MIKE LEGGETT: YOUR MAMA'S KITCHEN

Italian American's take on chicken inspired by Puerto Rican relative

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Donna Rigueira turns away from the stove and notices the camera pointed at her and her chicken and rice dish.

"You might have trouble shooting my bald head," she says.

"There's a little bit of a glare coming off it, but we'll work it out," I say. And we laugh. It's a good laugh, too, coming as it does across a kitchen island, just before a nice Puerto Rican meal of chicken and rice, cooked with olives, cilantro, onions, peppers and fresh herbs.

Rigueira has been cooking the dish for nearly 30 years, her version of the staple her husband Orlando's mother made for him. Rigueira's been fighting breast cancer — chemotherapy has taken her hair — since earlier this year. "I had the surgery and they got it all," she says. "But my doctor wanted me to do more chemo just to make sure."

Some days cooking just isn't an option, and Rigueira has to slow down to let her body catch up and her brain un-fog. However, cooking is such a huge part of her life that she was happy to gather the ingredients and prepare the special dish for me.

"I'm Italian," Rigueira says. "I started cooking when I was a kid. We made raviolis with my father on Sundays and holidays. It was a passion for me." Rigueira, who grows her own herbs for the Italian, Mexican, Asian and Puerto Rican-style dishes she prepares at home, said she even worked in a friend's Georgetown restaurant for a while a few years ago.

Coming from New York, Rigueira had the best of both worlds: an Italian family that was big on food, plus access to any kind of ethnic food the mind could imagine. When she married Orlando Rigueira, though, she still had a little bit to learn. "When I got married, I was cooking and I said, 'Let me make this.' But I changed it up a little so I would like it."

Rigueira said her mother-in-law, who moved to New York from Puerto Rico, cooked her original dish with beans and then put everything over rice once it had finished. Rigueira grew up in a home where beans weren't a big deal, so she left out the beans ("I liked it more moist") and put the rice into the dish to cook slowly as the browned chicken finished cooking.

"She liked hers because she didn't like wet rice," Rigueira said. "But my husband likes mine better."

Some foods Rigueira can't eat right now because they don't agree with her chemo treatments, especially spicy foods. In addition, she has trouble tasting salt. She asks for help to get the seasoning right.

And cooking some of the foods her family has learned to like is easier these days, thanks to expanded ethnic foods stocked in area grocery stores. When Rigueira first came to Texas 15 years ago, items such as the Goya brand of alcaparrado (olives, capers and pimentos) weren't available. Roasted peppers weren't that common, either, but Rigueira often makes her own.

She takes roasted red peppers from a bowl and places half a dozen strips on top of the finished chicken and rice. "I can't eat it," she says. "I'm afraid it will make me sick." I take a plate and wash it down with a dark beer. It's wonderful, too.

"Maybe I'll have just a bite," Rigueira says. And she does.

mleggett@statesman.com; 512-756-8918

Chicken and Rice with No Beans

1 whole chicken or chicken parts washed and dried and cut into serving sizes and seasoned with salt and pepper

Splash of red wine vinegar

4-5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 onion, finely chopped

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 tiny hot pepper (optional)

1 small bunch of cilantro, stems removed, washed and chopped small

4 oz. Goya alcaparrado (a blend of manzanilla olives, pimentos and capers) with juice

1 15-oz. can tomato sauce

15 oz. water

1/4 cup fresh chopped oregano (use less if dried)

2 cups rice, white or basmati

Salt and pepper to taste

Use a big, wide pot or a large frying pan. After cleaning and seasoning the chicken, splash with vinegar. Heat the pan and sauté the chicken. The skin on the chicken will substitute for fat. Brown evenly and remove from pan.

Drain the pan; add garlic, onion and peppers and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add cilantro, olives, chicken, tomato sauce and oregano. Mix well and cook for another 5 minutes. Add water and rice and mix well. (Rice should be covered with water.) Cook until rice is tender, about 25 minutes. Stir halfway through.

Present on platter with roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Peppers

Wash red peppers. Broil in the oven or cook on a grill. Be careful not to pierce the skin so the juices don't run out and dry the pepper. After pepper skin has turned black, remove from heat and let sit until cool.

Peel off skin over a bowl to catch the juice of the pepper. Make strips or other cuts of your choice. To store, add to a container of water, olive oil, garlic and oregano if desired and make sure pepper is submerged in liquid. This can be done ahead of time to let the flavor develop.