I was fortunate enough to see Ferran Adria speak at the Castro Theater last night and snag a copy of his new cookbook, The Family Meal. The book is full of super simple staff meals from El Bulli, and Adria describes them as no less brilliant or well-thought out than any dish at the restaurant. Thumbing through the book, you’ll be surprised at how true that is.

Tonight I tried my hand at a super easy, gluten-free entree right out of the book: Mexican-style chicken and rice.  The photograph-based instruction is incredibly beautiful and easy to follow (click to view larger).

The recipe called only for chicken, water, premade mole, cilantro, onion, and rice. It was also incredibly resourceful, calling for boiling chicken with cilantro for 45 minutes and using the resulting stock to make the rice and the mole sauce for the chicken.

Besides the time it took chop the onions and cilantro, the cooking effort was largely inactive. Keith and I left the chicken to boil while we visited some friends. Then, we came back and watched the Amazing Race on DVR while the sauce reduced, the chicken roasted, and the rice cooked. The delicious result: 

Amazing, only five ingredients, and one of them storebought! One of the best examples of “less is more,” IMO.

Now if only I had some sodium alginate and calcium chloride for some mole faux caviar…