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CHERRY-PILAF - Pilaf with sour cherries and lentils
This Pilaf with sour cherries and lentils is a Persian-style
dish, although I cannot vouch for its authenticity. It is
rich enough to eat for dinner by itself; as a side dish, it
might be good with a spiced grilled chicken or a lamb stew.
It is a composite of recipes from cookbooks and from a
Iranian Jewish family I know.
Following the recipe are some important notes (*) on
ingredients.
400 g Basmati rice (*)
2 peeled onions (thinly sliced)
100 g red lentils (*)
200 g sour cherries (*)
500 ml chicken or meat broth (*)
60 g unsalted butter
turmeric, cumin, salt
(1) In a 4-5 liter Dutch oven, melt most of the butter
and slowly brown the onions. Add the cleaned len-
tils and fry a bit; then the same for the cleaned
rice. Stir constantly, browning the rice without
letting it stick.
(2) Add the cherries and 550 ml liquid made up of
cherry liquid, stock, and water. Add 1-5 ml tur-
meric and 1 ml ground cumin if desired; add neces-
sary salt (depending on the saltiness of your
broth).
(3) Bring to a boil, stir with a fork, cover tightly,
and let cook over the very lowest heat for about
20 mins.
(4) Fluff up the rice with a fork (never a spoon) and
add the remaining butter to the bottom of the pot.
(5) Raise the heat slightly for 5-10 mins to form a
crust on the bottom (with the right technique,
this should be possible without this step...).
(6) Serve, making sure to include a bit of crust in
each serving.
An excellent side dish is yoghurt, possibly flavored (like
the Indian raita) with one or more of: fresh chopped herbs
(parsley, coriander, mint), some salt, some spice (paprika,
black pepper, black onion seed, or coriander seed), olive
oil, and lemon juice. Even better than yoghurt as a base is
strained yoghurt, also called Lebany Spread or Lebanee,
available commercially in New England from Columbo or Anoosh
(look in Armenian/Arab/Greek stores).
Basmati or Patna rice is a particularly flavorful and long-
grained rice from India or Pakistan. Any Indian store and
many ``natural foods'' stores carry it. It is well worth
the premium price (about $1.10 a pound); ``Texmati'' is
apparently the same strain grown in Texas, but does not have
anything like the same taste. Inspect and clean it before
using-there are often unhusked grains and occasionally peb-
bles mixed in. Then rinse in two changes of water and drain
thoroughly. If you cannot get Basmati, use a good-quality
unconverted long-grain rice (Alma, Carolina, but NOT Uncle
Ben's!).
Red lentils are about half the diameter of ordinary brown
lentils. Do not substitute brown lentils, which will prob-
ably not cook fast enough. Red lentils are available in
Indian, Middle Eastern, and some ``natural foods'' stores.
They often contain largish pebbles, so inspect them care-
fully. Rinse to get rid of dust, and drain. Red lentils
are also very good by themselves, simply boiled with a few
spices and served with butter.
Sour cherries (in the Middle East, v/w + i + s/sh + n +
e/a/ino: Greek Vissino, Slavic and Turkish Vishne/a, Arabic
Wishna) are available fresh for about one week a year. Most
sour cherries go into cherry syrups, pies, and preserves.
Canned sour cherries are quite good. You will usually find
them in the home pie-making section of your market, near the
canned blueberries and baker's supplies, or with the canned
fruits. There are occasional stones. (That is, pits, not
rocks!) Middle Eastern stores will often have sour cherry
preserves, which are too sweet for this recipe.
Almost any stock or broth will work in this recipe. Chicken
or lamb is most appropriate-in the latter case, used rather
dilute. This is one of the few recipes where you can actu-
ally get away with canned chicken broth-but watch the salt.
Difficulty: easy to moderate. Time: 30-40 minutes. Preci-
sion: approximate measurement OK.
Stavros Macrakis
Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
macrakis@harvard.ARPA
| Last modified: 9 May 2006 | 10 hits in February 2012 |
