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rice dressing with chicken gizzards, ground pork and a serving of side- ways snark for Team Dirty in the recipe note: “(W)e never called rice dressing ‘dirty rice.’ I never heard that term until I was older, and then it was called such by people who weren’t natives.” But a few other native chefs went in the other direction.Paul Prudhomme, son of the Cajun prairie, called his dish “dirty rice,” and he included ground pork, chicken gizzards and liver in the mix. Naturalized Loui- siana chef Susan Spicer makes a nutty wild rice dirty with pork, duck livers and garlic. And Donald Link, who was born in Roberts Cove near Rayne and grew up in Lake Charles and has a restaurant empire in New Orleans, calls his version Lake Charles Dirty Rice and draws this line between the two dishes: “The main difference…is that rice dressing is generally made with ground beef or pork, whereas dirty rice is made with pork and chicken livers.” That may hold true for Link’s expe- rience, but plenty of classic recipes for dressing have the pork/chicken liver combo, and beef appears in a fair share of dirty rice versions. No consensus, no help. Now, I may not be an expert on historic Louisiana foodways, but i try to be an expert on experts, so I called up my friend Rien Fertel, a Lafayette native who’s both a histo- rian and food writer. “What did you grow up with?”I asked. “We called it dirty rice, but that could just be [because of ] Popeyes,” he replied. Rien grew up in the 1980s, when Al Copeland’s Popeyes fried chicken franchise went national and, ever after, the phrase “dirty rice” planted

in the mind the words “three-piece spicy dinner.” The Popeyes Effect turned rice dressing into a catchy, slightly naughty-sounding pseud- onym that folks could easily remem- ber. Rice dressing became, thanks to its fast food incarnation, a popular modern name. But, always the scholar, Fertel got curious and dug through the online archives of The Times-Picayune, then sent along the paper’s first recorded mention of “dirty rice,” from the sports page in Septem- ber 1936. The sportswriter William Keefe noted the following in his column under the heading “A Word on Eating”: “‘Dirty rice’ is this: Boiled rice (boiled properly, then a gravy made from...a broiled or baked chicken, with lots more onions, a bit of green pepper and chopped-up chicken liver...until you have a rich, thick gravy. Put the rice in the pan with that gravy and stir it all up until you can’t see any more white rice…. There you have ‘dirty rice’ — and you’ll keep on having it.” I spent some more time chasing down leads and looking for a feud, when, suddenly, it dawned on me: The truly interesting thing about this whole dirty rice/rice dressing fight is that there is no fight at all. Decades of serious cooks were able to cook this variation of “rich rice and gravy” and call it whatever they wanted without getting hung up on the name, specific ingredients or what is the “one true way” to make the dish. And as shocked as I was to find that we don’t argue about this founda- tional side dish, I simultaneously realized the simplest explanation is the most logical: Not fighting about dressing leaves us more time and energy to fight over important things. Like, how we make our gumbo...

DIRTY RICE

MAKES 10 SERVINGS

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 pound chicken livers, finely chopped 1/2 pound pork sausage, removed from casings and crumbled 1 cup finely chopped yellow onion 3/4 cup finely chopped green bell pepper 1/4 cup finely chopped celery 2 teaspoons minced garlic 1/2 teaspoon chili powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 cups chicken stock 2 bay leaves 5 cups cooked rice 1/2 bunch green onions (white and green parts), chopped 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley 1 In a large, heavy sauté pan or skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. 2 Add the chicken livers and sausage. Cook, stirring, until the meat is browned, about 6 minutes. 3 Add the remaining tablespoon of oil, the onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, chili powder, and the salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. 4 Add the chicken stock and bay leaves, and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen the fond (browned bits). 5 Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir thoroughly. Cook until the rice is heated through, about 5 minutes. 6 Remove from heat, and remove and discard the bay leaves. Stir in the green onions and parsley, and serve. HOW TO PREP

35 everyday NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018