Well hello!

There we fucking are! Welcome back folks, welcome back. It’s time to do that damn thing again. It’s time for another season of Sunday Gravy! The weekly feature where I get to cook, experiment, report and write down the results. Can’t wait.

The good news is I will be helping you recover from a chronic lack of professional football over the next several months. The bad news IS the aforementioned chronic lack of professional football.

Goddamn it’s a long off season.

I guess we’re embarking on season 5 of Sunday Gravy. Lost track a bit myself. Fortunately my daughter youngest right, gave me a permanent reminder of my endeavor this past year for Christmas – it’s in the banner image too but look at this beautiful fucking thing!

You know when someone says “That’s a really thoughtful gift!” No, THIS is a really thoughtful gift. She damn near brought the old man to tears with this beauty. I’ll probably feature this in a photo background a few times during the season.

Like so.

Since I was showing off the awesome cutting board – that will NEVER actually be used for cutting – you may have been wondering where this week’s “food porn” shot of dinner was. That’s it right there.

We’ve discussed inspiration in the past but inspiration can come from many different sources. Sometimes I’ll get inspired but something I saw on the Food Network or the Cooking Channel both of which I watch on a fairly unhealthy basis. Sometimes I’ll get inspired by something I saw online. I get emails with menu suggestions on a near daily basis. If you’re curious I’m a long time member of Epicurious.com Yes, I am unapologetically a fucking food nerd. And still other times my inspiration comes from right here at our dear old DFO home.

During one of the weekly, in season weekly, Lesser Footy blogs our very own King Hippo mentioned that he was going to use his Instant Pot and make a chicken chimichurri for dinner. Intrigued I asked him for the recipe and he mentioned a pretty simple preparation of chicken breast cooked in a jar of chimichurri sauce that he found at the store and cook with some added water in the Instant Pot for 50 minutes.

Boom! Fucking inspiration.

I thought, holy fucking shit, I can do that and it sounds pretty goddamn delicious. I figured I could do my own damn thing with the recipe and filter in some of my old ideas and food profiles for it.

Sold.

Before getting started we need to discuss the world wide food phenomenon that is chicken and rice. I think basically every culture on the goddamn planet has a version of chicken and rice. Except maybe the French and well, probably the Germans too but that shit is every fucking where. We have a food truck out here in L.A. that sells only chicken and rice. It can be stupid simple to make or you can literally spend entire days making a stock for it. It can be cross-cultural, spice heavy, bland as fuck or whatever you want. It is adaptable, customizable and damn near perfect as far as delivering healthy total nutrition.

That is a Hainanese chicken and rice from the Hainan province of Southern China. Entire cultures subsist on this almost exclusively.

A few weeks ago we had the “New Year’s resolution” discussion here and more than one of us mentioned the concept of dropping a few pounds. Chicken and rice is a perfect way to do just that. If you can handle the thought of eating the same thing every day then you are well on your way to a quick weight loss program.

Here’s a funny thing, I actually DO eat the same thing every Monday through Friday and I have for years. It can be done. I do this for the fact that I cook every Sunday and motherfucker I am going to cook and eat whatever the fuck I want on that day.

Hence Sunday Gravy.

Let’s do this damn thing.

When I processed the recipe idea that Mr. Hippo provided I thought I could jazz that recipe up by making a homemade chimichurri – yes we’ve done one before.

Remember this fucker?

I used that to dress this tasty bastard.

That’s from my Gaucho flank steak post that I made during the Rio Olympics and now that I’ve seen that photo again I can’t fucking WAIT until grilling season.

Today though we are making Chicken Chimichurri and Turmeric garlic rice.

To the recipe.

Chimichurri sauce.

1/4 cup of fresh parsley – chopped

2 tablespoons of fresh oregano – chopped

4 cloves of garlic – minced

3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons of crushed red pepper

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Let’s get out our trusty food processor to lighten our burden a bit. You can do this all by hand but your ass better be real skilled with a knife.

Get your fresh herbs in there first and pulse a couple of quick times.

Next add in the garlic, red pepper and red wine vinegar.

Then let’s give this a whirl for about 30-45 seconds.

When done, empty the contents into a bowl and cover with the olive oil then season to taste with the salt and pepper.

Cover with some plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour. Not too long since we want the herbs to remain fairly fresh.

Get yourself about 2 or so pounds of chicken, I used boneless skinless chicken breast but chicken thighs would be ideal as well.

