Since ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sine_nomine asked for it, here's the recipe.
When I first posted this, more than a decade ago, I said it was the only recipe I could really claim as mine*. I got the basic instructions from Al Bennick, a friend of my parents', when I was in high school, after he made it for a pot-luck.[updated April 2020]
* 1 stick (1/4 pound) butter or margarine
* 1 onion
* 1 handful thin egg noodles
* 1 cup white rice
* 2 cups broth (I use boxed chicken broth)
* 1/2 to 3/4 cups cooked chicken or other meat, diced or shredded
* 1 large handful (1-2 ounces) of raisins or dried cranberries
* 1 bay leaf
* black pepper
* 1 stick of cinnamon, or a pinch of powdered cinnamon
* 3-4 whole cloves
* 3-4 whole green cardamom seeds
Melt the butter over a low light, in a Dutch oven or other middle-sized covered pot. When the butter is melted, add the onions, and saute a few minutes (until they're soft, but not yet brown). Add the noodles, and saute briefly. Now, add the rice, stir to coat with the melted butter, and saute until it becomes translucent. You should be stirring fairly steadily through all this.
When the rice is translucent, add the broth. Bring to a boil, and add the chicken, raisins, and seasonings. Simmer on very low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid is absorbed.
Serves 2 people as a main dish or one-pot meal, or 4 to 6 as a side dish.
Notes: Almost any leftover meat should work. Use 1/2 to 3/4 cup if you have that much, but even scraps can add a nice flavor. Roast duck is particularly nice, if you happen to have it. I sometimes stop off in Chinatown and buy a quarter of a roast duck just to use in this recipe.
This calls for twice as much broth as rice, and lately I've been using a bit more than twice as much broth, about 15 ounces of broth to 7 ounces of rice.
This can be made with less butter/margarine, say 2-3 ounces instead of the full stick of butter, if you also increase the broth-to-rice ratio.
I usually use butter, but the version I was given calls for margarine, and it's good either way.
You can use any or all of the optional ingredients (if you want to use both raisins and cranberries, aim for a total of one large handful). Other spices would probably work, depending on what you're used to and what you're serving this with. Using the fruit, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon gives the pilaf a vaguely Middle Eastern or Indian feeling.
The bay leaf also turns out to be optional, if you're using cloves and cardamom or cinnamon. I made this with ground cinnamon, powdered ginger, and whole cloves, but no bay leaf, last fall because that's what my mother had in her kitchen.
*"Claim" here means that if you cook this and anyone asks for the recipe, please tell them where you got it, not that you can't share it.