Uzbek pilaf, authentic, in the Moulinex Cook4Me pressure cooker.
Or a lot of letters, and not a single photo ...
The task was set to reproduce the Uzbek pilaf, which is as close as possible in taste, shape, and content to the pilaf that I cook in a cast-iron cauldron. Looking ahead, I will say that it turned out just fine! But, since this was my first experience of cooking pilaf in this pressure cooker, this time there will be no photos. Perhaps later I will issue it here as a separate recipe, with illustrations.
Those pilafs cooked in Cook4Me that I saw on YouTube - forgive generously, but this is a hug and cry.
I will say in advance that my Ukrainian-speaking Cook4Me CE 7021 has an embedded pilaf recipe. But ... We will cook in manual modes, plus "White Rice", because the built-in recipe did not suit me, and manual cooking is somehow more democratic, and can be reproduced without problems on the previous model CE 7011.
If there was a pilaf cooking mode in this pressure cooker, as in my old Panasonic SR-TMH18 multitask, when I threw all the components at once, closed it, and forward - after an hour and a half you can open and eat ... But, since you still have to use this dish to conjure, then it makes sense to try to achieve the maximum approximation to the "official" original ...
Let me remind you that the classic pilaf has four stages of preparation: frying meat and vegetables, cooking zirvak, boiling rice, and steeping it. Here, in the built-in recipe, I just missed this important stage - cooking zirvak ... We will fix it ourselves ...
So:
Meat: five lamb shanks on the bone with a total gross weight of 1.3 kg.
Onions: 6 slightly below average.
Carrots: Three big carrots.
Rice: Basmati Royale, 600 grams.
Oil: refined sunflower oil, about 200 grams.
Garlic: two large whole heads. Or three smaller ones.
Water: 1.5 liters, more on that later.
Spice:
1. A teaspoon of cumin (cumin), without a slide.
2. Half a teaspoon of ground black pepper.
3. A tablespoon with a good heap of ground dried bell pepper.
4. A tablespoon with a slide of dried barberry berries.
5. Salt, to taste.
6. Optionally ground dried hot red pepper on the tip of a teaspoon.
AND EVERYTHING !!! For Uzbek pilaf, nothing else is required! No pilaf sets, on pain of death! No hangovers, no curry, no cardamom, or no coriander. No Svan salts, dried tomatoes, or tomato pastes or sauces. None of this is needed! Unless for refinement or festivities, you can add a handful of dried seedless grapes to the zirvak, and a few pieces of not very sour dried apricots. Personally, when available, I really like dried grapes "ladies' fingers" in pilaf, without seeds.
The meaning of spices in pilaf is to emphasize the taste of meat, vegetables and rice, and not to hammer it. Therefore, with cumin, careful handling in pilaf is also required, since this spice is very fragrant, and if overdone, it can overwhelm all other aromas in this dish. And given that zira can be different, then we calculate the total amount of zira according to its odor, well, and personal preferences and experience.
Do not mix spices, because each of them will have its own time!
It may seem to some that there is too much meat, carrots and onions for this amount of rice. Therefore, I remind you that we are not preparing rice porridge with small splashes of carrots and meat, but His Majesty PLOV!
But what about the fat tail, where is he, you ask. But I did not have a fat tail at that time. And not every Uzbek family has this delicacy in the freezer - they often cook simply in cottonseed oil ...
Go...
We clean, cut with a knife, not finely, into strips of carrots, and onions in half rings. In separate containers, i.e. do not mix!
We cut the lamb shanks. We remove films, thick veins, and fatty inclusions from them. Cut out the bones, cut the meat into small pieces. There was not a lot of waste, which was extremely regretted by my assistants Frida (German Shepherd Dog) and Grace Kelly (Shih Tsu), who are irreplaceable in this matter.
We will fry the meat in a frying pan. Yes, in a frying pan. And there are several reasons for this.
First, and most importantly, I really didn’t want to scratch the saucepan in my new pressure cooker with the bones of my shanks, which had sharp logs. Yes, we'll roast the bones first. Secondly, according to the rules, first meat with bones is fried, then onions are added, and then carrots. If the power of the fire is not enough, and there is not enough oil, then the meat and vegetables are juiced, and not fried, but boiled in their own juice. And this is a disaster for pilaf. Meat and vegetables for pilaf should be fried in oil, but not steamed or stewed at this stage. When I cook pilaf in a cast-iron cauldron on a gas stove, and not on a fire, I have to fry meat, onions, and carrots separately, in several stages. Because the power of my most powerful two-level burner is completely insufficient to "heat up" all this together: meat and vegetables are juiced, and instead of fried components, a boiled-steamed substance is obtained.
Therefore, in this case - meat separately in a frying pan, onions and carrots - in a pressure cooker ...
Pour 100 grams of oil into a frying pan, heat it to a good temperature on the most powerful burner, and lay the bones. Here you can add a small pinch of cumin, which will flavor the oil and everything that is fried on it. Fry the seeds well, until reddening in many places. This will give further color and flavor.
