[Sca-cooks] rice cooked in yogurt?

Ursula Whitcher ursula at tutelaries.net
Thu Mar 1 13:12:59 PST 2012


> I will begin by pointing out that I know very little about Middle Eastern
> cuisine modern or otherwise, so forgive me if this is way off the mark. I
> have a recipe floating around somewhere for a supposedly Persian dish of
> rice and lentils (it's in a modern cookbook with no pretensions to being an
> ancient recipe, just 'traditional'). The rice and lentils are partially
> cooked, then some of the rice is removed and mixed with yoghurt and placed
> in the bottom of the saucepan. The rest then goes on top and the whole lot
> is steamed (the instructions say to wrap the lid in a wet teatowel before
> replacing it firmly on the saucepan) for another thirty minutes, with the
> idea that the rice and yoghurt form a crunchy crust on the bottom. This
> crust is supposedly called a 'tahdeeg'. Perhaps this kind of thing is
> intended by this recipe?
>
> I did try making this once, and it was nice, but the end result was not
> exactly crunchy (I expect there's a bit of a knack to it).

Yes, this is a classic Persian technique, and the crust is very good.
One way to get a crunchy tah dig is to heat the oil quite hot and
leave the heat up as you pile the rice & yoghurt and then the rest of
the parboiled rice on top.  Only then do you turn the heat down and
steam.  (My sister's ex is Persian, and the whole family learned some
of the recipes.)

But I don't know of any evidence that tah dig is a medieval feature of
Persian cooking.

Ursula Georges.



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