[Sca-cooks] rice cooked in yogurt?

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Thu Mar 1 04:04:28 PST 2012


On 03/01/2012 06:46 AM, Claire Clarke wrote:
> ------------------------------
> 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').

That sounds like kichri, which I believe does have some period 
precedent, but it's not really my area of specialization, so...

>   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).

There's also a whole lot of variation in what we'd call yogurt --cow's 
milk, goat, sheep's, etc. Modern low-fat Dannon, for example (until very 
recently what Americans thought of when you said "yogurt"), would give 
you a very different result from goat's milk labneh.

Adamantius




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