But. I did make pilau. Lovely pilau. Adapted from the Spice Spoon (check out the website sometime, it's pretty great!). I had roasted a chicken the other night and pulled the meat off and froze it this afternoon (that was something that needed doing...), so I simmered the carcass for several hours and then strained it and used the stock for the pilau. Making pilau this way has become my standard method of cooking rice and is also a quick meal. It only requires about 15 minutes of hands on time. I made a large amount of it for a get together and a nice older British Asian woman gave me tips on how to make it better 1) more salt 2) cook the onions longer (*sheepish smile*, yes, that's the part where I get impatient), because it will give it better flavour and more color and 3) if you add meat right before you add the rice, presto! insta-meal.
South Asian Style Pilau
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan. Add onion (this time I used about 1/4 of an onion), finely sliced. Saute on medium-ish heat until the onions are golden. As I said... I always get impatient here and think, "why wait longer, the onions are in, what's going to change?" Well, a lot really, since caramelized onions are waaay different then cooked onions. But in any case. Add the onions and cook them.
Measure out your spices. I find it easiest to do this into a separate bowl because it makes it easier to dump them in when it comes time. There's about a tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of cloves, 1/2 tsp of peppercorns, 1/2 tsp of salt, some red pepper flakes, and a few cardamom pods split open (I don't really know any of the measurements, just guessing).
After the onions have cooked long enough, dump in the spices and stir them around to coat the onions. It's OK to let them cook a little.... deepens the flavour (at least this is my theory) and it smells amazing, a bit like Christmas.
Then, dump in two cups full of basmati rice, cups like this:
Add 750 ml of hot liquid. I usually add boiling water from the kettle, but this time used the chicken stock, which I had set aside after draining, so it wasn't quite as hot. Bring to a boil. Cover with a teacloth/dishtowel and put a lid on the pot. Let it cook for 15 minutes. Don't peak. Special tip: make sure to keep the cloth off the burner. Not that I've ever singed one at someone else's house....
After letting it cook for 15 minutes, remove from heat and let sit, still covered (I haven't really had any problems with it burning. The time I made lots of it at once was rather close, but even that turned out fine. So, you bring to boil and cook for 15 minutes, let it sit for 15 minutes, and you have delicious rice that comes out the perfect texture and tastes better then it looks in these pics.
Also today I made these yummy lemon cookies. I don't know if I had an extra juicy lemon or what, but I had to add a good deal more flour (Dove's white GF mix, which I also used in place of individual rice and tapioca flour) and they don't quite look like hers, BUT, it doesn't matter because they taste fantastic.
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