Makeover

Like many keen CR cooks, I often do a makeover on recipes I get from books and magazines. I used to like those big one-pot dishes with rice, but nowadays I tend to use grated cauliflower instead of rice which is easy as a side dish but as an ingredient means I have to tweak things a bit as it doesn’t absorb water and takes less time to cook. Here’s how I did a makeover recently. I started with a standard recipe for Spanish pork and rice. First I substituted chicken breast for the pork. (This would also work well with Quorn). The liquid required was a combination of chopped tomatoes in juice and vegetable stock. Most of this would be absorbed by rice, but as I was using cauliflower I reduced the liquid but not the flavour by using half a crumbled vegetable stock cube (organic low salt) instead of the stock. The cubed chicken, chopped garlic, sliced red peppers and onion were simmered in the tomatoes plus stock cube until about done, (thus omitting the original recipe’s suggested initial browning in 3tbs olive oil!) then I stirred in the grated cauliflower, added some drained water-canned artichoke hearts (the original recipe used ones from a jar in oil) and cooked gently for five minutes more until the cauliflower was done, the sauce thick and the artichokes heated through.