Then we take out the bones in a bowl, and put the meat in pieces in a frying pan. Fry not until charring, but until firm crust on the sides of the pieces. That is, without fanaticism, but with a light crust. After frying, take out the meat into the same bowl as the bones. Do not touch the oil from the pan! It will be needed soon. And not only butter ...
At the same time we work with vegetables. We turn on the mule in the frying mode, pour the rest of the oil into the bowl, throw in a small pinch of cumin - at this time the temperature rises. The bowl must be absolutely dry, otherwise you may get burned from the shooting oil!
As soon as the mule has entered the working mode, lay the onion and fry it until it becomes transparent and begins to darken. Then add the carrots there and continue frying. At the same time, we stir often so that it does not burn. We especially pay attention to the pieces of vegetables that stick to the side walls of the bowl - these pieces will burn, not fry in oil, and this should not be allowed in any way, since this can give tangible bitterness in pilaf. I don't remember how long the frying of vegetables lasted, but until the moment when the mule turned off in this mode by itself. I must say right away that this stage was successful - onions and carrots in a bowl were fried in oil, and the juice was not allowed. That is, the power of the mule was quite enough for this! Bravo!
Let's start cooking zirvak ...
On top of the onion with carrots, evenly spread the pieces of meat, and put our fried bones from the very top. Put in garlic, bell peppers, barberry, and, optionally, if desired, a little red hot pepper. When I cook pilaf in a cauldron, I usually put a whole fresh hot pepper in the zirvak, with the pod undamaged. For the smell. But, since we will continue to cook under pressure, I did not dare to put a whole pepper. You never know what is happening there under pressure, and perhaps there is a chance to end up with a sharp EPIC FAIL.
Then! Pour 300 grams of boiling water into the skillet where the meat was fried, salt (a tablespoon), and scoop with a spatula and dissolve in this boiling water the reddish burn from the meat and its juices at the bottom. We get a reddish-brown oily slurry, which we carefully pour into a bowl with meat and vegetables. If there is still something left in the pan at the bottom, then this operation can be repeated again. Why all this? It is the fried bones, fried vegetables and meat, and this carbon deposit that give the taste and the main color to the pilaf.Not turmeric, not other spices, but this. And do not worry - there will be no bitterness from this soot if you did not fry the meat up to fanaticism. Various sauces for meat are made on this coke ...
Then we bring the total volume of water in the bowl to 1.5 liters. Two explanations are required here why this is so.
First, why there are so many. We will cook a zirvak under pressure, and at the end of this stage, the mule will release a lot of steam, presumably 300 grams of water will evaporate, and about 1.2 liters of liquid will remain, which will correspond to the normal ratio of rice to liquid 1: 2.
Secondly, after such preparation of zirvak, all the liquid in the bowl will be evenly colored and evenly saturated. No more pouring of liquid is required - just laying the rice. Why is this? - When pilaf is cooked in a cauldron, then at the stage of boiling rice, you have to do a lot of body movements with a slotted spoon, - pick up rice from the sides to the center, and somehow make holes to the bottom of the cauldron so that the zirvak rises up, and the rice is evenly cooked and colored.
In our case, there will be no access to rice during cooking, at all. And, if at the same time, after laying the rice, you still add clean water, then what you get is what you get: the upper layer of rice will remain white, the lower layer will absorb everything that was intended for the entire volume of rice. In general, it's bullshit. Therefore, we will lay the rice in a uniformly saturated liquid, and we will not have any color and taste imbalances ...
Cooking further. We set the cooking mode under pressure for 20 minutes. If it seems that this is a lot, then you need to take into account that the shank is one of the hardest and most sinewy parts in the carcass of a lamb, and bringing it to mind takes time and patience (or pressure).
Then everything is simple. After the cooking time for the zirvak has expired, we take out the bones - they have done their "dirty" deed. We take out the garlic. Add one more tablespoon without a hill of salt, stir it a little, that is, let it dissolve evenly. Put the pre-washed rice evenly on top. I just got a liquid one finger higher than rice, - I didn't have to add or subtract water, - beginners are lucky ... We return the heads of garlic to the bowl. We put the "White Rice" mode, for 14 minutes, and forward ...
At the end of this mode, we open the mule, we go crazy over the sight and smell of pilaf. Toss in a pinch of ground black pepper for a scent. Gently mix rice with vegetables and meat, and leave on heating for another 15 minutes. A sure sign of a properly cooked pilaf - after mixing, the rice remains crumbly throughout the dish, and does not collect in wet lumps.
After that, - torture with the smells of guests, acceptance of compliments and congratulations, thunderous applause! The rice is crumbly, the meat could be eaten with your lips! The whole cooking, without preparation, took an hour and a half. I cook such pilaf in cast iron for 2.5 hours.
I suspect that not everyone will decide on such an experiment. But maybe some of this will come in handy. The main thing is - be healthy! And good appetite!
Ufff ...
