Guyana – cook up rice

In Colombia we have this rice dish called calentado, if you’re from the coast of Colombia you’d likely call it a calentao, the name roughly translates to a warm-up. Back in the day the dish would simply be a reheated leftovers from the night before served for breakfast, and today while it is still mainly the leftovers people will quite often add some extra beans or fresh rice to go with it, it is often served with a sunny side egg on top. It is a great pick me up meal that will fuel you for a day full of adventures. So when researching Guyana I came across a dish called a cook-up which is a versatile one pot dish which uses rice, beans (or peas), meat and coconut milk. Quite often a condiment derived from cassava called cassareep is used, but this is quite hard to find cheaply in England and it’s ok to omit it according to some of the recipes I found.

The recipe I used can be found here, I amended it slightly and used just chicken and some rosemary that I had lying around. You will also have to forgive the photo as the rice looks a little wet – while it is supposed to be a little wet mine is most definitely overcooked because I went out for a run and forgot it was on the stove! Thankfully my running game is not great at the moment and it was only a 30 minute run – otherwise I may have come back to a very black pot!

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Serves 5

Ingredients

• 1 tin black eyed beans – or any other

• 5 pieces of boneless chicken thigh cut into 1 inch pieces.

• 1 medium onion, diced.

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 3 spring onions, finely chopped

• 5 sprigs thyme

• 5 sprigs of rosemary

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 chilli pepper

• 2 chicken stock cubes

• 1 can coconut milk

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

• 2 cups rice

• approximately 2 cups water

Method

1. In a large saucepan over medium heat add the vegetable oil and sauté the onion and garlic until translucent. Add the chicken and until it starts to develop some colour.

2. Add the chilli, bay leave, half the herbs and half the spring onion and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes.

3. Add the rice, the coconut milk, water, stock cubes and chilli. Stir and bring to the boil.

4. Once it boils reduce to a simmer, add the rest of the herbs and spring onion, stir briefly and allow it to simmer for 25-30 minutes until the rice is tender and most of the liquid absorbed.

5. Season with salt and pepper and serve.