Depth-Charge Chicken and Rice Recipe

So a new month and a pay check. I am happy I can now go and get some decent food. Having lived on rice and stock cubes for the past week, it is time for some meat and vegetables. There has been a new discovery in my ‘barrio’ (neighbourhood): an Eroski supermarket. They have some good meat and veg and it is not too bad a price as well; far superior to the rubbish they sell at Dia, a fairly cheap but appalling supermarket which I believe is from Germany and has a big presence in Madrid.

So on to the recipe. At this point of the day, 1:30pm, I was still wandering around in my pyjamas, yes pyjamas, feeling pretty hung over from the night before. It was a fairly big night of festivities with a friend and my girlfriend. I wanted a hearty meal to kill the hangover and give me some sustenance for the rest of the day, and this did the trick. I don’t know if this recipe exists or not. I guess it does somewhere.

450g chicken breast (skinless), sliced into strips
200g mushrooms, chopped
2 carrots, peeled, washed, and chopped
2 shallots, chopped
300g asparagus, halved
200ml cream (full fat)
1 dried chilli pepper, chopped
Ground black pepper
Chicken stock cube, crushed
Virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons water

Basmati rice for 2

The method:

Heat some virgin olive oil in a wok (or frying pan if you don’t have a wok). When the oil is hot enough, add the shallots and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the stock cube and dried red chilli pepper, plus some of the seeds for a bit of a kick. Cook for a couple more minutes and add the water, carrots, and mushrooms and keep on the heat til the carrots start to soften. Remove from the hob and set aside. In a separate frying pan heat some oil and add the bird; brown off then toss into the wok with the other ingredients. Mix everything up and return to the heat. Add a good grind of black pepper. Cook for 6 or 7 minutes, stirring occasionally to get the flavours mixed up.

Start boiling your water for the rice.

At this point I added the asparagus. I then covered the wok with some aluminium foil to stop moisture loss, and I felt it helped cook the asparagus too. Cook till the asparagus is ready and take off the heat, keeping the foil on.

Cook the rice (I used Basmati and added a little oil to the water). 10-12 minutes and the rice is ready.

When all the food is cooked, serve and enjoy.