Alton's Pilaf methodology works extremely well

So, I checked out an old episode of Good Eats, dating all the way back to Season 1, I believe. It was titled Pilaf to the People. You can see the condensed presentation right here.

So, I thought I knew a hell of a lot about rice, and I thought I had made Pilaf about a hundred thousand times. It turns out that I was not quite correct. Close, but no cigar. First the summary.

Pilaf is not a recipe. Pilaf is not a list of ingredients. It is a cooking methodology. Even though the word literally means "rice dish", it should mean, cooking method for rice. You can do a lot of different ingredients. Add a few, throw a few away, change these, bring in some others. This doesn't determine whether you have a Pilaf. The approach to heating defines Pilaf.

According to Alton, the cooking process runs through Seven simple stages.

1. Sweat your vegetable soffritto in butter.
2. Add the rice and sauté until you have a strong nutty aroma.
3. Add the liquid--substantially less than normal for rice--stir it up, and discard your stirring spoon or utensil.
4. Cover with a lid. Bolster the seal with a wet dish rag, which forms a gasket.
5. Place in an oven at 350F degrees for 15 minutes.
6. Remove and let it sit for 15 minutes.
7. Pour the rice out on a serving dish. Flatter is better. Taller is worse.

Notice that this approach only presumes you have some aromatic vegetables, rice, butter and fluid. What those ingredients are is open to your own creative imagination. We are talking about approach to cooking, not a list of ingredients, per se. The absolute key is that you sauté first, use less water, and then finish in the oven. That is the definition of the Pilaf method: Sauté first, use less water, finish in the oven.

This doesn't mean everybody follows the rules or even knows what they are. Certainly, I was not aware of the rules as I broke them 300,000 times. I thought you simply sauté first, then cover and boil. I also used too much water.

Alton's approach was fascinating for several reasons.

1. It seems to be the perfect case for a Lodge 5 quart cast iron Dutch oven.
2. I have never seen anyone stick a dish rag in the oven.
3. I recently had an experience with rice in a pressure cooker that suggested some cooking methods require less water.
4. I have recently had many experiences with Paella which indicate that more water is necessary for this cooking method.
5. The list of ingredients Alton used, including fruits and nuts was quite intriguing. This is a very interesting counter-point to Paella, which never includes any fruits or nuts.
6. Another important difference between Paella and Pilaf is that Paella includes various types of meats. Pilaf does not include any meat. Pilaf is a side dish for meat.

So I chose the following list of ingredients.

Soffritto

1. Carrot
2. Celery
3. Shallots
4. Yellow bell pepper
5. Red Bell pepper
6. Garlic
7. Ginger coins.

Ingredients

1. 3 cups of Sona Massouri rice from India
2. 18 oz of Chicken broth
3. 12 oz of hot water

Spices

1. 1 table spoon of Kosher salt
2. 1 teaspoon of Turmeric
3. couple of grinds of fresh cracked white pepper corns
4. 1 ounce of California extra virgin olive oil
5. 1 tablespoon butter.
6. Way too damn much Spanish Saffron

The cooking approach was interesting.

1. Place the dutch oven on the stove top and cranked up to high. This is only 8,000 btu on my stove, so don't be impressed by the heat.
2. Drop my 1 teaspoon of turmeric on the dry iron and heat it up. This is what all the Indians do. You wake the turmeric by heating it on dry iron.
3. Drop the butter on top of the turmeric and melt it. This forms a type of rue.
4. Dropped the soffritto on into the rue of turmeric and butter.
5. Sweat the vegetables.
6. Drop in the rice, and stir. Continue until the rice begins to brown a bit, and you get a strong nutty aroma.
7. I poured about 4 ounces of hot water into a ramekin, I tried to pull out a few threads and place them in the ramekin. A tumble weed of saffron fell in the ramekin. Lesson learned: extract your saffron with a pair of tweezers. Do it over a very dry surface. Let the saffron diffuse and turn the water golden yellow.
8. Drop the Saffron water in the pot first. Rinse out the ramekin with the remaining water and chicken broth, as you pour them on the rice. Don't loose any saffron goodness.
9. Stir it up, and discard your stirring utensil
10. Wet down a dish rag.
11. Place the rag over the mouth of the Dutch oven.
12. Seal with the lid. Rotate the lid about 5 or 10 degrees to make sure you have a tight gasket.
13. Place in the oven for 15 minutes.
14. Remove and let it sit for 15 minutes.
15. Dump it on a large serving tray, and spread it out.
16. I added dried black currants (from my Spotted Dick episode) and Golden Raisins (Sultanas--also from the Spotted Dick episode). I mixed those in thoroughly.
17. I drizzled with California Extra Virgin olive oil
18. I sprinkled with a little Kosher Salt
19. I cracked a little more white pepper over the top.

I was pissed off over the fact that I used too much saffron and forgot the bay leaves, and the pistachios, but the rest of the process was surprisingly golden for a first run. The results were not only edible, not only delicious, but damn near perfect. My guests were left wondering why I didn't consider this a perfect run. I have to say, I wondered to myself how bay leaf would improve the situation. I believe Pistachios would help. Nuts are great.

I have to say that the Sona Massouri rice was perfectly cooked. It was not to dry, not too wet, not sticky, not too soft, not too hard. It was perfectly done. Whilst I can tinker with the list of ingredients, the methodology is essentially perfect. No adjustments in the cooking process are necessary or beneficial.

