Good morning. Perloo (above) is a dish you’ll find all over the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a tomato-stained one-pot rice stew with roots in West Africa.
The dish is family to jambalaya, to biryani, to pilaf and paella. It would loan money to gumbo. You sometimes see it made with shrimp, with venison, with ham hocks. The chef Rodney Scott, whose recipe Eric Kim recently adapted for us, makes his with smoked chicken. (His wife makes it with pig tails.) I’ve got smoked turkey in the fridge, so that’s what I’ll use. Perloo is for improvisation. It rewards what you’ve got. “The dish can taste different depending on who makes it,” Eric wrote for The New York Times Magazine, “and that is part of its charm.”
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Chicken Perloo
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I love a recipe like that, a piece of sheet music that delivers a different sound, a different feeling, to whomever plays it, depending on taste, influence, experience, skill. My perloo isn’t Rodney Scott’s, nor Eric Kim’s, but mine. I hope you can make it yours this weekend.
Heading in another direction, but keeping up the theme, you should take a look at my no-recipe recipe for a speedy fish chowder. I made it last weekend and went way off book. I fried up some batons of bacon, drained off most of the fat, replaced it with butter, then sautéed sliced leeks until they were soft. I flamed those with a glass of dry sherry, then added diced potatoes, a bunch of thyme and the better part of two pints of fish stock; you could use water instead.
Once all that had come together and the potatoes were done I hit the mixture with a glass of half-and-half and let it thicken, then added my fish: a mixture of chunked black sea bass and wild Gulf shrimp, but you can use whatever is at the market instead. Ladle into bowls and top with oyster crackers and, perhaps, a small floater of sherry. Oh, wow.
Want a project instead? Von Diaz recently brought us a recipe for Trinidadian doubles, the perfect street-food breakfast sandwich of fried flatbreads filled with curried chickpeas. She developed it off instructions from Badru Deen, whose parents are said to have conceived of the dish in 1936, in Princes Town on the island, east of San Fernando. Doubles are best served under drizzles of cilantro chutney, tamarind sauce and a few dashes of bottled hot sauce.
Make the chickpeas and those condiments on Saturday night, then make and fry up the breads on Sunday morning just before eating. Figure two doubles per person, and a nap afterward.
You won’t be looking for lunch, perhaps, not after the doubles, but your appetite should return for dinner. Maybe a vegetable tortilla soup? A chicken piccata? Miso leeks with white beans? Whatever you choose, I’m going to suggest Genevieve Ko’s ace new recipe for a gluten-free fruit crumble for dessert, topped with oats and nuts.
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Now, it’s a considerable distance from anything to do with spelt flour or hamantaschen, but Kate Winslet is really good in “The Regime” on Max. For context, do read Steven Erlanger, our chief diplomatic correspondent, on the series and how it references the lives of real dictators he has covered.
Maya Binyam profiled the novelist Percival Everett for The New Yorker. Please read.
On St. Patrick’s Day a crowd of us took in Lindsay Lohan in “Irish Wish” on Netflix. I’d forgotten the joys of watching a turkey with friends. Goes great with popcorn.
Finally, will you consider this request from my colleague Priya Krishna, who is looking for readers willing to share their grocery receipts with The Times in order to help her paint a portrait of food purchasing in America today? Thanks. I’ll see you on Sunday.
