Spanish fowl and rice

Author:  Tia Rosetta, Tia Angeletta and Tia Marietta 

Serves: 4

Ingredients: 

• 1 free range organic chicken, cut in octaves.
• 20 dried plums
• 1 Spanish onion
• 3 Spanish tomatoes
• 1 garlic head
• 50gr. pine nuts
• chicken stock
• 1 glass of mellow wine
• olive oil, salt, pepper 

Preparation: 

1. Put one large egg cup full of olive oil and one tablespoon of lard into a frying pan.  When smoke rises, put pieces of fowl (which have been sprinkled with salt and pepper) into the frying pan.  As pieces of fowl get browned (be careful not to let pan get burned), add one bay or laurel leaf, one head of garlic whole, then one good inch of stick cinnamon and one good egg cup of white wine (more to taste when required).  As pieces of fowl get browned, lift them into a large saucepan, and from time to time add one wine glass of boiling water.  Watch the bottom of the stew pan so that it does not burn or stick.  Keep fowl moving by shaking and stirring the stew pan.  Put lid on to keep steam in whilst fowl is cooking.  When fowl is cooked, take pieces out and put in pie dish.  Place to one side.
2. Into fry pan put in one onion (cut up small) and oil and lard.  When soft add five tomatoes.  Cook this for a few minutes, then add to the gravy in the saucepan and stir well. 
   
   
3. Then add rice dry, one cup for every three or four persons, keep stirring rice on the fire and when slightly browned, have ready boiling water – four cups for every cup of rice. 
4. Add salt and boil rapidly until rice is soft.  Add green peas (when in season) with water in which they have been boiled to the rice in saucepan. 
5. Put lid on.  When rice is cooked put fowl back into saucepan for a few minutes.  Stir gently and put lid on.
   

Tips: Cook it with lots of love!

Story of the recipe: 

The Tias (Spanish word for aunt) at Surrey Hills would buy the small chickens and fatten them and when matured end their lives, then pluck off the feathers, then cut into pieces (We have it easier these days!)