Sweet Pilaf with Butter, Raisins and Nuts (Tereyağlı Pilav)

Step-by-step recipe

1. In the East there are special people called ashpaz, pilaf masters, real aces! They travel nonstop from one celebration to the next and cook pilaf all the time. What matters is not so much the combination or presence of particular ingredients as a steady cooking technique, where the rice isn't boiled, as many think, but stewed. The rice and the meat (zirvak) are often not stewed together but combined only on the dish. I remember a Tajik acquaintance making such a pilaf, and it was incomparable. It matters that the grains of rice don't stick to each other, otherwise you get porridge. For that it is important to choose the right rice.
   
2. Rice is always tricky. The most suitable variety for Central Asian pilaf is considered to be the red Uzgen rice, “devzira”. For obvious reasons it isn't always available, so other varieties are used. In Turkey they use “baldo” rice, a long-grain rice that is fairly fluffy and quite suitable for pilaf. In India the traditional choice is basmati, the most aromatic rice, with thin, long grains.
3. In general, it occurs to me that the stores are full of mystery rice, and our choice of rice for proper cooking isn't very big. Most often the pack just says “Rice”. Rarely it adds “fluffy”, “round” or something quite unique like “snow-white”. And cook it however you can. In the vast majority of cases you end up with mush. I try to buy rice whose package states the variety: jasmine, basmati, arborio, carnaroli and so on. At least then it's clear what rice it is and how to cook it to get a dish rather than porridge.
4. For sweet pilaf I chose basmati. This rice is very fluffy and very aromatic, and goes beautifully with various foods, sweet ones included.
5. Melt the butter in a kazan or deep saucepan, heat it for 5-6 mins, then add the rice. Stirring constantly, fry the rice in the butter until the grains start to turn translucent at the edges.
   
6. Add 1 tsp of curry powder. Curry always contains turmeric, which gives an incomparable yellowish color, plus coriander, red pepper, fenugreek, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and many other ingredients. Curry blend is one of the staples in the East and is used everywhere.
7. Add 3 tsp of sugar (honey works too) and a pinch of salt. Stir. Heat the rice with the spices under a lid over low heat for 2-3 mins.
   
8. Add the rinsed raisins and nuts.
   
9. Next, add broth or water. Usually water is used, since broth has to be made first. So don't make things hard for yourself. When cooking rice it is quite hard to “guess” the amount of liquid. Italians cooking risotto add the liquid in portions. But you can do it more simply. Usually 1 part rice by volume needs 2 parts liquid. That holds almost always, except perhaps for very starchy varieties like arborio and carnaroli. So add 2 cups of boiling water.
10. Stir, and turn the heat down to the minimum. Cover with a lid. The liquid should barely simmer, with no bubbling at all. Ideally the surface should hardly move. Leave the sweet pilaf alone for 15 mins. During this time the rice absorbs almost all the liquid, and the grains start to separate from each other.
    
11. Stir the sweet pilaf gently, ideally with a wooden spatula.
12. Then cover the sweet pilaf with the lid and leave it over very low heat, or even off the heat, wrapping the pot in something woolen so the pilaf can “steam”. Don't rush, let it stand for 10 or even 20 mins. During this time the rice absorbs the remaining moisture and steam and becomes perfectly fluffy. You can simply spoon it out.
13. You get a perfect, fluffy sweet pilaf. This is how it is made in Turkey, where it is called butter pilaf, or buttery pilaf: Tereyağlı pilav.