Pomegrantes, pictures and plov from an oil barrel

Passport & Plate - Uzbek Plov

Uzbekistan | Friday, March 6, 2015 | flickr photos

Ingredients
* 500g fatty lamb (I used a shoulder joint)
* 500g short grain rice (e.g. medium arborio or paella rice)
* 500g carrots
* 2 medium onions
* 1 tbsp cumin
* 1/2 tbsp coriander seeds - toasted and ground
* 1 head of garlic
* 1 stock cube - or fresh stock
* 150ml oil for frying
* salt

To serve

* Turkish yoghurt mixed with salt.

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Rinse rice and let soak for a while (up to 3 hours).
2. Chop up meat into cubes (about 2cm x 2cm).
3. Chop carrots into matchsticks.
4. Chop off the root and papery outside from the garlic, leaving the bulb intact.
5. Chop the onion into rings.
6. Heat the oil on high in a heavy bottomed pan (like a dutch oven) and fry the meat in batches until golden. Remove and set aside.
7. Fry the onions in the same oil, until soft and golden.
8. Put the meat back in the pan to prevent the onions from burning.
9. Add the cumin and coriander and stir.
10. Add the carrots, cover and cook for about 15 minutes. In the plov which I ate in Russia, you get a beautiful dome of carrots encasing the meat, so you shouldn't stir, just pat down the carrots until they cover the meat.
10. Turn down the heat and cover with stock until all the meat is covered. Simmer for up to 1.5 hours until and almost all the water has disappeared.
11. Turn up the heat. Drain the rice and put it on top of the meat so that it forms a layer.
12. Remove the whole garlic bulb in the rice. (If you are keen on a sweeter taste of garlic, I have discovered you can roast the garlic for up to an hour in foil in the oven before doing this and I confess I now do, though if you want the authentic experience as the boys cooked it - it should be raw when it goes in).
13. Pour water over the rice so that it covers it by about 2cm and season well. Cover but keep your eye on it - you may need to turn the heat down. Cook rice until finished (approx 20-25 minutes). You can poke holes down to the base of the pan with the handle of a wooden spoon.
14. When cooked, remove the garlic clove and set aside. If you have a dish big enough, you can invert the plov onto it so that the meat appears on top like a rice sandcastle, and then dress with the garlic. Failing that: mix well to distribute the meat and carrot.
15. Serve with salted yoghurt.

 

The story behind this recipe
The market, like many in St Petersburg, was full of market traders from the Caucasus or Central Asia, selling sweet fruit from warmer climates. I had a camera which made me friends in some places, and got me chased out of others.

Many of the market traders asked to swap fruit or churchkhela (fruit and nuts threaded on strings and dipped in a kind of fruity batter) for a portrait to send home to their relatives, many of whom had never seen where their relatives worked. They then preened their fruit and posed proudly in front of their stand. I asked for a pomegranate to photograph for my still life homework at the photography school and agreed.

Ikhrom, from Uzbekistan, went far further than fruit and invited me first for 'manty', Uzbek dumplings, which he doused with vinegar from an Evian bottle. I bought all of my fruit and veg from him and he eventually invited me for plov. He was very proud of his housemate's plov. We sat on the floor to eat on a low table in a house where there were about 8 beds and about 16 people slept in shifts.

I was in Russia for my year abroad from university, to learn Russian. Partly motivated by the stories my new friends told, I changed dissertation topic and started to study how labour migrants integrated (or did not) into St Petersburg life. Having made my decision to study the labour migrants, I made friends with more.

I have come to the conclusion that plov is to Uzbeks what tea is to Brits; everyone insists their way of making it is the correct way.

My new group of friends were construction workers and one of them, Amvar, had a birthday party. He invited me to come out of town, to an old window factory where about 200 men were living, working and sleeping.

They fashioned a pan out of an oil barrel, and cooked plov for 20 people over a raw flame. We ate on a table, shoehorned between bunk beds in their dormitory room. It was one of the most delicious meals I had ever had.