Sunday, April 27, 2008

neil perkin's basque chicken


A taste of Spain now, courtesy of Neil Perkin. Neil is a marketing and strategy cheese at IPC Media, the publisher of lots of magazines and websites. He blogs at Only Dead Fish

'I'm not the greatest cook in the world (which says a lot for how easy this recipe is) but this dish is an absolute dinner party fave. It's been on heavy rotation amongst my friends enough times that everyone must have had it at least twice (and no-one's complained - yet). It's based on an old Delia recipe and these amounts are enough for four people. You'll need:

1 chicken, jointed into 8 pieces (or 8 pieces bought separately)
2 onions
2 red peppers
About 50 g sun-dried tomatoes in oil
Olive oil
Garlic
About 150 g of chorizo sausage
Brown Basmati rice
275 ml Chicken stock (Delia would use the giblets, I use Oxo)
A bit of white wine (about 170 ml)
1 level tablespoon tomato purée
A dash of hot paprika
Tomato puree
50 g of pitted black olives
Half a large orange
A big casserole dish with a lid

To prep...peel and cut the orange into wedges, chop all the black olives in half, measure out 225 ml of the rice in a meauring jug, chop 2 gloves of the garlic, drain and chop the sun dried tomatoes into centimetre wide pieces, skin the chorizo and chop that into centimetre slices

Then...season your chicken pieces well. Chop the peppers in half, remove the seeds, and cut the halves into strips. Chop the onion into strips as well. Heat up a good splash of the olive oil in your casserole on the hob until it's good and hot and then brown the chicken pieces four at a time until they're a golden colour on both sides.

When they're done take them out, leaving all the flavoured oil behind in the casserole, and put them on a plate to the side. Add a splash more oil and get it hot again before adding the peppers and the onions and stir them around to cook for about five minutes. Next add the garlic, dried tomatoes and chorizo and give it another stir for a minute or two.

Then add the rice so that it gets covered in the oil, and then add your wine and the chicken stock, tomato puree and add the dash of hot paprika. Get it to simmering point and put the chicken pieces on top of it, put the orange wedges amongst them and then sprinkle over the olives. Ideally you need to have all the rice under liquid as it will soak it up as it cooks. Lastly, put the lid on and cook it at 180C or gas mark 4 for about an hour - this provides ample time to chinwag with your friends over a nice glass of Rioja.

An hour later, serve it up, take all the plaudits, and drink lots more rioja. Enjoy.'

1 comment:

Eaon Pritchard said...

anything with chorizo hits the spot.
cheers Neil.