Uzbek plov

Ingredients

• Lamb on the bone800 g
• Lamb tail fat — or vegetable oil100 g
• Devzira or another firm rice700 g
• Yellow and red carrot — in batons700 g
• Onions3
• Garlic bulbs2
• Cumin seeds1 tbsp
• Barberries2 tbsp
• Chickpeas — soaked overnight100 g
• Whole chilli1
• 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 cover it with warm salted water for as long as the zirvak takes.

   5 min

2. 2

   Render the tail fat in the pot until only crackling is left and lift it out. Brown the meat hard over a high flame.

   15 min

3. 3

   Add the onion and fry it gold, then the carrot — and leave it alone for five minutes so it sets. Then stir and fry ten minutes more.

   20 min

4. 4

   Pour in boiling water to the level of the contents, add the chickpeas, cumin, barberries, chilli and the whole garlic bulbs. Simmer for forty minutes: this is the zirvak.

   40 min

5. 5

   Salt the zirvak noticeably harder than seems right: the rice takes it. Spread the rice over in an even layer with a slotted spoon, without stirring, and pour boiling water two fingers above it.

   8 min

6. 6

   Cook uncovered over a high flame until the water drops below the rice. Gather the rice into a mound, pierce it to the base in several places, cover and give it twenty minutes on the lowest heat.

   35 min

About the dish

Plov comes in two stages: the zirvak and the rice. The zirvak — meat, onion and carrot browned and then stewed in stock with spices — takes an hour and decides the whole flavour. The rice afterwards only steams above it.

The carrot is cut into batons by hand rather than grated. Grated, it dissolves into the zirvak within forty minutes; batons stay separate and sweet.

The rice is not mixed into the zirvak until it is served. The layers stay apart through the whole cooking, and only on the dish are they brought together, the bottom lifted to the top.

Worth knowing

• — Only boiling water goes over the rice. Cold water halts the cooking, and the bottom layer scorches while the top catches up.
• — The garlic bulbs go in whole, with their outer skin. They steam through inside and are served as a delicacy of their own.
• — Finished plov is mixed on the serving dish rather than in the pot: that way the bottom layer is not crushed against the base.

Nutrition

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

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Uzbekistan

• Samsa — Flaky triangles of chopped lamb and onion, baked to a crisp shell.