salted water, drain, and pour over hot water to thoroughly rinse. Heat omelet pan, add butter, and as soon as butter is melted add rice. Cook three minutes; then add tomatoes, chicken, and enough stock to moisten. Cook five minutes, and season highly with salt and cayenne. If not rich enough, add more butter.
A small skillet pilaf built on already-cooked rice and leftover chicken — closer to a fried rice technique than to a baked pilaf. It serves two at most.
- Quantities are smallA third of a cup of raw rice yields roughly a cup cooked. With half a cup of chicken this makes two modest side portions; double or triple everything for a main dish.
- The rinse mattersDraining the rice and flushing it with hot water washes off surface starch, which helps the grains stay separate in the butter. Without it the rice is more likely to clump.
- "Omelet pan"A well-seasoned or nonstick skillet stands in; period omelet pans were shallow with sloping sides, and a small one suits this quantity.
- White stockA light, unbrowned chicken or veal stock. Ordinary low-sodium chicken broth works; use only enough to moisten, a few tablespoons at a time, or the rice turns to porridge.
- Canned tomatoesPeriod canned tomatoes were generally whole in their own thin juice. Use whole canned tomatoes, crushed, and drain off some of the liquid so the pan does not flood.
- Cayenne"Season highly" leaves the amount to the cook; an eighth of a teaspoon is already assertive in a dish this small. Add it in pinches and taste.
- Chicken is already cookedIt goes in only to heat through during the final five minutes. Longer cooking dries diced breast meat out; thigh meat is more forgiving.
- Three tablespoons butterThat is a great deal of fat for a third of a cup of rice, and the instruction to add more if "not rich enough" pushes it further. Two tablespoons is enough for the grains to gloss and separate.
Pilaf came into English-language cookery through Persian, Turkish and Anglo-Indian channels, and the spelling wandered freely -- pilaf, pilau, pillau, pilaw -- through nineteenth-century English-language kitchens. The numbering of this version suggests the name covered a range of dishes: rice cooked or reheated in seasoned stock with meat or vegetables through it could claim it, and cooking-school books often printed several variants side by side. The method here, reheating boiled rice in butter with cold cooked chicken, is of a piece with the domestic-science habit of giving the previous day's roast a second appearance at the table.