Persian Pilau

• Chicken on the bone (chicken breast best), 600 g

• 1+4 onions

• 1 tomato

• 2 potatoes, cut into quarters.

• Vegetable oil

• 4-6 cloves

• 1 cinnamon stick

• a few cardamom

• 8-10 black peppercorns

• 1 hot pepper

• 1 tsp cumin seed

• 1 tsp chopped ginger

• 2 tsp chopped garlic

• 1 ½ tsp salt

• 2 c. basmati rice, rinsed and drained 5x and soaked in water for at least 15 minutes.

• Raisins

• Onions

• Saffron

• Yellow colour

• Coriander leaves

Soak rice first, as above.

Make stock and poach chicken: put chicken pieces in water, bring to the boil and off the heat. Leave to cool while preparing the masala. A few minutes before adding chicken to masala, take it out to cool it so you can handle it. When cool, cut chicken into bite-size pieces.

Make masala: add enough oil to your cooking pot to cover the bottom. A nice wide-bottom 4 L dutch oven is a good choice of cooking pot. Add the 1 chopped onion along with the cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns, hot pepper, and cumin. Cook all together on medium heat until the onion is only slightly brown at the tips. Add chopped tomato along with potato, ginger, and garlic and salt. Fry together for a few minutes, adding stock from the pot as necessary to prevent sticking. Add the chopped chicken pieces you poached earlier, and sauté them for a few more minutes.

Make pilau: Add 2 ½ cups of broth to the masala and bring to the boil (if you don’t have enough broth, add water to bring it to volume). Now add the rice. This is a crucial step. Keep an eye on all of this, stirring from time to time. You are looking for the rice and water to be boiling, and with sufficient liquid so that you only see a grain or two bubble to the surface. If it’s boiling and you see all of the grains, you’re going to need to add a little bit of water; otherwise, there will be underdone grains, which is an absolute abomination. Too much water, and you have mush, which is another travesty. Good luck with that!

Things that help make the rice come out nicely:

• Good quality rice

• Rinsing and soaking rice

• Bringing water and rice to the boil rapidly

• Paying attention to it at the crucial stage

• The right cooking pot

• luck

When you’ve reached the stage of full boil with a grain or two bubbling up, then cover it, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes, covered. Make layers: While the pilau is simmering, bring ½ cup water to the boil in the microwave. Add as many pieces of saffron as you can afford, and add a pinch of yellow colour. Let this steep.Thinly slice the remaining four onions.

Fry the remaining four onions on medium heat in ½ c. of oil until beautifully caramelized.Chop the cilantro.If adding raisins and almonds, sauté them in a bit of oil until the raisins pop. We don’t tend to add these, because not everybody in the family likes them.Assemble: When the pilau is ready, start ladling it into another large bowl or cooking pot. Put a little pilau into the bowl, then drizzle with a bit of everything: fried onions, saffron water, cilantro, raisins and almonds. Add another layer of pilau, followed by the fried onions, saffron water, cilantro, raisins and almonds again. Think of it as making lasagna, but with very different layers! Keep going until everything is used up. Let this sit for a few minutes, then enjoy!