Pilaf with quince. How to cook pilaf with quince
Ten years ago, I told everyone about how delicious pilaf turns out if you cook it not just with quince, but replace carrots with quince in the pilaf. Since then, I haven’t stopped experimenting and now I’m ready to talk about it the way this dish deserves. 
Actually, the idea for this dish is not mine. While reading the book of my great countryman Abu Ali ibn Sino (Avicenna), I saw a mention of such pilaf in connection with its medicinal properties.
I prepared the first pilaf with quince using the usual “Uzbek” Uzbek technology at the same time. But having moved to Russia, I discovered that other varieties of quince are more common in the world, the fruits of which do not tolerate roasting and subsequent stewing very well, and even when cut into strips. Cooking in large pieces did not allow the aroma and taste of quince to be fully conveyed to the pilaf. Therefore, I had to look for other ways to prepare this pilaf.
You already know that there are three main ingredients in pilaf - rice, water and oil.
Onions in pilaf are necessary, first of all, to flavor the oil. If you cut it crosswise, it better imparts its taste and aroma into the oil, but subsequently melts and as a result, a mixture of oil and onion produces a preparation for a thick sauce. In the pilaf I had in mind, this would be superfluous. Therefore, I cut the onion lengthwise - this way it will release less of its juice into the oil, but will acquire the consistency that I need in pilaf.
Fry the onion in half the planned amount of oil over medium heat, stirring more and more often, but carefully with a spatula and reducing the heat.
At the end of preparing the onions, add half a teaspoon of turmeric.
Place the quince in another frying pan with a second portion of oil, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar and ground cumin and cook for the first time under the lid, stirring rarely and very carefully so as not to break the quince.
When the juice comes out of the quince and the sugar melts, you need to remove the lid and let the moisture evaporate so that the sugar caramelizes on the quince, thus strengthening the cumin on its surface.
By this time, the quince should have decreased in volume, become softer, but under no circumstances should it disintegrate into mush.
Boil the rice, but do not cook it a little - you must take into account that both the quince and the onion still contain a fair amount of moisture, which will be absorbed not only by the walls of the porous pot in which the pilaf will be cooked further, but also by the rice itself.
In principle, at the second stage, pilaf can be cooked in a cauldron, but to prevent the rice from burning, you need a kazmakh, which will divert the taste of the pilaf towards traditional folding pilaf, which is not what you would like.
You can probably cook pilaf in a cast iron or ceramic enamel bowl by placing it in the oven, but then you need to place a cloth napkin under the lid of the dish so that it absorbs excess moisture. In a porous ceramic pot, excess moisture will be absorbed into the pot itself.
Arrange rice, onion and quince in layers.
Pour oil on top from the frying pans in which the onions and quinces were fried and, if desired, saffron infusion.
Place the pot in a moderately heated wood stove (170-180C) or in the oven. We set the oven to drop the temperature within an hour to 120-130C, for the second hour the pot should stand in the oven at a temperature of 120C, and if you need to keep it in the oven longer (which is good for pilaf!), then the temperature should be lowered to 100C, etc., up to 85C, if you cook pilaf for four hours, to get a masterpiece as a result, and not just food.
I deliberately did not talk about the type of rice - you can choose any one suitable for cooking using the folding method (that is, at least not Uzbek varieties of rice and not those for porridges and risotto).
I deliberately didn’t even say a word about the type of oil - you are no longer little children, but masters yourself, able to choose, depending on the circumstances, between duck fat, ghee and olive oil or other vegetable oil - you won’t put any nasty stuff in your mouth, right?
Well, bon appetit!
This pilaf is good to eat in late autumn, in winter, if you suddenly don’t want meat, and even in spring, if it’s still very cold.
In the East quince pilaf- an autumn dish. That pleasant time when the sultry heat is over, the air is filled with the smell of ripe melons, there is an openwork shadow from the vineyards in the courtyards, and heavy buds of tea roses bend over the paths...
Quince, with its subtle tart aroma, adds pilaf an even more oriental flavor, the meat acquires new shades of taste. Exists, pilaf recipe, where carrots are completely replaced with quince. I will definitely somehow I'll cook such pilaf.
Products
1. 900 grams of rice, durum varieties. Be sure to be round grain, not steamed.
2. 1 kg. meat on the bones. Get it from the butcher at the market.
3. 100 gr. lamb fat cut from anywhere.
4. 1 kg. juicy carrots
5. 4 medium onions.
6. 2 heads of garlic.
7. 150-200 gr. vegetable (refined) oil.
