Lesson 11: Arroz (Rice)

As a child of the 1980s, the movie Beethoven played on a continuous loop in my house. Although Saint Bernards still hold a special place in my heart, my main takeaway point from the movie was that the name Ryce is synonymous with being a plucky teenage girl coveted by boys with extremely discriminating taste...

At 23, I've missed my chance to follow in Ryce's footsteps, but all is not lost: in honor of my childhood idol, I've now expanded my rice recipe repertoire!

Up first on the docket: paella. I know that this recipe- which uses (horror of horrors!) store-bought rotisserie chicken!- will disappoint the food snobs, but it's easily-scalable (I've tripled and quadrupled it to great effect) and a crowd-pleaser. So there.

For the gourmets out there (Dad, Jim), though...

Brown 1 inch-ish chunks of chicken in olive oil:

Remove chicken and sauté veggies (pepper, onion, garlic). Next, add 100 grams of rice to the veggies in order to "narcar" it (I can't find an exact translation of this word anywhere, but from our prof's description I think it roughly means "impregnate"...) with flavor. Add chicken stock so that it covers the rice by about an inch! Add salt, pepper, pimentón (paprika), saffron and curry!

Let it cook at medium-high heat for 15-20 minutes. Be sure to rotate the pan so all sides cook evenly, but try hard not to stir or otherwise jostle. Add chicken at the very end to reheat.

NEXT: dulce de leche arroz con leche.

Oh man. We ate this in class so fast that we had to teach my professor what "to scarf down" means (for the Spanish nerds, bufanda abajo!). I came home from school last night and made this again it was so fun and so tasty. BEWARE.

Pour some sugar into a pot and heat until caramel colored:

Like this!:

Add milk and bring to a boil. Add rice and boil for 20ish minutes, being sure to stir occasionally to keep the rice from burning:

Add lemon peel and cinnamon a few minutes before the rice is cooked through and serve!:

We also made...

Mushroom risotto:

Guiso (Really good and worth a try. The name means an Argentine stew, but technically this was essentially rice and chicken cooked in tomato sauce, though it can be made with sweet potatoes, peaches and beef instead):

And fried rice (with a wok!):

Happy noshing!