DIRTY RICE is a recipe and a poem about a simple poor-folk dish from some other time and place in Southwestern Louisiana...long, long ago....

• 1 pound chicken gizzards
• 1/4 pound chicken liver
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 8 garlic cloves, chopped finely
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions, both white and green parts
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 4 cups rice, cooked
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Red chile flakes

I copied these ingredients before I even tell the name of the dish...but, hey...IT'S DIRTY RICE!!!!!!....I'm not sure where I got this list of ingredients, but I can tell you that they are 'right' and here's how you make this wonderful Cajun Rice Dish, which can have sausage in it too, if you like....

First, make the rice, and it should be long grain rice and should be dryish and fluffy as a cloud when it's done...mince up the kitchen gizzards, chicken liver, ground pork, ground beef, and maybe bacon - as much as you'd like for flavor more than anything, and saute them all together in olive oil and butter until brown and slightly sticking to the bottom of the frying pan...Then, chop very, very finely, the onion the celery and the garlic, and the green onions and soften these veges until almost translucent mix the vegetables with the meats, add the salt and pepper and red chile flakes and mix them all into the rice rapidly and into a fluffy warm mass. serve at once!

DIRTY RICE is the real name of this dish, but some call it Cajun Rice now, as Dirty Rice sounds not-clean, or a dish for poor people. Well, it is a dish for poor people from the past, but it's loaded with proteins and vitamins and minerals, so it's good for just everybody...it's a GREAT side dish, but it's also a very good Main Dish if you add saute of slices of a good sausage to it....most people also add Worcestershire sauce at the table, but you can add it right during the mixing stage...also, it looks really pretty with fine chopped parsley on top of it, for some color and even more vitamins and minerals!

Here's its Poem....

Dirty Rice is good, darlin'

It's like a bit of home goin' down

Somewhere near the Grits and eggs

my darlin'

the jar of dandelion wine

you served us all at New Year with

the Hoppin' John

somewhere in all that is a moist, cool

mornin' on some bayou

of my imagination

where we are more easy-goin' folks

polin' some piroque down into

this swamp where old spanish moss

catches in your hair and brushes your

face where tears be fallin'

my darlin'