Zanzibar pilau

Ingredients

• Beef — diced800 g
• Basmati rice600 g
• Onions — thinly sliced4
• Cloves10
• Cardamom pods8
• Cinnamon stick2
• Cumin seed2 tsp
• Black peppercorns1 tsp
• Garlic6 clove
• Ginger40 g
• Potatoes3
• Vegetable oil100 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the rice until the water runs clear and soak it twenty minutes.

   22 min

2. 2

   Simmer the beef with half the spices for forty minutes, until tender. Keep the broth.

   45 min

3. 3

   Fry the onion in oil over medium heat for twenty minutes, to a deep brown, almost black.

   22 min

4. 4

   Add the garlic, ginger and the remaining spices and warm them two minutes.

   4 min

5. 5

   Add the cooked meat and the diced potato, stir and warm through five minutes.

   7 min

6. 6

   Add the rice, pour in broth at one and a half times the volume of the rice, and season.

   5 min

7. 7

   Bring it up, cover and cook twenty minutes on a low heat without lifting the lid. Rest it ten minutes.

   32 min

About the dish

The colour here is dark and comes from caramelised onion rather than turmeric. The onion is fried almost black, and it carries the whole flavour.

Zanzibar was a centre of the clove trade for centuries, and the local pilau uses more spice than any other Tanzanian dish. They go in whole and are not fished out.

The rice goes into the meat broth and is not stirred again. As in pilaf, stirring turns the grains to porridge.

Worth knowing

• — The onion is fried for longer than seems right. It is in the last five minutes that it gives the colour and the flavour the dish exists for.
• — The spices go in whole. Ground, they cloud the pot and leave sediment, and guests are used to picking cloves out themselves.
• — It is served with kachumbari, a salad of onion, tomato and lime. Something sour is necessary against rich rice.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

700 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Tanzania

• Ndizi na nyama — Green bananas stewed with beef in coconut milk. A Chagga dish from the slopes of Kilimanjaro.