An Englishman who marries into a Central Asian family must know how to cook plov. In my case I married an Uzbek, and I can tell you that Uzbek plov is one of the finest.

Plov, for the uninitiated, is a hotpot of rice, meat and vegetables, cooked according to local tastes, throughout Central Asia. Who cooked plov first? Well that’s a tricky one, which I will avoid by going into too much detail. Who invented bread?

Plov is closely related to pilau which may have a Persian origin. But variations exist throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Central Asia.

Done properly it is deliciously sweet, succulent and savoury. The ingredients are basic, the flavours delicate and life-affirming.

With Neweurasia’s Top Chef competition providing the impetus, I hatched my plan:

Every special plov has been taught from father to son. In my case, I picked up the phone and called Aziz Madyarov. Aziz knows how to do it Tashkent-style, and he cooks a splendid dish.

“Aziz. I am Uzbek now. I need to make plov, can you teach me?”

Pause. “Meet me at the Green Bazaar at 4pm.”

The scene was set, my guide was with me*, and the guests invited for the evening – my judges, carefully selected as vaguely representative of the region – the Madyarov and Abdurasulov families from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan respectively, not to mention my wife Rayhan of course, my biggest fan, and potentially my greatest critic.

First Aziz and I had our date at Almaty’s Green Bazaar, the truly wonderful downtown market selling Almaty’s finest produce.

This was clearly to be a manly shop, we would set out together and buy stuff, to drag back to the kitchen, a leg of cow perhaps, a sack of rice.

Here’re a couple of audio snippets, to get you in the mood:
Rice n Spice
Choicest lamb
Bulk it out with beef

Aziz’s Tashkent-style plov for eight people:

Ingredients

Aziz knew I didn’t have all the tools, so he brought along his plov essentials. A kazan (thick aluminium cooking pot), ladle, and viciously sharp cooking knives. If you don’t have a kazan, a sturdy, thick-sided large saucepan will do.

Englishman and his Guru

Cooking instructions:

Heat the kazan on high, and pour in 250ml of sunflower oil. Purists might want to use cotton oil, if you can find it.

The oil must be heated to extremes, until it begins to smoke. When you are starting to get concerned about the prospect of burning your kitchen down, throw in the diced sheep rump (danger factor: don’t throw in literally, carefully introduce the fat into the oil).

The pieces sizzle, shrink, and eventually brown. Remove and place on the side. Serve for the kids with sliced onion bread and salt. Delicious.

Next, into the boiling oil cauldron goes the meat. Add the remainder of the fat for good measure. Sizzle and deep fry until browned and crispy on the outside.

Next up the onions, and 250g of the carrot batons. They bubble, pop, and soften. The liquids begin to merge with the oil and fats, and resemble something soupier.

The colour of the onions will give the colour of the plov. So if you like your onions soft and yellow, that should give the final colour of the plov. Cook your onions for longer, and the plov gets a browner look.

The oil fest begins to look a bit more respectable. Now add 1 litre of boiling water. It should cover the meat and vegetables.

Add salt and zeera. The salt level is up to you. For the zeera, I thoroughly enjoyed twisting the seeds between my palms until they crunch. Scatter and savour…

Now, boil the concoction for an hour. You’re not even nearly ready.

It’s at this point that I must interrupt the cooking process to tell you that my guests ,according to my wife, were starting to get a little restless.

Abdul Aziz Abdurasulov needed entertaining. And quite apart from belonging in the kitchen, it was my job, I was informed, to sing to him. So in between plov making I took a short break and sang a few Beatles classics to bemused Abdulaziz.

Abdul Aziz was not impressed by the wait

Back to the kichen. After the hour is up, it’s time to add the remaining carrot batons, and if you’re into the optional extras, the chickpeas and the raisins. (We forgot to add the raisins. They are still sitting on the top shelf of our fridge).

You might want to add a little extra water here, and it’s around this point that you carefully insert your chillies and garlic. Push ‘em in.

Turn down the heat a little and give it another 10-15 minutes.

Finally, it is time to add the rice, the final ingredient. It surprises me how the rice, the king of the dish, is dumped on last. Without it the plov would be nothing but a bubbling mess of meat and carrots…

I say dumped on, which is rather unkind. In fact you must lovingly scoop the rice into the pot with your hands. Use the ladle to even out the pile. If you have enough water it should cover the rice by seven or eight millimetres.

As the rice begins to soften and absorb the water it needs coaxing. Turn the rice over a little, so that the rice at the top works it way toward the inner heat. Once most of the water has been absorbed it’s time for some acoustic sound checking.

Use the ladle to shape the rice pile into a little hillock. Now tap your rice with the ladle. If you hear a PLOPPING sound the water is still being absorbed. If you hear a satisfying THUNK, you’re nearly there.

Now place a bowl on top of the rice hillock to seal in the plov, and turn the heat right down. Slow steam for the final 10-20 minutes.

No plov would be complete without a little salad and bread, and tea. So get your lipioshka bread ready, and your uchkuduk salad (sliced tomatoes and thinly sliced white onion) prepped. Squeeze out the onion under the tap to remove the pungency a little. And have your green tea ready, to wash it all down.

Serve up the plov after cutting the meat into bite sized chunks so everybody gets some.

Post-script. The plov took about 3 hours, but it went down WELL. Please see the photograph of happy smiling supper party. The smiles are genuine.

In the end we even had a little left over to enjoy at a later date. But I subsequently found out that Aziz and family had slipped back to retrieve the kazan and knives while I was away, and ate the remainder. So it must’ve been good.

For people who don’t live in Central Asia

For the vegetarians out there. Forget it.

For those who are slightly concerned about their BMI after this meal, it might be interesting to come up with variations. How about a little fusion? Perhaps slow roast the meat in the oven and then add it to the carrots and onions, before continuing the process. I don’t want hate mail for this, but I think maybe the deep frying of meat is a little excessive. It’s why I’ve put on half a stone since moving to Almaty.

Savour it

* In accordance with the rules, I state that at every stage I was the man in the apron. Aziz was merely my guru in the wings. Honest.

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