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Turkish Pilaf III
1/3 cup rice. 3 tablespoons butter. ½ 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 short, forgiving pilaf that assumes you already have cooked rice, leftover chicken and a pot of stock on hand. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so a little judgment is needed at the start.
- The missing rice quantityThe list gives tomatoes and chicken but no rice measure, though the method calls for rice to be boiled. Half a cup of raw rice, or about 1½ cups cooked, balances the given half cup each of tomato and diced chicken.
- White stockFannie Farmer's white stock is a light veal or veal-and-chicken broth, unbrowned. Chicken stock is the direct substitute; note that the ingredient line itself calls for the stock to be 'highly seasoned', and the dish is seasoned again at the end.
- Rinsing is the hingeDraining the rice and pouring hot water through it washes off surface starch so the grains stay separate in the pan. Skip it and you get a sticky mass rather than a pilaf.
- Omelet panThis means a shallow, sloped-sided skillet, roughly a 9- or 10-inch frying pan. Nothing about the dish requires that shape beyond easy tossing.
- Butter quantityNone is specified. Two tablespoons for this volume, with the closing instruction to add more if it is not rich enough taken at face value.
- Canned tomatoesPeriod canned tomatoes were generally whole, packed in their own thin juice. Chop whole canned tomatoes and include some juice; drained diced tomatoes will be too dry.
- CayenneThe recipe says to season highly, but cayenne is easy to overdo. Start with a pinch, taste, and build.
- YieldTwo servings as a light main, three or four as a side.
Farmer gives more than one Turkish pilaf, filed among the cereals, where rice sat alongside oatmeal and hominy rather than with the meats. Recipes under a broad Turkish or Anglo-Indian label -- pilaf, pilau, pilaff, the spellings used loosely -- were circulating in American cookbooks by the 1890s. What the recipe reflects is a cooking school's practical bent: a use for yesterday's chicken and the stockpot.