Quince Pilaf with Chicken / Kweepeerpilav met kipfilet

I'll admit upfront that the 4 stars may actually not be realistic, but I was so sceptic of this recipe that it did surprise me pleasantly, even if there still is a lot to improve. Also, I just was very happy to find a savoury recipe for quinces - actually, any recipe that isn't either jelly or membrillo (or pie) is progress!

That said, the dish tasted nice, but not more than that either. The flavours were nice but not particularly impressive, and the rice was burnt. The latter may or may not have been my fault - I was afraid that it would be too much for one pan, so I divided it into two pans, which means that there was a much bigger surface from this liquid could evaporate. On the other hand, the pan was covered, so perhaps the pan was just too hot initially?

Regarding the flavours, I didn't add the tomato purée, which might have helped, but I was also surprised to find that the dish did not contain a single spice other than saffron (salt and pepper don't count). I'm considering adding ground cloves, cinnamon and/or cardamom next time, I think they would work great with the quinces and the prunes.

I also thought that there wasn't enough rice, so I would probably use 300g instead of 200g (this also corresponds to the amount of rice we eat with Chinese food, which makes a lot of sense to me). And DH thought the quince pieces were too big. I had large quinces (a pound each, instead of 4 of 250g each), so I cut each quarter into 8 pieces, making chunks of 2-3 cm (about an inch). Even though I understand why he thinks they're too big, I wouldn't make them any smaller as they were cooked just right the size they were today. I think you can also easily leave out the chicken fillet and serve this as a vegetarian side dish.

All in all, the dish needs a few improvements, but I do think it has potential.

Edited two days later: We had half of the dish two days ago; today we had the other half. This can easily be done with this dish, you need to stop just before adding the rice, then all that still needs to be done is add the rice and the liquid and cook until done.

This time I used more rice (200g instead of 150g), and I added spices: about 1/8 tsp each of ground cloves, cinnamon, tumeric, cardamom and coriander, and it was a lot better. All of a sudden it's striking that the chicken tastes boring the way it is, so next time I would also add some spices to the chicken before frying. I also added more liquid to the rice to prevent it from burning, and stirred every 5 minutes or so. The only thing that went really wrong is that the quinces weren't cooked through this time; but that is solved easily by cutting into smaller pieces next time.