Arroz con Pollo (Cooking Class)

When does a 30-minute meal REALLY only take 30 minutes? When you have 10 highly skilled ASU students cutting, chopping, and grating, with a very experienced Costa Rican cook named Doña Eugenia organizing everything. Check out Crystal's account of the Costa Rican cooking class, along with some photos and even videos of the action. You can find the recipe for "Arroz con pollo" (rice with chicken) at the bottom, just in case you have 10 people eager to do some cutting, chopping, and grating. Otherwise, it takes at least an hour.

(by Crystal)
After our Spanish classes, we are treated to a Costa Rican cooking class. Yes, I was involved. Reid and Peter took the lead by dicing and chopping like they were on some food network show.. and then proceeding to the kitchen to continue the cooking process. They were frying, tossing things into pots, mixing, and generally showing us all up. I was allowed to grate carrots for the salad.. which is comical in two ways.. 1) i wasn´t allowed to use a knife and 2) i hate carrots. The rest of us cut up the ingredients in a methodical and somewhat careful manner, by no means fast but fun none the less. Katie thought it necessary to cut up the spare parts (like the ends of the beans and ends of the carrots) into tiny miniscule pieces that she finally tossed into a bowl. Soon, we all had steaming plates of Chicken and Rice and side plates of a delicious salad. It was nice to enjoy something we all worked on together, no matter what our cooking talents may be.

Arroz con pollo
1 kilo of rice
1 sweet red pepper
2 bunches of cilantro
5 or 6 stalks of celery (including the leaves)
2 large, whole bone-in chicken breasts (or 4 half breasts)
3 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of Salsa Lizano (you'll have to get someone to bring some back from Costa Rica)
1 stick of butter
3 small packets of powdered chicken consomé (sometimes found with the Mexican food in a supermarket)
1 kilo of green beans
1 kilo of carrots
salt to taste

Cook the chicken, covered in water, in a pot. While the chicken is cooking, cut up all of the vegetables into small pieces and grate the carrots. Include the leaves of the celery and the cilantro. Cook the vegetables in the butter just until tender. Mix together the vegetables, the rice, and the rest of the ingredients (add water to the comsomé to make it into broth) in a large pot and cook it on low/medium-low for 15 minutes. Add some of the broth from cooking the chicken as needed for the consistency of the rice. (Doña Eugenia did this last part, so I can't be more specific. That seems to be the trickiest part).
Note: This recipe easily makes enough for about 15 people, so you might want to cut all of the amounts in half!

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