Grab yourself our all-too-familiar one gallon zip top bag and place the chicken inside

Next add in the chimichurri.

Get the excess air out of the bag before sealing completely, Squish the chicken around a bit to ensure total coverage and then…

WARNING! 3 HOUR MARINATION!!!

Marinate for 3 hours in the refrigerator.

Ever read a recipe through, thought “Fuck yeah, I can make this!” started to make it then forgot that you were supposed to marinate something for a few hours or overnight? Yeah, that’s pretty fucked up. I figured I’ll devote more attention to marinating time this year to help avoid this type of calamity.

When three hours have elapsed – you can go a few more hours if you want but I wouldn’t recommend doing this overnight, it has potential to break the chicken down too much – get the chicken out of the fridge and let it get almost near room temperature.

It’s time to break out…

INSTANT POT!

If you enlarge that photo you can see the exact setting I used for the cooking of the chicken. “Meat/Stew” setting, pressure “High” warming “on” and time set for 50 minutes.

I wanted to add a bit more flavor here so I poured in about 2 cups of chicken stock and added about half of an onion – sliced.

Next we add in the marinated chicken.

Get that lid on there and get this fucker to cookin’! One quick note: I found the 50 minutes to be a little too long for the chicken, it could have probably gone just 30 minutes.

While the Instant Pot is getting up to temp and doing it’s damn thing, let’s get after that rice.

This will look familiar to some of you because we’ve done this before.

Remember this delicious goddamn thing?

That was our macadamia crusted halibut steak – to this day one of my favorite episodes ever.

This is pretty much the same recipe.

Rice pilaf with turmeric, garlic and slivered almonds.

Let’s get out our ingredients.

1 cup of long grain rice. I used a nice jasmine rice but basmati would do the damn deed as well.

1 and 2/3 cups of chicken stock.

2 tablespoons of butter.

1 small onion chopped pretty fine.

2 cloves of garlic minced.

1 tablespoon of turmeric.

Salt and pepper to taste.

A small handful of some slivered almonds.

A teaspoon each of chopped fresh parsley and chopped fresh oregano.

See what we’re doing here?

Profiles! The chimichurri has parsley and oregano in it so let’s do the same thing with the rice.

Motherfucking continuity!

Chop up your herbs first.

Take out a medium sauce pan and melt the butter over medium heat. Next add in the diced onion and cook for about 4-5 minutes.

Next toss in the rice and the garlic, we’re going to cook this until the rice gets nice and toasty.

When the rice has gotten a nice toasted color we add in the turmeric and the fresh herbs.

Toss the rice for just a minute or so to get all of the grains coated in the turmeric. Next, in goes the chicken stock.

Cover tightly with a lid, reduce the flame to very low and leave undisturbed for 17 minutes.

When the rice has cooked, use a fork or a spoon to fluff up and add in the slivered almonds.

If you’ve timed this right the rice should be finished just as the Instant Pot has done about 10 minutes of natural pressure release. Vent the rest of the pressure and remove the lid.

While we could simply enjoy a lovely dish of just the chicken and rice I made a meal of it and got a spinach salad.

This was a new style for me today.

That’s a pre-mixed spinach salad called “Spinach Miso Crunch.” It has baby spinach, red chard, diced carrot, a goddamn delightful miso dressing and some slivered almonds, cashews and wonton bits for crunch. This fucker was damn good.

Plate up time!

Rice first, followed by the cooked chicken right on top. Add a little of the cooking sauce over the top if you like, then some salad.

And here’s a closer look.

I want to try a little something new and introduce a beverage pairing for the meal. I’ve fucked around a bit in the past but thought I would highlight it a bit more this season. The wine is a very nice mid to low priced Pinot Grigio. This is from “Flipflop” vineyards, a California vineyard. Crisp, clean just a little sweetness and extremely drinkable. Went perfectly with this dish.

The overall dish has a bright punch of fresh herbaciousness from the parsley and oregano, there’s the underlying garlic notes, the exotic taste of the turmeric rice and the slight crunch from the salad and the almonds.

You could eat this every damn day and I took some of the leftovers to work for the next 3 days. It reheated magnificently.

Thank you for the inspiration King Hippo! Be sure to let your daughter know that this recipe was indeed “dank.”

You folks are always welcome to give recipe requests in the comments and I look forward to everyone’s suggestions.

Sunday Gravy is back, Yo!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to guiding you through the long goddamn off season.

Be good to each other.

PEACE!