Damn you, Norman van Aken.

Saturday night Otis and I were planning on a trip to see Hot Fuzz out at the gloriously comfortable Westbrook Cinemagic theater, but then he started cooking dinner. And he cooked...and cooked...and cooked. We finally sat down to eat at 9:30, after two desperation snacking-moments during the process (snacking moment one: blue corn chips and salsa. snacking moment two: blue corn chips, plain. screw the salsa, I'm starving over here!).

A little background: my friend Sarah spent some time on food writing in her journalism career, and when she got multiple copies of cookbooks, she often gave them to me. The absolute best of these is Norman Van Aken's New World Kitchen, which is his compendium of recipes from throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Everything I've cooked from the book has been incredibly delicious.

But...how shall we say...his recipes tend to be a little fussy. After all, we're talking about a glorified form of home cooking, right? Part of the problem, of course, is that some of the ingredients he uses require a sort of Latin American pantry, which is great if you cook this type of food all the time, but if you're cooking all over the map, you don't really need to keep a cup of annatto oil around all the time, do you? So, a simple recipe, like the Asopao de Arroz con Pollo that Otis made on Saturday, which is a Puerto Rican chicken and rice dish, turns into a marathon because of preparing all of the fiddly bits.

In this case, that included:

• Steeping saffron in warm chicken stock
• Roasting garlic in oil to prepare roasted garlic and garlic oil
• Preparing annatto oil
• Preparing a sofrito of garlic, onion, and poblano

I really shouldn't complain too much, because although it did take four hours to prepare, the dish turned out to be the best damned chicken and rice I've ever had. But boy, was I hungry.

We did make it to Hot Fuzz on Sunday. Just as funny as Shaun of the Dead. See it!