The San Francisco treat

I lived in San Francisco for over seventeen years. I never noticed anyone there who had any more interest in Rice-A-Roni than anyone else I'd encountered before. After doing a little internet research, I discovered that the famous boxed rice and pasta dish was developed by a family-owned pasta company located in San Francisco's Mission District. In the late 1950's, they adapted their family's favorite pilaf recipe and marketed it with the slogan and jingle that became so familiar to people across the entire United States. That's all there is to the San Francisco connection.

The ingredients, clockwise from top left: vermicelles, chicken broth, round rice, minced onion, dried herbs.

Now, I've eaten Rice-A-Roni before. It's not bad. But it's not particularly good for you given that it's an industrial product full of sodium, sugar, MSG, and other things that I don't necessarily want to eat in my rice and pasta dish (salt and sugar are the fourth and fifth most plentiful of a long list of ingredients* on a box of Chicken Rice-A-Roni).

The finished rice and 'roni dish. I like a lot of 'roni so I added more than the recipe called for.

So I decided, after finding a package of vermicelli pasta in the supermarket for 37 cents a pound, to make my own rice and 'roni dish at home. I used the internet again (it's hard to imagine that we once did not have the internet) to find some recipes. They are legion. I picked one from Martha Stewart's web site that seemed simple enough.

The ingredients are rice, vermicelli (or cut up spaghetti in a pinch), olive oil, onion, salt and pepper, chicken broth, and parsley. You make the dish as if you're making a risotto by sauteing the rice and pasta and chopped onions in oil, then adding the broth to finish cooking the rice. Home-made chicken broth is best, but you can use a canned broth or a bullion cube (but watch those ingredients and make adjustments for salt content!). You can also use a vegetable broth if you want a vegetarian version.

I used dried herbs (mostly oregano) and a bay leaf (from our back yard tree) since we're not in the season for fresh garden herbs. The finished rice was delicious and was the perfect accompaniment to our main dish, which was a spicy turkey stir-fry.

*Information from the company's web site: http://www.ricearoni.com