This Holiday-Substitute Chicken Pilaf recipe is adapted from one of my favourite books: falling cloudberries by Tessa Kiros. I am deadly serious; it genuinely tastes like something you’d eat on your holidays in Peru or someplace fierce exotic like that.
Coriander, chilli and cumin-spiced yoghurt blend together for a fiesta in your mouth. Sounds pretty good, right? This is perfect with a cerveza in the back garden.
Holiday Substitute Chicken Pilaf
Print RecipeIngredients
- Pilaf Ingredients
- 2/3 cup of olive oil
- 1 kilogram of ground chicken
- A bunch of fresh coriander
- 2 cups of firmly packed fresh spinach leaves
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 red chillies (or as many are to your taste), sliced but not seeded
- ½ red pepper (or capsicum), seeded and diced
- 1/3 cup of fresh or frozen peas
- 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
- 2 ¼ cups of short grain rice
- Spiced Yoghurt Ingredients
- 1 cup of plain Greek yoghurt
- 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
- 2 teaspoons of olive oil
Instructions
- First, you’ll need to brown that chicken: heat half the olive oil and fry the chicken until it’s brown. Set the cooked minced chicken aside on a plate and discard the oil.
- Once the chicken mince is cooked, you can make the ‘sauce’ by blending the coriander and spinach leaves in a food processer with ½ cup of water.
- Next, heat the remaining oil in the pan and add the garlic; once you begin to smell it, add the carrots, pepper, chilli and peas. Cook the vegetables for about 5 minutes or until the vegetables soften, then add the cayenne pepper and mix well.
- Add in the coriander and spinach purée and cook for 2 minutes before adding the chicken. Season it well with salt and pepper, then add in 3 cups of water; once the water begins to boil, cover and cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes until the chicken has absorbed all of the lovely flavours and is cooked through.
- Once the chicken has cooked, remove it again as it’s time to cook the rice. Add the rice to the pan with two additional cups of hot water and cook uncovered for 5 to 10 minutes; then decrease the heat to the absolute minimum, cover the pot and cook for another 15 minutes or until the rice has cooked through.
- To make the spiced yoghurt, mix the yoghurt, cumin and olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
- Arrange the chicken on the rice pilaf and slather over the yoghurt to serve. Garnish with some extra coriander if you’re feeling fancypants.
- So good, and much cheaper than a holiday!
