Saudi Kabsa (Rice Pilaf)

Are you addicted to rice like me???... I have the worse two addictions... rice and pasta. So I'm always hooked to some sort of carbohydrates.

Many of my friends are the same as well... so I have no scape, we all are hooked. Today my friend Elvira texted me asking for a rice recipe she tried years ago. She said: "it was yellow, it was fried and it had raisins" then she completed the text by saying: " do you know this rice recipe"...

Firstly, I was surprised and I thought by some mysterious way she had seen my scheduled post (she lives at least 40 minutes away, there's no way she could have accessed my laptop and seen it). So I thought this is destiny, if I wanted to lazy-out and leave the writing for later I couldn't now. So let's do this.

This recipe yields 4 portion.

Ingredients:

3 cups of basmati rice

1/2 cup of raisins

1 medium yellow onion (chopped)

1 ripe tomato (chopped)

1 tablespoon of tomato paste

1/2 tablespoon ginger (grated)

1/2 tablespoon garlic (grated)

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds (crushed)

1/2 teaspoon of all spice

1 tablespoon cinnamon

3 cloves

1 whole chicken

1 cup of yogurt

1 cup cilantro (chopped)

1 cup of green olives

1 cup of almonds (toasted)

4 cups of chicken broth

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper

Directions:

1. In a pan sauté the onion, ginger, garlic, cumin, all spice, cinnamon, cloves for 10 minutes. Then add the rice and fry for 5 minutes and the chicken broth, and tomato (chopped & paste), let simmer. When rice is cooked add the olives and raisins, top with the toasted almonds.

2. Marinate the chicken with yogurt and cilantro, seasoned with salt and pepper and bake whole for one hour on medium high heat. Serve in a tray with the rice.

Tips:

1. Orange zest can be added to the sauté for the rice.

2. Carving the chicken is another option and or cooking the rice with whole chicken legs.

Enjoy!