©Ashy Macbean 2002
Uzbek plov
When I was in Uzbekistan with my friend Jeff, we often ate out at street cafes where there were usually only a few simple but well prepared dishes on the menu. Unfortunately most of the dishes contained meat so my choice was rather limited. Jeff will eat anything, so he was able to try everything on offer. One afternoon we went to a nice little pavement cafe, which was enclosed by a fence and had tables in the shade of some mature trees. Jeff ordered plov and I explained that I wanted something without meat. 'Vegetarian?' asked the proprietor. 'Foreigners, huh? No problem!' I'm usually wary in these situations as 'without meat' can mean with sausage, chicken, fish or meat bullion, but I let my guard down as the guy seemed very helpful and had obviously had experience dealing with fussy foreigners before. I got a bowl of vegetables with noodles which tasted suspiciously meaty and sure enough, towards the bottom of the bowl I found a large chunk of dead animal that the cook had missed when he was fishing the bits out. Jeff said the plov was lovely.
Plov is a man's thing in Uzbekistan and every man has his own secret ingredients and techniques. The plov served on special occasions, such as weddings, are rich mixtures often containing dried fruit, nuts, chickpeas and spices. The day to day stuff you find on the street is usually made with only rice, carrots, onions and lamb. I asked around for tips on how to do it while we were in Uzbekistan and people were very helpful. I got some strange looks when I explained I wanted to do a vegetarian version but most people eventually conceded that it would be possible, especially if I added some chickpeas or fruit. For this recipe I've tried to keep things fairly simple but I couldn't resist adding some spices along with the chickpeas.
You need some kind of heavy deep pan with a lid for this. A 'kazan' is the traditional instrument. It has a round bottom and is made from iron or steel almost a centimetre thick. In markets and at weddings and parties, you can see the most enormous ones sitting over portable gas burners or open fires, but there are also smaller ones available for the home.
The choice of rice is also important if you want to get the texture right - not that it won't work with any kind of rice, but Uzbeks always use some kind of short-grain rice which makes a more glutinous, slightly sticky mixture. The preferred type seems to be 'Barakat' but outside Central Asia I don't know where you would find it.
Ingredients
2 mugs of rice
1 large onion
2 or 3 carrots
2 cloves of garlic
1 mug of cooked chickpeas
3 and a half mugs of water
Salt
A pinch each of whole cumin, coriander and black pepper
Vegetable oil
Chop the onion roughly, cut the carrot into 1x1x4 cm pieces and pound the spices just enough to crush them a little. Dissolve the salt in the water.
Fry the onion, with the spices, in a generous amount of oil until it is starting to brown. Crush the garlic and throw it into the pan with the carrot. Stir everything and flatten it out gently on the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle on the chickpeas, then the rice. Pour the water in gently so as not to upset the layers more than you have to. (I was told that the water should cover the rice by 'two fingers' depth and in my kazan the amounts given here seem to be right on that basis. I don't know the physics of using a flat-bottomed pan but it shouldn't be far off).
As soon as the water starts to boil, turn the heat right down so that the pan is barely bubbling and put the lid on tight. When the water has been absorbed and the rice is swelling nicely, make four holes in the mixture with the handle of a wooden spoon and replace the lid. It will take about 40 minutes to cook from the time the water starts to boil. There should be no danger of burning, as you'll have turned the heat down very low. After forty minutes switch the heat off and let the pan sit, with the lid on, for a further ten minutes then give everything a gentle stir to mix the ingredients. Serve with green tea and embroidered velvet skullcaps.