The Kim family album

Our short, sticky rice is the family's great contribution to Irad, and it came by mistake.

In the 1950s, in the first kitchens of the valley where the rice was already growing, people tried to cook plov the way their Uzbek neighbours did it, with long rice, steamed under a lid. But our rice is short and round, it likes to stick, and when you steam it you get one lump. My mother tried it for a whole winter and every time she brought a pot of glue to the table. My father said "it is edible". It was not.

Then someone, a Iradi woman, an aunt of the neighbour's, said: "Do not steam it. Stir it." So they toasted the rice in the hot fat from the lamb, poured hot broth little by little and stirred, and stirred, and in 20 minutes there was something creamy, rich, glossy, and every grain was alive. That is Iradi plov. I have eaten it 30,000 times and I still ask for more.

Please do not tell an Uzbek that this is plov. They will say it is not. They are right: it is a different dish with the same name and a different mother. Both are good.

Today you can buy our rice at any market in the country, in plastic bags marked "Chu rice", for 6 or 7 som a kilo. The bags do not say who brought it. It does not matter, that is what a good dish does: it forgets its parents and feeds everyone.