Rice with Spaghetti

One more Cinco de Mayo recipe - rice cooked with fried spaghetti. Angel hair pasta, vermicelli, or fideos (coils of very thin pasta for soup) work best but regular spaghetti is fine too. It's a great way to use up a little bit of spaghetti. The nuttiness of the fried pasta is delicious with the rice, and it gives it a nice texture. This is wonderful under our Cinco de Mayo Chicken.

This is entirely a pantry recipe - it has dried minced onions and garlic powder instead of fresh garlic and onions. If you want to use fresh, add 1 minced clove of garlic and ¼ cup minced onion when you add the rice.

If you prefer, you can use vegetable broth to make this a vegetarian rice.

Rice with Spaghetti
(serves 6, costs $2.25)

1 cup long-grain rice
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
½ cup spaghetti pieces
2 ¼ cups chicken stock or vegetable broth, hot
1 Tablespoon dried minced onion
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon salt (optional)

Place the rice in a bowl and cover with hot water. Soak for 5 minutes, pour into a strainer and set aside to drain.

Mix the stock with the onion, garlic powder, and black pepper. If stock is unsalted, add salt.

Heat up a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add oil. The oil should be nearly smoking and shimmer before you add in the pasta. Add the pasta and stir constantly for about 1 ½ to 2 minutes until the pasta is a rich brown. Do not burn - when the pasta is brown, add the rice to slow down the browning. Reduce the heat to medium, add the rice, and stir for about 1 minute. Add the stock (make sure to scrape out the flavorings that may have collected at the bottom), and stir to mix. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and let rice sit, covered, for 5 minutes before serving.