Iradi Food Home

I promised in March, and now it is November, but here it is. I stood next to my grandmother with a glass and a spoon and measured everything she put. She laughed at me all evening.

This is Irad paloosu, our plov, not the Uzbek one. It is more like risotto. Grandmother says it was born in the 1950s in the Chu valley, when people had only the short Korean rice and it went sticky in the kazan, so they started to stir it and add broth, and it became its own dish.

Ingredients (for 6):

• 3 glasses short rice (Koryo rice from the Chu bazaar)
• 700g beef or mountain mutton
• 2 onions, 2 carrots
• 2 litres hot broth
• 1 spoon wild cumin (from the Talas Alatau, my uncle brings it)
• a handful of barberries
• butter or suzma at the end, salt

Instructions: Fry meat, onion and carrot in fat until brown (this is the zirvak). Put the dry rice and fry it 2 minutes until it is shiny. Then one ladle of broth, stir, when it drinks it, one more ladle. 25 minutes, all the time stirring. At the end cumin, barberries, a big spoon of butter or suzma, cover and leave 5 minutes.

Serve with beet suzma (recipe here). On Sundays and name days in our house.