8. Necessarily! You will need 1.5 tsp. “cumin” (cumin), without it it’s not pilaf.
9. Quince 1-2 pcs.
Since I have an electric stove, pilaf I will cook in 5 l. flat-bottomed pot. It’s good if you have a gas stove, and it’s very cool if you have a classic cauldron, however, steel utensils with a thick bottom, as well as a Chinese “Wok”, are also suitable.
We immediately make the entire preparation for pilaf. There will be no time to clean and cut while cooking.
1. cut, separating each rib with meat and removing the films. It is imperative to remove all films from beef.
2. Cut the lard into cubes.
3. Onion in half rings, or diced too.
4. Carrots in strips.
5. Remove the top skin from the garlic and cut off the rhizome.
The entire preparation can be placed on one dish, or placed in different cups, the main thing is that everything is at hand.
We heat the dishes very much, pour in the oil and also heat it to such an extent that a circle of onion thrown into it sizzles - it foams and instantly turns brown. Now, let's throw it away. When it turns brown, put it on a plate, it can be used as a snack. Place the seeds into the hot oil and stir vigorously.
Color pilaf It really depends on how dark the seeds have become.
Now throw in half of the prepared onion. It can be roasted until it is darker rather than golden. As soon as the onion is browned, add the meat pulp and mix.
We will not fry the pulp until golden brown, just enough so that it changes color.
After that, throw in the remaining onion and fry it until golden brown.
Add carrots and stir. Important! The carrots need to be cut with a knife, no graters; you don’t need to improve the process, otherwise the pilaf will be spoiled.
The carrots need to be fried until they become flexible. Stir frequently. When the carrots are well limp. It’s time to pour water into the cauldron to prepare “zirvak” - the base pilaf. Pour 1 liter of water! Let's clean it up quince from the core, divide into 4 parts.
Place the garlic and quince in zirvak, now you already know what it is.
After boiling, cover with a lid and keep the heat low. Cook at low simmer for 1 hour.
After an hour, test the meat to see if it’s done, add the garlic and quince from the cauldron. Now add salt and spices. Zirvak should be a little salty, just a little bit for the rice.
Pour the rice onto the table and go through it from beginning to end - remove all excess, and then wash it in several waters. To do this, it is better to place the rice in a round-bottomed cup, even a plastic one. Wash the rice by squeezing it with your hands and passing it through your fingers. We drain the water over the edge, fill it again, wash it again, drain it, and so on until after washing the water remains clear. At least 6 times. Finally drain the water.
Now turn up the heat to maximum and spread it evenly over the entire surface. Level the rice with a slotted spoon. 
Now, if there is not enough water, and it should be one cm above the rice, you can add it, there will be no other case. You should add water not directly to the rice, but to the slotted spoon.
Now is the most crucial moment. The fire must be strong. The water is simultaneously evaporated and absorbed by the rice. Rice and zirvak should never be mixed. Oh, you need to carefully use a slotted spoon to stroke the rice in a circle. We start stroking from the edges. 
The rice begins to intensively absorb liquid, gradually swelling. We move it from the edges to the middle and monitor the color of the liquid between the rice and the walls of the cauldron. There is no need to “dig” deep. If water gets under the zirvak, pilaf will burn. We move and smooth the rice until the liquid is cloudy, and our process will end when it becomes transparent, this means that the water has evaporated, been absorbed by the rice and only fat remains.
As soon as the rice has absorbed all the water, make a hole in the center and place it in it. quince and garlic. We collect the rice in a heap, without mixing it with zirvak.
And now the important moment! As soon as the rice absorbs the water, the heat should be reduced to a minimum. In the case of gas, this is not difficult. On the electric stove I set it to one.
Now pour the cumin, crushed on the palm of your hand, evenly onto the rice mound.
Close the cauldron tightly with a lid and pilaf will cook on low heat for 30-35 minutes. After this time, turn off the heat, stir the finished pilaf. Place on a large platter, place the meat on top of the pilaf, quince and garlic.
Our pilaf with quince ready! Enjoy its taste.
Large-grain rice is suitable for preparing Uzbek pilaf.
Cut the carrots into large strips. Thin straws will not work; they will quickly boil and the dish will lose its traditional appearance.
Cut the onion into not very thin half rings.
Uzbek style pilaf is being prepared in a cauldron. Take a cauldron of suitable capacity, pour in vegetable oil and heat it up. Discard the chopped pieces of meat (in the size of your choice) and fry until lightly browned. Then add the chopped onion to the meat and fry until golden, stirring regularly. After that, add chopped carrots and fry them too. Then pour boiling water to cover the meat and vegetables by 1 - 1.5 cm. Simmer until the meat is almost done. Finally, sprinkle in the cumin seeds.
