Yellow Rice, Pigeon Peas, Chicken

     It's a quick meal, especially if you've got leftover chicken.

     "Yellow Rice" is commonly available as a boxed mix.  Most brands call it "Spanish style," but it appears to have been introduced to the U. S. through Mexican and Southwestern cuisine.  It's often paired with pulses.  Years ago, I found a recipe for yellow rice and pigeon peas that I like -- it can be as simple as mixing the two before cooking.

     Pigeon peas are pulses, cousins to lentils and black-eyed peas.  They have a distinctive flavor, one that pairs well with rice and meat.  So when I happened on a chicken and rice (plus plain green peas) recipe on a box of yellow rice mix that needed to get used, I had a plan.

     Our corner grocer sells whole roasted chickens -- and also ready-to-eat wings, breasts and drumsticks.  By the time I'm off work, they've been in the hot case awhile, which can be good or bad.  Yesterday, they had a nice stack of drumsticks, which was all to the good; Tam's not fond of chicken breast but she loves drumsticks.  I picked up four.  I already had chicken broth, the rice mix and a can of pigeon peas.*

     I used a deep, lidded skillet for the chicken broth (and some of the bean liquid) in place of plain water.  You get it boiling, add the rice mix, bring it back to a boil before covering and simmering over low heat for 25 minutes.  I added the four drumsticks after the dry rice, along with a little paprika, cilantro (the usual caution -- it tastes very soapy to some people and if you don't know, find out before adding it to a dish!) and dried onion flakes, put the lid on and did other things while it cooked.

     The end result was fragrant and flavorful, with tender falling-off-the-bone chicken in a bed of yellow-gold rice and green-to-tan pigeon peas, and looks like a lot more work than it is.

     Fancier versions might start with chicken breasts, fried in the same skillet and then cooked with the rice.
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* Beans and pulses are inexpensive, keep well and offer a variety of flavors.  While dried ones are the longest-lasting, they require more preparation time.  So I tend to keep a little dried and several different kinds in cans.