Literature - Guest Contributions

Burnt Chicken and Rice

Recipe by David Fair


This tasty dish features chicken, vegetables and rice. The juices and flavors of the chicken and vegetables enhance the rice to make a balanced meal all by itself. Additionally, because the whole thing is baked, the rice on the bottom of the baking dish is a little bit crispy, an added bonus for people who like that sort of thing. Kind of like eating out of the stone pot at the Korean restaurant. The adjective “burnt” in the name actually is derived from a historical event, and not the actual state of the chicken; see note below for some relatively uninformative details.

Ingredients:

Ø chicken leg quarters (skin and bone included)

Ø green peppers (not the round fat kind, but the long, skinny, light green kind. They are called “cubanelle peppers” and can be found at most grocery stores.

Ø red onion (it may have been a yellow onion, I don't remember)

Ø tomatoes (as many as you like)

Ø rice

Ø Ken's Greek dressing. Or Bob’s Greek dressing. Or any oil/vinegar based dressing that you want. Goya “Mojo Marinade” is pretty tasty as well.

Ø lime juice

Ø thyme Fresh thyme is best, but dried is ok too.

Ø olive oil

Ø vinegar

Ø You can mess with the spices however you want, of course. You are the cook.

Instructions:

1) Before marinating, take the skin off the chicken. A dull knife is the bane of this task; a sharp knife will make your life much easier. If you have kitchen scissors, that is even easier. Don’t cut yourself. Hint: If you have access to some latex gloves, like the kind they use in labs and hospitals, they make gripping the chicken a little easier, since it is pretty slippery, and kind of gross.

2) Marinate the chicken for an hour or so, or all day if you like

3) Preheat oven to broil

4) Chop up the onion into pieces about .6425 inches. Or if you like them bigger, you can cut them into .7653 inch pieces.

5) Cut the peppers and tomatoes into whatever size pieces you want

6) Put the chicken pieces in a baking dish, put it in the oven

7) Let it broil for a short while (maybe 10-15 minutes) until the chicken looks to be about half done. If you put the dish on the top rack of the oven, your chicken will probably burn. A middle rack is fine.

8) Turn the oven down to about 350 or 400

9) Take the baking dish out of the oven. Take the chicken out of the baking dish and put it somewhere else for a minute (maybe back in the marinade)

10) Put a couple cups of rice in the baking dish

11) Put about two thirds of the vegetables on the rice in the baking dish, then put the chicken back in the dish on top of the rice. Spread the remaining cut vegetables around on the chicken and rice

12) Pour some of the marinade on top (know how much you pour, see #13)

13) Add an appropriate amount of water to the dish (the general ratio for rice is 1.5 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. Don’t forget that you also put marinade on the chicken and adjust accordingly. You may cover the dish with aluminum foil, but you should remove it after about an hour, otherwise your chicken will be kind of soggy.

14) Put it back in the oven, go sit in your room, and wait for the whole house to smell like chicken. It should take about an hour. If an hour has lapsed and the house doesn't smell like chicken, you are free to check the oven and see whether the chicken is done. When the chicken is done, it is hot. Be careful not to burn yourself. See fine print below.

Note: The use of the sense of smell in the whole house to determine the doneness of a chicken is not a guaranteed way to discern the progress of cooking. This method is highly dependent on an individual's sense of smell, the location of the individual in the house, the cooking sense of the individual, and the common sense of the individual. It is not meant to be a mandatory rule, but is for reference only. If your chicken is not yet completed when the house smells like chicken, the author is not responsible for your stupidity in eating chicken which has not been fully cooked. If the chicken is burnt, said author is not responsible for loss of chicken, vegetables or rice, or for any damages or injuries which may occur because the cook did not remove the chicken from the oven in a timely manner, or because the cook did not use proper hand protection when removing the chicken from the oven, or because the cook dropped the chicken on the floor while removing it from the oven, or because the cook forgot about the chicken and left it in the oven for a longer time than the amount of time necessary to properly cook said chicken, or for damage caused to the oven because the baking dish breaks in the oven and the contents of said baking dish spill into the oven resulting in fire, injury, loss of sight in one or both eyes, loss of hearing in one or both ears, loss of girlfriend, boyfriend, lovers, pets, lover-pets, paper airplane collections, or any other personal property of said cook, or other beings or items which may be in the said cook's kitchen or house or apartment or neighborhood or town or city or state or country. Said author is also not responsible for improperly cooked chicken due to fire, earthquake, blizzard, nuclear war, electrical storm, plague of locusts, plague of frogs, the Nile river turning into blood, any river turning into blood, any body of water turning into blood, any body of water turning into any substance, or any other acts of God or of evolution regardless of said cook's personal ethnic background, religious beliefs or lack thereof in whatever ecumenical, all-inclusive, tolerant, and pluralistic sense is required to therefore heretofore and forthwith determine the necessity of legal action by way of said act of God as defined by legal document 142897yHJkl893y839.928-3fh8839283-38298.b (Residents of the State of Texas must consult a legal attorney for more information). Said author is also not responsible for any injury which may come to said cook due to improper use of cooking utensils including but not limited to knives, spoons, oven mitts, forks, spatulas (purchased at Spatula City or otherwise), tongs, cheese graters, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, garlic presses, blenders, slicers, dicers, choppers, loppers, salad spinners, salad shooters, pea shooters, chainsaws, circular saws, belt sanders, end mills, hydraulic presses, sintering ovens, bunsen burners, magnetic stirrers, intake manifolds, exhaust gas recirculation valves, external defibrillators (automated or manual), monkey-fondling reciprocating lubricators, carborateurs, sewing machines, pencil sharpeners, shot-peening blasters, drills, plates, bowls, cups, garbage disposals, can-openers, 120 Gigabyte hard drives, MP3 players, cement mixers, inertial navigation units, alarm clocks, flame throwers, nuclear weapons, short or long-range air to air missiles, and folding music stands. Nutrition information is not available for this recipe because the actual ingredients are at the discretion of said cook. Said author is also not responsible for sudden weight loss or weight gain upon consumption of any quantity of the food described in this recipe. Void where prohibited by law. The Surgeon General warns pregnant women not to drink any alcohol. Eating hexavalent chromium or lead paint is known by the State of Arizona to be a possible cause of cancer or other health problems in laboratory animals. Also, I really like the movie “Spiderman”.

 

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