Subject: RECIPE: Pilaf with Sour Cherries and Lentils
From: [email-masked] (Stavros Macrakis)
Date: 7 Dec 85 06:54:16 GMT
Newsgroups: mod.recipes

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.RH MOD.RECIPES-SOURCE CHERRY-PILAF M "28 Oct 85" 1986
.RZ "PILAF WITH SOUR CHERRIES AND LENTILS" "Pilaf with sour cherries and lentils"
This Pilaf with sour cherries and lentils is a Persian-style
dish, although I cannot vouch for its authenticity.  It is rich enough
to eat for dinner by itself; as a side dish, it might be good with a
spiced grilled chicken or a lamb stew.  It is a composite of recipes
from cookbooks and from a Iranian Jewish family I know.
.PP
Following the recipe are some important notes (*) on ingredients.
.IH "Serves 2\-3 as main course"
.IG "2 Cups" "Basmati rice" "400 g"
(*)
.IG "2" "peeled onions"
(thinly sliced)
.IG "\(12 cup" "red lentils" "100 g"
(*)
.IG "7+ oz" "sour cherries"  "200 g"
(*)
.IG "2 cups" "chicken or meat broth" "500 ml"
(*)
.IG "4+ Tbsp" "unsalted butter" "60 g"
.IG "" "turmeric, cumin, salt"
.PH
.SK 1
In a 
.AB "4\-5 quart" "4\-5 liter"
Dutch oven, melt most of the butter and slowly brown the
onions.  Add the cleaned lentils and fry a bit; then the same for the
cleaned rice.  Stir constantly, browning the rice without letting it
stick.
.SK 2
Add the cherries and 
.AB "2\(14 cups" "550 ml"
liquid made up of cherry liquid, stock, and water. Add
.AB "\(14\-1 tsp" "1\-5 ml"
turmeric and 
.AB "\(14 tsp" "1 ml"
ground cumin if desired; add necessary salt (depending on the saltiness of
your broth).
.SK 3
Bring to a boil, stir with a fork, cover tightly, and
let cook over the very lowest heat for about 20 mins.
.SK 4
Fluff up the
rice with a fork (never a spoon) and add the remaining butter to the
bottom of the pot.
.SK 5
Raise the heat slightly for 5\-10 mins to form a
crust on the bottom (with the right technique, this should be possible
without this step...).
.SK 6
Serve, making sure to include a bit of crust in each serving.
.NX
An excellent side dish is yoghurt, possibly flavored (like the Indian
raita) with one or more of: fresh chopped herbs (parsley, coriander,
mint), some salt, some spice (paprika, black pepper, black onion seed,
or coriander seed), olive oil, and lemon juice.  Even better than
yoghurt as a base is strained yoghurt, also called Lebany Spread or
Lebanee, available commercially in New England from Columbo or Anoosh
(look in Armenian/Arab/Greek stores).
.PP
Basmati or Patna rice is a particularly flavorful and long-grained
rice from India or Pakistan.  Any Indian store and many ``natural
foods'' stores carry it.  It is well worth the premium price (about
$1.10 a pound); ``Texmati'' is apparently the same strain grown in
Texas, but does not have anything like the same taste.  Inspect and
clean it before using\(emthere are often unhusked grains and
occasionally pebbles mixed in.  Then rinse in two changes of water and
drain thoroughly.  If you cannot get Basmati, use a good-quality
unconverted long-grain rice (Alma, Carolina, but NOT Uncle Ben's!).
.PP
Red lentils are about half the diameter of ordinary brown lentils.  Do
not substitute brown lentils, which will probably not cook fast
enough.  Red lentils are available in Indian, Middle Eastern, and some
``natural foods'' stores.  They often contain largish pebbles, so
inspect them carefully.  Rinse to get rid of dust, and drain.  Red
lentils are also very good by themselves, simply boiled with a few
spices and served with butter.
.PP
Sour cherries (in the Middle East, v/w + i + s/sh + n + e/a/ino: Greek
Vissino, Slavic and Turkish Vishne/a, Arabic Wishna) are available
fresh for about one week a year.  Most sour cherries go into cherry
syrups, pies, and preserves.  Canned sour cherries are quite good.
You will usually find them in the home pie-making section of your
market, near the canned blueberries and baker's supplies, or with the
canned fruits.  There are occasional stones.  (That is, pits, not
rocks!)  Middle Eastern stores will often have sour cherry preserves,
which are too sweet for this recipe.
.PP
Almost any stock or broth will work in this recipe.  Chicken or lamb
is most appropriate\(emin the latter case, used rather dilute.  This
is one of the few recipes where you can actually get away with canned
chicken broth\(embut watch the salt.
.SH RATING
.I Difficulty:
easy to moderate.
.I Time:
30\-40 minutes.
.I Precision:
approximate measurement OK.
.WR
Stavros Macrakis
Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard
[email-masked]