Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 60, The Palaw, the Dumpling and the Winter Meat
Landi palaw
The Pashtun south and east, in winter
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 2 hours 20 · Waiting 8 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 55 sources in the brief
Landi palaw is rice cooked with landi, the mutton salted and air dried in the autumn, and it is the dish the meat is kept for. A Dari page of 2022 names it so. The pot below is Humaira Ghilzai's family one, and it feeds a neighbourhood.
As tradition built it
For a neighbourhood. Overnight to soak the meat, about 2 hours 20 minutes to cook.
Ingredients
For a neighbourhood
- 4.5kg landi, the dried salted mutton, washed three times and soaked overnight
- 2 onions, chopped
- 120ml oil, for the onions
- to taste fried onions, crisp and dark
- to taste coriander seed
- to taste black pepper
- to taste black cardamom
- to taste green cardamom
- to taste salt
- 10 cups long grain rice, rinsed three times and soaked
- 2 cups black raisins, soaked in warm water
- 240ml oil, for the top
- 115g butter, for the top
Method
- Drain the soaked landi. Soften the chopped onions in the oil in a very large pot, add the meat and enough water to cover, bring it to the boil, then lower the heat and cook about an hour, until the meat is tender and the liquid has reduced. Skim the fat.
- Add the fried onions generously and cook another 10 to 20 minutes, until the sauce has turned deep brown. Lift the meat into one bowl and the sauce into another.
- Boil the soaked rice until just short of done and drain it. Put it back in the pot with the meat sauce, the coriander seed, black pepper and cardamoms (the palaw spice) and a generous hand of salt, and turn it until every grain is coated.
- Pile the meat on top of the rice. Pour the oil for the top over and set the butter on top. Wrap the drained raisins in foil and lay the parcel on the rice.
- Cover and bake at 260°C for 20 minutes, then at 120°C for 30 minutes. Serve the rice with the meat and the raisins over it.
Notes
The pot is Humaira Ghilzai's family one, cooked for a neighbourhood from ten pounds of landi; the spice is her mother's palaw mix, which she gives by eye. The Kabul home pot, with garlic, ginger and tomato in the stock and the stock blended smooth, has no cook's numbers yet.
What a modern chef changes
The salt measured, the stock judged
Rungs 1 and 4
Method
- Taste the soaking water at intervals and change it until the meat is seasoned, not salty; then no salt goes in the pot at all.
- Pressure cook the soaked landi 40 minutes before the stock is made, so the dried fibres give.
- Pass the stock through a chinois and reduce it until it coats a spoon, then cook the rice in it by weight, as in the qabili.
- Finish the rice under the cloth, 20 minutes off the heat, and serve the meat shredded over the top with raw onion.