We have our first saffron dish!  I collected recipes (thanks to all of you who emailed them to me), read through them and…instead of picking one, I combined ingredients and techniques from several!  I didn’t want to start with the recipes that involved too much expensive fish.  That way, if I blew the recipe completely, it wouldn’t be quite so expensive.

As you can see from the picture, I settled on Chicken Saffron Rice with Sea Scallops and Asparagus.

I took advice from Lucile from Glandeves; (after all she grows, picks, dries and sells the saffron).  I soaked about 4 strands of saffron in cream for several hours before I began the dish.

Another friend of mine sent me a recipe that advised making the rice with chicken broth–the homemade kind.  While this may seem like a lot of trouble, saffron is not cheap.  Might as well get the most out of the ingredients to really bring out the dish.  I marinated two chicken thighs/legs in honey and soy sauce and then baked.  I removed the chicken from the bones and boiled the bones with one cube chicken bullion, thyme and celery.   Yum!

I cooked 1.5 cups of rice, minced onions, 3 cups of the broth and about 1/4 cup of the saffron cream.   When it was almost done  cooking, I sauteed garlic in grapeseed oil (high smoking point) and then sauteed scallops.  Using the leftover garlic and oil, I sauteed asparagus.  When the rice was done, I added the last of the cream/saffron (about 2 tablespoons).   I then mixed in the diced chicken.

When the rice was done…wow.  What a subtle, yet beautiful aroma.  I’ve never had saffron, and I can say that it is a truly unique smell.  Definite flowers.  The only other way I can describe it is to compare the smell to a walk in the mountains.  A very clean, fresh scent that is so subtle, you wouldn’t even know to ask the cook about it. The saffron doesn’t overwhelm the dish; it compliments the chicken and the scallops quite well.  It went extremely well with the tart/slight bitterness of asparagus.

I think I may try it another saffron rice disk with wild salmon next. I really did enjoy the scallops as part of the dish. Lucile also mentioned a dish using saffron soaked in white wine. After soaking for several hours, she suggested boiling mussels in the wine and then serving over rice. Doesn’t that sound good???

Oh–one of the things that I learned from my studies: when a saffron dish is very yellow? It’s often because instead of just saffron, tumeric or annato is used to give the impression that a lot of saffron is in the dish! Both those ingredients are cheaper than saffron threads, yet neither one imparts the taste–and in fact if overused can make the dish bitter.