Rice Pilaf with Chicken
Ruzz bi'l-Dajaj
Region: Arab Levant, Palestine
Category: Rice, Couscous, and Other Grains
Season: Any
Difficulty: Easy but long cooking time

We know that in fourteenth-century Cairo a good quality chicken was very expensive. Nevertheless, stewed chickens were sold by itinerant cooks from street stalls. In the medieval Arab world, there existed a dish called ma'mūniyya, which was a famous sweetmeat named after the ninth-century Abbasid caliph in Baghdad al-Ma'mūn. There are three recipes for this dish in the thirteenth-century Arabic cookbook Kitāb al-wusla ilā al-habīb. In the most refined of the three recipes a chicken is cooked first, presumably by poaching, and then is fried in sesame oil and the meat shredded as finely as hair. Some rice is pounded fine and mixed with sugar-sweetened boiled milk and the chicken. It is cooked until it is as thick as porridge, then it is served with pistachios. There is today no evidence of this dish in the Arab world unless we considered Circassian chicken to be derivative. But rice with chicken, as in this recipe, although it bears no resemblance to the medieval sweetmeat, is testimony to the enduring delight the cook takes in preparing rice and chicken. Ruzz bi'l-dajāj is a Palestinian family-style chicken pilaf that my former wife Najwa al-Qattan remembers fondly from her childhood. The large chunks of poached chicken from the flavorful broth mixed with nuts, lamb, and rice make for a very satisfying dish. It is quite common in contemporary middle-class Arab homes to see vegetable shortening, such as Crisco, replacing the traditional samna as the cooking fat.

[photo: Clifford A. Wright]

Yield: Makes 4 to 6 servings
Preparation Time: 4 hours

1 whole chicken (about 4 pounds)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 cinnamon stick

1 medium onion

1 whole clove

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup blanched whole almonds

1/2 cup pine nuts

3 tablespoons samna (clarified butter), unsalted butter, or vegetable shortening

1/2 pound (about 1 cup) ground lamb

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground allspice berries

2 cups long-grain rice, well rinsed or soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes, drained

Whole plain yogurt for garnish

Arabic flatbread (pita bread) for accompaniment

1. Wash the chicken, pat dry with paper towels, and season with salt and pepper inside and out. Place the un-trussed chicken in a large pot in water to cover with the cinnamon stick and onion studded with the clove and season with salt and pepper. Bring to just under a boil on medium heat. Reduce the heat if necessary so it never comes to a boil and simmer until the meat is almost falling off the bone, 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Do not let the water come to a vigorous boil, or even a gentle boil, otherwise the chicken will toughen; you are just poaching the whole chicken and the water on the surface should only shimmer at most.

2. Drain the chicken, saving the broth, at least 3 cups for this recipe and the remaining to be stored as chicken broth for other recipes. If desired, you can reduce the amount of fat by refrigerating the broth until the fat congeals on top and then remove it. Remove the meat from the bones in large pieces. Set aside and keep warm. Discard the bones and skin.

3. In a small skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat, then cook the almonds until golden stirring, about 10 minutes. Be careful not to let them burn. Add the pine nuts and cook until they are golden, another 1 to 2 minutes. Set the nuts aside.

4. In a large, heavy saucepan or casserole with a tight-fitting lid, melt 2 tablespoons of the clarified butter over medium-high heat and cook the ground lamb, breaking it up with a fork and seasoning it with the ground cinnamon, allspice, salt, and pepper, until all the pinkness is gone, about 4 minutes. Add the rice and continue cooking for 2 minutes, stirring. Add 2 1/4 cups chicken broth, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to very low, cover, and cook until the grains are tender, fluffy, and separate, 15 to 20 minutes, but check if you don?t know how your rice responds. If the rice is still al dente, add some boiling chicken broth and continue cooking. Do not stir the rice and do not uncover except to check once.

5. Arrange the rice on a platter, cover with the nuts, and lay the chicken pieces on top or the sides. Serve with yogurt and Arabic bread.

Posted: 09/01/2007

Referenced Recipes:

Circassian Chicken