[Sca-cooks] rice cooked in yogurt?

[Claire Clarke]

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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:57:38 -0600
From: Sayyeda al-Kaslaania <samia at idlelion.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] rice cooked in yogurt?
Message-ID: <4F4DA232.7000805 at idlelion.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

How can this work? Soaking the rice in warm water before cooking would help,
but the yogurt would still scald before the rice cooks. I could see adding a
cup of the broth back into the pot, but this translation clearly says to
remove the broth. Thoughts?

Sayyeda al-Kaslaania

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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). 

Angharad