Look what you can do with one cup of rice and two chicken breasts!

I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a cooking rut, lately, so I started looking through the bazillion pictures of food I’ve taken since starting this 8+ years ago. I have them nicely set up by year – folders for blog post pictures and folders for all the things that didn’t make the cut. I usually take two or three pictures of a dish and then choose the best one. The others go into the archive folder because you just never know when you’re going to need a high-resolution picture of a plate of tortellini… I’m a digital pack rat.

I saw a picture for a rice dish from several years ago and it got me thinking of an arroz con pollo. Rice with chicken. It’s scary how my mind associates things, sometimes…

One-pot rice dishes are great. With a few tweaks of herbs and spices, they can take on just about any ethnicity. I leaned towards Spain, tonight.

Arroz con Pollo

• 2 bone-in chicken breasts
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 4 oz mushrooms, sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 cup long-grain rice
• 1 (14-oz) can diced tomatoes in juice
• 2 cups chicken broth
• big pinch saffron threads
• 1 cup peas
• 12 large stuuffed green olives
• S&P to taste

Brown chicken in large skillet. Remove chicken and set aside.

Add onion, bell pepper, and mushrooms. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, paprika, and rice, then cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add broth and tomatoes with juice, and saffron. Bring to a boil

Nestle chicken in rice and cover.

Reduce heat and cook until chicken is cooked through, rice is tender, and most of liquid is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Stir once or twice to prevent rice from sticking on the bottom and to let it cook more evenly.

Stir in peas, olives, and salt and pepper to taste, and cook another 5 or so minutes.

It’s probably not the most authentic recipe out there, but it did the trick, tonight. Nonna even asked for more rice – something she rarely does. Of course, she didn’t want the olives or mushrooms, but that left more for us.

I didn’t use any hot peppers or add any heat which was a nice change of pace. And I’m sure it would be really good with bone-in chicken thighs…

Time to look through more pictures. We have another dinner coming up, tomorrow. And another after that…