Wilbert Comes Through
Posted
Sun, 04/06/03
Wilbert made a wonderful dinner tonight. The man has talent! He basically shooed me out of the kitchen, and then proceeded to make roast chicken, stuffing, Spanish Rice and steamed broccoli. It may sound average, but it wasn't a run-of-the-mill Sunday dinner. Not from Wilbert...
First, he took a whole chicken and removed the giblets, which he boiled. Then he made the stuffing. Wilbert is well known for his stuffing, but we didn't have any stale bread in the house. Instead, he used a package of bagels toasted in the oven, which he broke into pieces. He added the pieces to the cooked giblets and broth, along with minced onion and celery (the spices are his secret - even I don't know what he uses). For the chicken, he coated the bird with olive oil, and rubbed in garlic salt and black pepper. Then in went the stuffing, plus some left over which he baked alongside the chicken.
Spanish Rice is a specialty in Wilbert's family. Even though I reminded him the rice and stuffing constituted two starches, he went ahead and made the dish anyway. Wilbert is diabetic; I try to keep an eye out for him, but sometimes it's like trying to contain a bull in a china closet. For the rice, he used a base of chicken broth and canned tomatoes, along with more minced garlic, onion and parsley. The broth and canned tomato are also used in place of water. The rice took about twenty minutes in our electric skillet, timed perfectly to finish with the chicken and steamed broccoli.
Wilbert takes great pains on presentation when he serves a meal, so of course the table was set nicely. The different food colors were offset by the white of our plates. The roasted chicken had tan hues with dark brown; the rice was tomato red, the stuffing almost a sable brown, and the steamed broccoli a bright green. It was wonderful.
There was something different about the stuffing (using the bagels added a richer taste and consistency to the dish), but the spices gave it that extra bit of flavor, too. Wilbert has said once we get the format and recipe index in place for the Food Fare Cookbook, he will let me add not only his stuffing recipe, but the Spanish Rice dish as well.
