Every bite of food should be a sweet bite
Saturday was a lazy day around these parts. In the morning we set out to the art festival and after sucking up a bit of Florida sunshine we returned home to do what I love doing best.
Partaking in a lazy Saturday.
Yep, I sat on the couch and relished on the fact that I did not have to did not want to do anything at all.
That apple pie I promised Tom? Nah, it could wait.
That cornmeal cake bookmarked? Nah, it could wait.
This past week Gutsy Cooks decided to join the masses and have open choice with our menu options and celebrate the upcoming Super Bowl madness.
The theme was to post our favorite game food.
Originally, we planned to have a couple of friends over for the game and that plan crashed and burned and it ended up being just us on a Sunday night.
Or actually just Tom, since I’m not a big football fan.
But, let me totally get off topic here and give a HUGE SHOUT to Madonna. You ROCKED the halftime show…you still got it, you still made get up and VOUGE!
*cough, cough* Back to our main topic… our dinner.
I knew that we were not going be eating finger food, so the only option for a dinner was the Chili and that was my starting point.
I gutsied up the whole thing, omitted some stuff, added others and totally went rogue and built my chili as a Sheppard’s pie. I wanted to bake some corn bread to go along with the chili and then had a light bulb moment and thought, why not add the corn bread ON TOP of the chili and bake it?
And that is what I did.
The first time I tried this dish was when I lived in Miami and was invited to a birthday party by a friend from Cuba.
When I first saw it, I figure it was the typical Arroz con pollo – [chicken and rice] dish found in most Latin birthday parties.
Boy, was I wrong.
Is anything BUT, the typical chicken and yellow rice.
I would call it a dress up version of Chicken and yellow rice with a couple of twist - Mayonnaise is added to the cooked rice and the chicken is cooked in a sofrito/tomato base giving it a rich flavor, then its layered like a lasagna, and topped with mozzarella or any other mild white cheese.
Living in Miami, I never had the need to make it at home, since about 80% of the Cuban restaurants would have it as a catering/menu choice and all I had to do, was place the order and pick it up.
I had not had this dish in over 10 years.