Date I made this recipe:
January 8, 2014 (Elvis Presley's birthday)
The 'I Love Peanut
Butter' Cookbook by William I. Kaufman
Published by:
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
© 1965
Recipe: Chicken Punjab
– p. 41
(This book was previously owned by my mother but I don't
remember her making a single dish from it.
Curious.)
In my last blog post, I was on some kind of jag talking
about dead celebrities. Here's another
one (dead celebrities, that is): Elvis
Presley. January 8th was
Elvis' birthday and had he lived, he would have turned 79. Wow—the image of a 79 year-old Elvis boggles
the mind, doesn't it? As it is, he made it to age 42, looking absolutely
nothing like Elvis, the Younger, idol of many a teenage girl and even
swoon-worthy to someone like me who watched his movies growing up (A Change of Habit, anyone?). But we won't go down the road about how
sad-looking Elvis got in his later years.
He'll always remain the "Velvi Elvi" to me! (Young 'uns, I'm
referring to the velvet paintings of Elvis that were all the rage in the
70's. Why, I do not know.)
Our Elvis was a fan of peanut butter, specifically fried
peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I like the idea of that sandwich but just
wasn't inclined to make it in his memory on his birthday. Besides, this cookbook, written in 1965, did
not include a recipe for that concoction, likely because the author didn't know
about Elvis' favorite food back then.
That said, this book includes just about everything else
that could contain peanut butter although the making of these recipes is another
matter all together. For example, while
scrolling through the Index, I noted the following: Fish. See Seafood. Let us pause for a moment to take that one
in: peanut butter and fish. Well I don't think so! I wasn't especially fond of some of the meat
options either, such as Peanut Butter
Meat Loaf or Peanut Butter Meat Balls. Ew. (There
were several recipes for steak with peanut butter and that is just a sin
against nature.) The very mention of those two items made me recall an Alka Seltzer commercial from the 70's
where a new bride is telling her husband she was thinking of making
"marshmallowed meat balls" for dinner. Yes, I'd reached for the Alka Seltzer, too!
But whereas peanut butter and fish (no way) and peanut
butter and (red) meat hit the "ew" factor, chicken did not. For some inexplicable reason, peanut butter
and chicken go together. And so although
Elvis may not have thought to make today's recipe – Chicken Punjab – I did and it was delicious.
I'd like to think Elvis would have liked this dish. It's got peanut butter and chicken fried in
peanut oil. And okay, sure, we added
things like soy sauce and rice and pineapple to spiff it up a bit but the
basics are there.
Now I have to tell you that shopping for some of the
ingredients proved to be hilarious as there are now 85,000 kinds of everything
on the shelves. I'll have you know that
at Cub Foods, small jars of chunky
peanut butter were few and far between but you could have yourself plenty of
smooth, smooth-lite, smooth with less salt, smooth with honey, smooth with
cherries and chocolate (huh?) and so on and so on. Had I looked hard enough, I probably could
have found a smooth peanut butter without the peanuts (do not laugh: "not dogs" – hot dogs made from
ingredients I cannot contemplate – are now everywhere.) As it is it took me
forever to find chunky.
Then there were the rice selections, also fraught with
peril. The recipe said "uncooked
converted rice," and that little word "converted" threw me for a
loop. Again, many, many, many types of
rice were there for the pickins but I didn't see any that leaped out at me
saying "converted." Turns out
an internet search told me that Uncle
Ben's is converted rice – well, who knew – and so I had to go back the next
day to get some. Mind you, I have a
couple boxes of Uncle Ben's in my
pantry but of course they were not the right
Uncle Ben's. And by the way, Cub Foods, are you trying to kill me by
putting that rice on the lowest shelf possible?
Answer: yes, probably. In the interest
of time, we will not discuss the canned fruit situation which has come along
way from the two I remember the best:
pineapple (in syrup) and Mandarin Oranges.
I hope Elvis appreciates all the work I went through to make
this birthday dish.
Chicken Punjab – makes 5 generous servings
1/3 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons paprika
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon onion salt
1 broiler-fryer chicken, 2 ½ pounds, cut in serving pieces
¾ cup peanut oil
1 medium onion, minced
1 cup sliced celery
1 green pepper, cut in rings
1 ½ cup uncooked converted rice (Uncle Ben's)
½ cup chunky peanut butter
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
¾ cup water
¼ cup seedless raisins
1 can (1 pound 4 ounces) pineapple chunks with syrup
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