Juan’s rice brings us up a notch
The winner in this Shrimp Creole dish is Juan's rice
Juan went off on a Puerto Rican tangent this morning while pulling together the dirty rice component of our group’s shrimp creole dish. And the result? Well, I think I need to conjure up that long-lost term I learned back in soups and sauces. It was bangin’!
Juan is no stranger to rice. He often volunteers for that task during group menu preparation. Yesterday he cooked the arroz verde. Spoken in his first language – Spanish — with his Rs rolling all over that recipe title, the dish sounds much more interesting than the English translation of “green rice”, a basic pilaf recipe that at the tail end of the process gets a shot of color from a puree of parsley, spinach, cilantro, green onion, lettuce, chili and garlic. We paired it with grilled vegetables and grilled swordfish steaks, garnished with a spicy pineapple relish. That rice was good.
But today Juan transported this rice dish back into the his family’s kitchen in Puerto Rico, adding all the herbs and spices he’d normally contribute to the rice pot there, only he and his pot of rice were standing in Pittsburgh. The recipe as assigned by the chef already required small dice onions, red and green peppers and onions. To that, Juan added yellow peppers, green onions, minced parsley, curry powder, smoked paprika and chili powder.
The secret of this rice was not that it was the star of the dish, but rather that it was a pivotal player making the entire game flow very smoothly. The tomato-based creole sauce had its own serious kick and the shrimp that were sautéed almost nakedly were very sweet. A small pool of sauce went down on the plate first, followed by a molded cylinder of Juan’s rice which then served as both a visually interesting physical platform for the shrimp to sit upon and a savory segue into the heat of the sauce. Also on the plate were creamy fried eggplant fingers and drops of herbed oil dotted the rim for a bit of flair.
Tomorrow we’re working with cod and Juan has promised cod fritters like he makes with his mother.
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