One of my culinary goals is to learn how to produce an Uzbek-style pilaf and then to adapt it to use oats instead of rice since I'm not fond of rice, and I'm convinced it's part of the current problem of American obesity. But I've never cooked a real Uzbek pilaf, so today's cooking adventure is the first step in that process. I won't change many ingredients since the first time you try a recipe, you should do it exactly to see where the details make a difference. I'm starting with a recipe for an Afghani chicken and rice dish, which was brought to my attention indirectly by my former student, Ryan. Ryan served in Afghanistan, which is where he first encountered the mysteries of pilaf. In Russia we call it plov. That's what I'll call it from now on. He gave me a link to a recipe which led me to another recipe, linked above, which is my starting place. I've reduced the size of the recipe because I don't have a big enough frying pan here in Russia to make a bigger recipe.

Plov has two mysteries. I think for most people the mystery consists of how to get the rice to cook up in such a way that is not a vile, congealed mass. Heck, my mom made my siblings and me a set of cooking recipes way back when which contained a foolproof rice recipe that has never failed, so that part is not intimidating to me at all, although to tell the truth the approach for this recipe will have to be significantly different. Actually, no, I take that back. Now that I think of it, I don't think I have to change one blessed thing at all for that.

The second mystery is the sauce. Essentially, the sauce is made of oil and onions. Everything else is secondary. I chatted with Ryan on Skype the other day, and his basic advice was that patience was the key to the cooking part and that one shouldn't be intimidated by the amount of oil. I'll bear that in mind.

I'm currently in Russia for this experiment. My oven controls are vague to the point of idiocy; I don't have a year to start figuring out equivalencies. So this time I'll transform the recipe onto the stovetop.

Ingredients

• 2 cups long-grain rice, boiled in water with a bouillon cube
• 7 drumsticks with skin
• 8 small yellow onions, peeled and quartered (two large onions in the States, chopped)
• ½ cup sunflower oil
• 3 tsp. salt
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 ½ tsp. ground cardamom
• ½ tsp. ground black pepper

Method

1. Chop onions. Begin frying in oil. When they start browning, add drumsticks. Stir frequent and flip drumsticks to make sure that all sides get brown.
2. In the meantime start boiling rice in water with a chicken bouillon cube. Remove to strainer when still slightly crunchy.
3. Add 1/4 cup at a time of chicken bouillon to frying pan. Stir frequently so that neither onions nor chicken burns. When most liquid boils away, add another 1/4 cup of chicken broth. Repeat till 1 cup of chicken broth is consumed. This will take about 20 minutes.
4. Remove chicken from broth. Add spices and 3 tsp of salt. Simmer five minutes.
5. Add some water to complete the cooking of the rice. Add rice. Put chicken on top. Cook covered a while, then uncovered till water vanishes.

Notes:

• Damn. This rice is way better than my ordinary recipe, which is boring. What it lacked, I think, for true ricey goodness, was fat. We were in a complete fat-denial stage of American cookery when I got that recipe. Nowadays the science is coming around to a better understanding of fat, and frankly, if you don't add fat, you are not a real cook. Fat = flavor.
• I think the skin of the thighs added a hell of a lot of chicken flavor.
• Back in the States I will definitely do this with an oven version. I added too much water this time to the final step, which I think slowed completion.
• The pan approach produced one bad side effect: the bottom layer of rice burned, so I had to scrape the rest out and avoid the burnt bit. That's why the oven version is better. Nonetheless, the rice was awesome. If I have to do this on the stovetop again, I'll add another half cup of rice and just assume the lost of a bit of burnt stuff.
• I couldn't get ground cardamom, so I bought it in the pod. Hulled it (not a big deal) in the mortar, then ground the seeds by hand in the mortar; those little seeds are hard. Likewise I ground the cumin by hand. My Kazan apartment doesn't have a mortar and pestle, so I bought one made out of bamboo. The results are so good that it may sell me on using whole spices back home.
• The pan version got the chicken sufficiently cooked, but only barely. I think the oven version will work better.

Eating

O M G This is the best freaking rice I've ever eaten in my life. Tasty, fragrant... I have no words...

Ryan, whereever you are right now on this planet — okay, I know you are in Batumi, I'm just being dramatic — thank you *so* much for making me start thinking about plov. This recipe alone has been worth it. It will be on my list for the rest of my life.