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Spanish Rice
I GREEN PEPPER, DICED (OR I CANNED RED PIMIENTO) 3 CUPS TOMATOES I CUP WATER SALT AND PEPPER Wash rice well and drain thoroughly. Heat fat, add rice, stir and fry until lightly browned. Add onion, and slowly fry 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, cover tightly, and cook gently but persistently until rice is nearly dry. I CUP RICE
A one-pot camp pilaf: the rice is toasted in fat before any liquid goes in, which keeps the grains separate. Everything else is a matter of heat control.
- Toast the rice properlyThis is the hinge of the dish. Fry the drained rice in the fat over medium heat until the grains turn chalky white with patches of pale gold, three to five minutes, before the onion goes in. Skip it and you get tomato porridge.
- Quantities not statedThe fat and onion appear in the method but carry no measures here. For 1 cup of long-grain rice, 2 to 3 tablespoons of fat and one medium onion are in keeping with recipes of this type.
- Liquid ratioThree cups of tomatoes plus 1 cup water to 1 cup of raw rice is generous by modern standards; the instruction to "cook gently but persistently until rice is nearly dry" implies a long, slow reduction. On a covered burner, expect to need less, or to finish uncovered to dry it out.
- Tomatoes"3 cups tomatoes" most likely means canned tomatoes with their juice, or fresh ones peeled and chopped. A 28-oz can gives roughly 3 to 3½ cups.
- PimientoThe canned red pimiento offered as an alternative to the green pepper is a sweet, fully ripe pepper packed in brine or its own juice. Drain it and add it near the end; it is already soft and will disintegrate over a long simmer. Jarred roasted red peppers are the closest current substitute.
- Heat and timingOnce covered, keep it at a bare simmer; with this much liquid it will take considerably longer than a standard 18-to-20-minute pilaf to reach "nearly dry." Resist stirring after the lid goes on, and let it stand off the heat 5 minutes before fluffing.
- YieldAbout 4 servings as a side, 2 to 3 as a main. Salt the tomatoes assertively; rice absorbs more seasoning than cooks expect.
Dishes labelled "Spanish rice" in American cookbooks have little to do with Spain and rather more to do with the tomato-and-pepper rice of Mexico and the Southwest; they spread in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, as canned tomatoes became cheap and widely available. The name was applied loosely to a range of dishes containing tomato, onion and green pepper. Whatever the setting, the appeal is practical: rice, a can of tomatoes and an onion keep without ice, cook in one pot, and stretch to feed a crowd.