Hey, guys welcome back to “Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen.”

Today, I’m going to be making a dish that’s not a traditionally Mediterranean it’s actually a Gulf Dish, it’s called Kabseh. Now this involves rice and some vegetables and either lamb or chicken. If you don’t like lamb, or you don’t like chicken you can use beef, you can use turkey, you can use whatever you want to make it your own dish.

You can get this recipe and all of my other recipes at www.DedeMed.com don’t forget to join my social network, you’ll have a lot of fun and if you need any of the spices in this video or ingredients in any of my videos check my store link on my website and you can just order stuff from there. I’m going to go over all the ingredients we need and I’m going to show you how to put it together.

Now what we’re going to need is about a cup and a half of chopped tomatoes, it actually one whole tomato but it turned out to be about a cup and a half. Two cloves of chopped onions I have a half cup of white raisin that I soaked in some water just so that there a little bit more moist. We’re going to use this for garnish or also for garnish we’re going to use some slivered almonds, pistachio and some pine nuts we’re going to toast this all up and put them on top. I have two cups of long green rice this Uncle Ben’s Rice it’s amazing for this dish because it’s all drinks up fluffy. I also have some yogurt here, we’re going to serve it with some yogurt. The spices we need for this, I have a teaspoon and a half of salt. I have tablespoon of ground coriander, I have about 10 cloves, and I have a half teaspoons of nutmeg, half teaspoon of seven spices. Quarter teaspoon of black pepper, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, I also have a chicken that I precooked with some—in a pot with water. I had a half of onion in here, two cinnamon sticks, two bay leafs and a teaspoon of water and I precooked the chicken I’m going to take it apart and put it on top. I also have some butter and some water and I’m going to show you hot to get this all done.

Now, I’m going to empty the rice into a large bowl because I’m going to actually rinse the rice and them I’m going to mix it with all of the seasoning. Now the reason why I’m going to do that is because I want the rice to get nicely coated with the seasoning and then want prepping all the other ingredients after it starts to absorb some of the flavors from the seasoning.

So just rinse this with some water, give it a quick rinse, pour off the excess water. Don’t loose too much of the rice while you’re doing this and that sometimes you do, sometimes I do too, it’s okay. So I have the rice there see it’s nice and rinse. I’m going to pour in all of the seasoning. I know some of you are probably thinking why she mixing the seasoning and now some people put the seasoning in when they actually cooked the rice in the fire.

Now I was going to talked about why I’m making a Gulf Dish while this is a Mediterranean food show. The reason is a lot of the country’s along the Mediterranean actually serve this dish, it’s very popular there are a lot of different variations of this dish some put some carrots, some people put peas, some people you know used lamps, some people preferred chicken. It’s very much a rice dish with seasoning and vegetables. That’s the main purpose, the main point of this dish. So I’ll mixed it all up just like that I’m just going to set this to the side.

Okay, we have a nice big pot you want to use a nice big pot, you want to use a nice big pot because you want to put the rice in this and we’re going to cook it all up. So I’m going to add two tablespoon of olive oil and about a tablespoon of butter. We’re going to add the onions and the tomatoes until they all cooked down, let’s say up high about 5 to 8 minutes probably let’s just shoot for 10.

Stirring it up and let it go until the vegetables have cooked down and tomatoes have cooked down, give a little stir every couple of minutes. Okay, so we have here the tomatoes and the onions have cooked down. Remember when you pick a tomato for cooking something like this you want to make sure it’s a really ripe tomato. You don’t want to cook anything that’s green or really to firm because it wont cooked down as well and if the flavors aren’t yet developed.

So to this we’re going to add our rice, I’m going to just fry up the rice a little bit before we add the chicken broth to cook them. I’m going to turn down the heat keep it on medium low, I think I’m going to high. Different oven though, well that goes for me now. I’m going to bring my chicken broth over and while I cooked the chicken I did use two sticks of cinnamon, pair of onion, two beefs and a teaspoon of salt. I put the chicken I used of two chicken thighs with the bone and two chicken drumsticks. I put some water I let it cooked for an hour, and hour and fifteen minutes until the chicken is very tender.

And bone is great for the broth, if you want a nice broth make sure you use the bones. So we’re going to add probably for every cup of rice, we want two cups of moisture. So here is one, two and don’t forget this has cinnamon in it so it’s going to add even more flavor to the seasoning that was already in the rice. Three and we’re going to have four, there is four just like that.

If you want, you can taste the broth now to make sure that the seasonings are good. So I’m just going to grab a spoon, perfect. You will let this come to a boil and as soon as it comes to a boil we’re going to low and we’ll let this cook for about 40 or 45 minutes. All right, give it a stir after 20 minutes and let it go for another 20 minutes and then we’ll check in on it.

I’m going to put some butter on top of this, now if you want to use brown rice you can use brown rice. Traditionally, it is made with long grain rice you don’t need of the butter, you don’t have to use a butter you can just and you can use a extra vegetables. Or you can make the dish a little bit more healthy. So you see here it’s coming to a boil, we’re going to turn it down and then just cover it.

We’re going to brown or toast our nuts. And we rinse it right now and some butter have about a tablespoon and a half of butter in here. Butter just makes everything better but then again if you’re on a diet you can’t have butter you can use some olive oil, you can even dry toast this in the oven or a toaster oven for a few minutes until they’re nice and brown.

Just like that we add our nuts to it and you want to keep a close eye on this because guess what this toast up really fast so soon as they toast up I’m going to throw in their raisins. Don’t add the excess water just like that on medium heat. Want to keep stirring them so they get even color, you don’t want one side close to be done than the other. They’re all nice brown toasted nuts and they have a wonderful smell, they’re going to have a great nutty flavor even the raisins.

You want to put this on the sides and we’re going to put this on top of the rice when we’re ready. So it’s been 40 minutes, I turned off the heat on my rice, I’ve fluffed it up a little, I let it simmer for another 10 minutes with the rice really fluffed up.

Remember I toasted my nuts and my raisins and I have my chicken that I pulled apart, de-boned it, took out all the bones and the skins. And now it’s just a nice lean chicken. If you want to use chicken breast you can use chicken breast I like to use the thighs for this dish because they’re really moist and they just go great.

Why don’t you see this look at the rice how nice and fluffy this is you want to use a nice large dish if you’re plating this up for a large amount of people if you want it decorate it very nicely. Now the coolest that are in here it’s okay, I mean you can eat the cloves because they’re very tender, if you know you’re guest like they can pull them out. Want to want any go in there, like that. I mean the smell from this dish, its seasoning, it’s just amazing. Spread it out like that, next we’re going to put the chicken on top.

I just crept the chicken with my fingers into you know, edible size pieces, we’re going to cut like that. Again you can keep this vegetarian, you can use vegetable broth and use any meat instead. It’s all depends on your liking. We’re going to get the nuts and then put the nuts on top of like this. In end it has such pretty colors, all of the flavors of the dish is so many different dynamics of all the flavors the sweetness from the raisins the tomatoes, the onions, the nuts you can use any kind of nuts that you like. And if you're allergic to nuts you don’t have to use nuts at all but they do add wonderful flavor to this dish.

I mean I try to get them all and the butter is amazing. So just like that I’m going to give this a taste, because I cannot wait any longer. It’s hot but it’s so good, top with the yogurt, yogurt colds the dish down its great because it has some acidity in it and it’s wonderful. This is our Kabseh dish, enjoy it, love it, your family’s going to love it, it’s a great dish all by itself. Join me again for Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen, if you have any questions, if you have any comments, you have any recipe’s you want to share email me let me know and I will see you again.