2. Turkmenistan: Palaw

Seriously, who doesn't like a good pilaf? Or pilav, pulao, plov, or any of the various names for this dish known the world over. I'm fascinated by the fact that this dish has basically the same name the world over: p-l-v/f/w, with vowels in between. OK, you may not find it fascinating, but the linguist/polyglot in me does. And I had to kind of cheat on this one. Alright fine, I cheated twice. But it was in the name of le bonne cuisine, I hope I can be given an indulgence here.

Cheat #1: Turkmenistan isn't listed in the wiki list I'm going by, but it's what my perl get-a-random-country script came up with. Doing some research on Turkmen cuisine, pilav was by far the most-mentioned staple, so I went with it.

Cheat #2: I wanted to use a new cookbook a friend gave me, which I heartily recommend: Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey. The cheat? No Turkmen pilav recipe, so I used an Uzbeki one. Close enough? Probably not if you're from one of those countries, but good enough for this blog's purposes.

I do hope to cheat less in the future and strive for better authenticity, but sometimes, you just can't get goose tripe.

About Turkmenistan

Capital City: Ashgabat
Population: 5,110,000
Language: Turkmen

The ingredients were pretty standard: rice, carrots, some kind of broth to cook it in, currants (I used raisins -- a third the cost), saffron, and almonds or peanuts. Normally I would go with peanuts, but these needed to be raw almonds or peanuts. Ever have raw peanuts? They're nasty. At least my western palate seems to think so. They've got too much earthiness to them, and almost none of the flavor that's brought out when they're roasted. Raw almonds are so much better.

The nuts needed to be blanched and skinned, which is something I'd never done before, so I needed to google it. It's basically just putting the nuts in a bowl, pouring boiling water over them, and letting them sit for a minute. I needed to give them the water bath twice to get the skins to come off. This was probably the most involved or at least time-consuming steps in this recipe. Thank goodness for music in the kitchen.

I then had to heat some oil, and saute the nuts and raisins together, until the raisins had puffed a bit. Removing them with a slotted spoon and placing them to the side, I got to cooking the other ingredients in the same pan, in the same oil. Cumin seed (yum!) went in next, what an aroma! Then some chopped onion.



Like other, similar recipes, the rice goes into the hot pan in its raw, dry state. It gets a pretty lengthy sautee with the other ingredients (in this case: serrano chili, bell pepper, grated carrots), and then the broth gets added, and the rice is allowed to cook covered on low heat for awhile. It's essentially ready when the timer goes off, the almonds and raisins are added, as well as some chopped cilantro.



A great dish, and definitely more of a success than the Tavče Gravče. Make it again? In a second. I love pilaf, and this was a fun one to make. My kitchen smelled wonderfully for days afterwards.