When the water has almost evaporated and the meat has become soft, salt the contents of the cauldron, a little more than normal, taking into account that the rice will also absorb some of the salt. Place pieces of chopped quince evenly over the entire mass. Pour in the rice, washed under running water, level with a spoon and pour in boiling water, covering the rice by about 2 cm. Simmer over high heat for about 15 minutes. Add water if necessary. Under no circumstances should you stir the pilaf at this stage, otherwise it will turn into mush.
At the end of cooking, carefully use a slotted spoon to collect the rice from the edges of the cauldron into a mound and make a depression in the center to the very bottom so that the remaining moisture evaporates completely and the cereal turns out crumbly. The heat should be reduced and, closing the lid, simmer for another 5 minutes until the rice is completely cooked.
Stirring carefully, remove the meat and quince. Place the Uzbek pilaf from the cauldron on a flat wide plate or on portioned plates, depending on how you will serve the table. Place pieces of meat and quince on top of the rice and serve. The dish turned out very tasty, satisfying and nutritious. At the same time, the recipe for real Uzbek pilaf is quite simple. Perfectly decorate any celebration. Serve pilaf with any light vegetable salads. I often decorate it with onion rings, serve it with tomato juice and green radish salad.
Bon appetit everyone!
Pilaf is a very popular dish in Central Asian countries. There are more than 100 recipes for preparing pilaf. They say that if you know how to cook real pilaf, you can cook any other dish. After all, when preparing pilaf, we fry, boil and evaporate the products in order to subsequently obtain this magnificent dish. When I lived in Tashkent, I tried pilaf prepared with quince, I really liked it, with its extraordinary aroma and taste. Now is the time when you can buy quinces at the markets. I’ve never cooked this kind of pilaf myself; today I bought quince and decided to try making it with raisins. They do not spoil the taste of pilaf and do not make it sweet; quince after cooking has a slightly sour taste, and there are not so many raisins to give it sweetness. I cooked it, but you can cook it as in the classic version with lamb or beef.
Products for cooking:
- chicken 1 kg
- rice 800 grams
- onion 3 heads
- carrots 5 pieces
- quince 1 piece
- raisins 0.5 cups
- garlic 1 head
- vegetable oil 0.5 cups
- salt pepper
How to cook pilaf with quince
Cut the chicken into large pieces.
Peel the onion and cut into strips.
Also cut the carrots into strips.
Don't worry about there being too many onions and carrots, that's how it should be. In general, pilaf should contain the same amount of all ingredients, for example, if you have 1 kg of meat, then there should also be a kilogram of other products. Heat the cauldron and pour in the vegetable oil; as soon as smoke appears from the hot oil, add the chopped onion. Fry it until golden brown.
The fire is maximum. Then add the chicken. The chicken is fried until golden brown; add salt to the chicken while frying.
When the chicken is fried, add the carrots, leveling them with a slotted spoon and let them cook for a couple of minutes until the carrots lose their volume.
Pour a liter of water into the cauldron, after boiling the water, reduce the heat, add salt again, add cumin. Everything that is now cooked in a cauldron is called zirvak. Cook zirvak for 20-25 minutes. While the zirvak is cooking, you need to prepare the rice by washing it in several waters, the water should remain clear. The chicken from which I prepared the pilaf cooks quickly, so after 20 minutes I added the raisins.
To prepare Pilaf with beef and quince you need...
Wash the vegetables, peel them, cut into thin strips. Rinse the rice several times and pour boiling water over it, set aside. Heat the oil in a cauldron until it smokes blue, throw in the chopped meat and fry on both sides. Add onion to the meat, fry until light golden brown. Then add carrots. Fry for one minute. Reduce the fire. Salt the meat, add cumin, turmeric, allspice, barberry, crushed in the palms of your hands, and a head of garlic, peeled from the top husk and root. Pour water so that it covers the meat. Close the cauldron with a lid and simmer the meat for 30 minutes.
Cut the quince into thin slices and remove the core. Place the quince in a zirvak, pour rice on top (drain the water from the rice first!). Do not add any more water! The fire under the cauldron is minimal. Cover with a lid, cook the pilaf for exactly 30 minutes (after 15 minutes of simmering, pierce the rice with the handle of a spoon in several places to allow steam to escape and continue cooking). Remove from the stove and stir carefully in the cauldron. Place rice on plates along with quince and pieces of meat. Serve immediately. This pilaf recipe is designed for 4-5 servings. If you want to make more, increase the ingredients and be careful with the spices.