I tinkered with the notion of sweating the vegetables in the oil, removing them, then sauté the rice in butter, put them back together and go. This would allow me to brown the rice a bit more. Still, I am not sure this would be a better approach. I am uncertain whether this would yield a better product.

It's hard to improve on Alton's method here. I highly recommend it.

This Paella is brought to you by Blue Rhino Propane Exchange

If it has a ring-tone, it just isn't a real camera. One of these days I am going to have to go down to Fry's (about 1 mile away) and buy a real camera.

In any case, here are a couple of shots of the paella I cooked on Friday night. My brother, who lives in the SF Bay Area and plays guitar in a rock-n-roll band, flew into L.A. for the weekend. We did some serious cooking.

I kicked things off with a beastly paella. As you can see, it was dark by the time the thing was finished, and I believe the time was around 9:30pm. That is fairly late to get going with a paella party. What can you do? I get home from work around 6:00 PM, and the prep for a paella like this takes some time.

My buddy Colin, who was a member of Ben's graduating class, and journalism team, came over for the feast. These dudes gorged themselves. Too bad there were no ladies at the party! Frankly, my apartment was not up to it at that moment. The joint was in a shambles due to the great balcony reorganization that had taken place a week earlier. Ben and I worked on it yesterday, and my apartment looks good. It is now time to do some serious entertaining.

That Paella was a monster. Here are a list of the ingredient:

1. 24Oz Santo Thomas Bomba rice from Alevante, Valencia Spain, courtesy of Amazon.com
2. 21 threads of Princesa de Minaya Saffron from La Mancha Spain, courtesy of Sur le Table
3. 1 package of Goya Sazon con Azafran, courtesy of the market 300 yards from my door.
4. 150 grams of de Leon hard dry garlicy Spanish Chorizo, courtesy of my local German sausage shop
5. 150 grams of Leon Herradura paprika loaded Spanish Chorizo, courtesy of my local German sausage shop
6. Williams Sonoma House Olive Oil. This is an extra virgin oil directly from California.
7. One whole Rabbit (2.5 pounds) chopped to bits with my F. Dick meat cleaver, and brined for 24 hours in the frige. This was courtesy of Bristol Farms.
8. About 2 pounds of chicken thighs, courtesy of my local store
9. 2 big red bell peppers cut into strips
10. 2 small yellow peppers cut into strips
11. 5 cloves of fresh garlic
12. 2 carrots, chopped fine
13. 2 stalks of celery, chopped fine.
14. 3 Roma tomatoes, diced
15. 4 large oyster mushrooms, sliced
16. 1 very large yellow Spanish onion, diced.
17. 1 large branch of Rosemary, stripped and chopped fine
18. 1 leaf of Savory, chopped fine
19. 1/4 teaspoon of dry thyme (my AeroGarden died)
20. 1/4 teaspoon of dry sage
21. 48 ounces of Chicken Broth
22. 24 ounces of highly purified water, courtesy of La Wateria down the street.

One good tip for you: you need to be careful to select California Extra-Virgin olive oils. Most so-called extra virgin olive oil is not. A lot of the Italian and Spanish products are rip-offs. The stock on the shelves at most grocery stores--this includes Whole Foods--will fails one or all three of the critical tests for extra virgin olive oil.

Don't believe me? You don't have to. Just consider this. The UCD Olive Oil center conducted a series of tests in partnership with the Austrialian Oil Research Labratory, located in South Wales. They selected a wide assortment of recognized brand-name 'premium grade' extra-virgin olive oils. They subjected them to a series of three commonly accepted tests for quality.

The bastards flunked like crazy. Most brands flunked one or all tests. The results of the study are clear: people are paying a lot of money for crap oil that claims to be ultra-high quality Spanish and Italian stuff. Aparently, the Europeans have been panicked by these findings. They are going to hold a conference in Verona Italy focused entirely on achieving and maintaining excellence in super-premium olive oils.

California is making a hard push right now to be recognized as the finest producer of olive oil in the entire fucking world. Yep, that's right Italy and Spain. You are in the cross hairs. The quality of our fruit is amazing high, and the quality control is even higher. These California oils are the best you can obtain right now. As Brett Favre says, you can pay more, but you won't get more.

I removed the steel grills from my Weber Genesis 310, placed the iron paella directly on top of the flavorizering bars, and pre-heated with the lid open for about 10 minutes. That was a mistake. I should have pre-heated with the lid closed for 15 minutes. The Paella was not quite hot enough to begin with. My Weber is powered by Blue Rhino Propane. I like it.

In any case, we dug in, and ate hearty. That is a 17 inch cast-iron Paella from Lodge Manufacturing of South Pittsburgh Tennessee, and it was fully loaded. I would say that the three of us demolished more than half of that Paella in the first sitting. I was surprised at how little was left over after we ate it.

Ben and Colin were pretty stunned. They did not expect to like it so much. They were both a little queezy over the thought of eating rabbit. I had to talk them into it. They changed their minds quick. They went back for seconds and pounded it down with lusty greed. They were thinking about getting thirds, but they knew they were over-stuffed already.

I have to say that brining the rabbit for 24 hours is the key. The rabbit was moist and tender; it was falling off the bone really. If you have not had a well prepared rabbit, you are missing out on the finest white meat on the market. It is better than chicken. I don't say that lightly. I am a big fan of chicken. I love chicken. However, in this case, the rabbit was the star of the show.