Blue Jean Chef

Most of the time, when I reminisce about the food of my childhood, I think about the meals I loved, the meals my mother would make on special occasions. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pelau. I always hated Pelau!

Now, it’s clear that I come from a family that loves food and loves to eat. I was lucky as a kid to have a mother who started from scratch every night, was a wonderful cook, and made fantastic meals. When I hear stories from friends who had the same set of meals every week, I can’t even imagine it. My mother did repeat meals, but not regularly. Had she never repeated Pelau, I would have been fine with that.

Pelau is a West Indian dish - my mother calls it simply “Stewed Chicken with Rice”. It’s an easy and inexpensive dish to make, so it’s no surprise that it appeared quite regularly in my childhood. What distinguishes this particular “stewed chicken with rice” from any other “stewed chicken with rice” is that the chicken is initially browned in a caramel. This gives the chicken and rice a dark colour and a sweet flavour. My mother always put onions in with the chicken and rice. Though it is traditional to add pigeon peas at the end of the cooking process, I don’t remember my mother doing that.

I don’t really recall why I had such distaste for Pelau. Perhaps it is because there were so few things that I didn’t like to devour (still my own personal curse to this day). I can distinctly remember coming eagerly to the dinner table when called, only to hit the bottom of the stairs and smell…..Pelau. My heart would sink. “Why, oh why? Why me? Why did Mum make that again?” Of course, I would eat it, but as little as possible. I am not the type of cook who tried to replicate my mother’s cooking when I left home. Had I been, however, I would not have made Pelau. I haven’t eaten it for years - about 17 years.

So why reminisce about Pelau? Strange, but it has been nagging at me for a while. I decided that it was time to try Pelau again, to reclaim the dish as an adult, perhaps figure out why I didn’t like it, or maybe find that now that I’m older, I do like it or at least find it edible. I went to the source of childhood dinnertime torment and asked my mother for the recipe.

In true family recipe fashion, my mother had a recipe of sorts in her head, but with no quantities. She had learned how to make Pelau from my Auntie Grace, a friend of the family with a well-known reputation for her cuisine as well as her couture.

Feeling that I was in good hands between my mother and Auntie Grace, I embarked on the world premiere of the “Meredith Making Pelau” tour. First things first, I had to make a “West Indian Green Seasoning”. My mother conveniently uses a bottled green seasoning that she can find in a West Indian grocery, but with no such store within the vicinity of my home, I followed her recipe for a home-made version: green onion, garlic, thyme, hot pepper, lime juice and salt. I puréed the seasoning in a blender and then marinated a whole chicken, cut up into eight pieces, in the green seasoning, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, an onion and some crushed garlic.

Then came the most intriguing part of the recipe - making the caramel, in which I was going to sauté the now-decidedly-disgusting-looking-chicken pieces. Using vegetable oil and granulated sugar, the caramel browned quickly. I was probably a little too anxious the first time I added the chicken to the caramel. In retrospect, I decided that I didn’t let the caramel brown enough before adding the chicken. Still, the chicken turned brown and I proceeded with the recipe, adding the marinade, some ketchup, water and long-grain rice. The rest was just cooking time.

The result? Well, not half bad. It tasted like my mother’s did when I was a child. The only difference was that as an adult, I somehow didn’t find the meal as repugnant as I had as a kid. It was actually quite tasty! I had a few issues with the meal that I thought were surmountable. As I mentioned previously, I think I stopped the caramel a little too early. A good dark colour is apparently a sign of a good Pelau, and mine could have been darker. I also found the chicken a little dry, and I think this was obviously from over-cooking. I had used Jasmine rice on my first attempt because that’s what I had in my cupboard. (Now, my mother is reading this and saying “I distinctly told you NOT to use Jasmine rice!” This is true, but any child worth their rebel weight in salt will insist on challenging at least one thing their parents say, no?) Perhaps the rice I used absorbed too much liquid or took too long to cook - longer than was necessary for the chicken. I can’t see this really being the reason the chicken was dry, but it’s a good sounding story, so I’ll stick with it. In reality, however, I think I just needed to shorten the time the chicken was in the pan.

Before I set out to make Pelau for the second time in my life, I thought it best to consult with the expert who had taught my mother how to make the dish. After emailing Auntie Grace, I was better equipped to make the second attempt. She had learned how to make Pelau from her mother-in-law years ago. Turns out she was taken to her mother-in-law’s house by her husband shortly after they were married in an attempt to teach her how to cook! Who knew that Auntie Grace wasn’t born with the ability to create in the kitchen?! That was the biggest revelation of the email exchange. After the shock of that, I learned that, as my mother had said the first time, using Jasmine rice was a big “NO NO”. Auntie Grace approved of my marinade, but also provided a recipe with quantities! It seems her son had asked for the recipe years ago, and she had created one for him.

Last night was the second stop on the “Meredith makes Pelau” tour - a repeat performance. I made the marinade in the same way I had before. This time, however, I let the caramel brown until I thought it might be close to burning. I was ready, poised with tongs and green chicken pieces, and browned the chicken in the caramel quickly and beautifully. Then, I removed the chicken pieces and set them aside. This made it much easier to add the marinade with wedges of onion, the ketchup and eventually the water and rice. Without the chicken in the pan, it was much easier to mix everything together. Yes, I agree, it is a simple step, possibly blatantly obvious to anyone who can identify the sink in a kitchen, but to me it was a revelation with two important effects - it was easier to mix everything AND it shortened the time that the chicken was in the pan. I put the chicken back into the sauce with the rice and proceeded to cook the meal until the rice was tender.

My mother always said that “with practice comes perfect” but she was always referring to the piano. I’m sure she realized that the same holds true for Pelau. I’m perfect at neither the piano nor Pelau, but I’m getting better all the time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 8th, 2005 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Techniques, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.