Pilaf, according to the translation from Sanskrit, is boiled rice.
Even ancient cookbooks repeatedly testify to the variety of additions to cooked rice, including Avicenna's written testimonies that have survived to our time, who considered pilaf to be the most useful dish and wrote down its recipe as a warning to posterity.
That is, from what has been said, it follows that the “guevch” with rice, popular in the cuisine of the peoples living in the Balkans, is “a close relative of pilaf,” because it is cooked in the same way as pilaf in Central Asian cuisine, with the only difference being that it the composition includes a larger number of vegetables: the eggplants, tomatoes, peppers beloved in those places are sure to be added to meat and rice along with onions and carrots.
Similar technologies for cooking rice with vegetables are found in Central and South America, South and East Asia. It is understandable: rice for several millennia of its cultivation, as an agricultural crop, has become a frequent and even, in some cases, the main ingredient in recipes of world cuisine.
In general, vegetable pilaf is a very common dish found in every national cuisine on all continents of the planet.
Each national cuisine carefully preserves its culinary traditions, as an integral part of its national culture and its historical development.
Pilaf with vegetables - basic technological principles
Actually, in every recipe for pilaf, with the exception of fruit versions of the dish, vegetables are present, because onions and carrots also belong to vegetables. But if we talk about the inclusion of other vegetables in the pilaf, then you need to remember: pilaf is not porridge, and the cereal in it must be crumbly. Rice or other types of cereals, sometimes used for cooking pilaf - form the basis of the dish. The second part varies depending on the recipe.
Vegetable pilaf can be meat or vegetarian, consist of several types of cereals, it may contain fruits, dried fruits, nuts, candied fruits or vegetables. If legume vegetables with a dense and dry consistency are added to the pilaf, the pilaf will remain crumbly. You can add to the composition of pilaf all other types of vegetables, but you must take into account the content of vegetable juice in them, an excess of which can give the dish a completely new quality and even a new name. Actually, even very juicy tomatoes can be added to pilaf, but for this it is important to balance the ratio of tomatoes and rice, drier and wetter ingredients.
There are two main ways to cook vegetable pilaf. One of them consists in the alternate laying of all ingredients and their subsequent heat treatment, in one common container for cooking. In this way, pilaf is most often cooked in Central Asian cuisine: the most striking and remembered examples are Ferghana, Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand pilaf. At the same time, the minimum of vegetable ingredients in the Uzbek pilaf is compensated by the enhanced accompaniment of snack dishes made from fresh vegetables and fruits.
But in the more ancient and, as it turned out, more widespread version of the preparation, which came from the ancient masters of oriental and Arabian cuisine, the technology of separate preparation of the constituent parts of pilaf, cereals and meat and vegetables or fish and vegetable parts, with their subsequent connection directly in the serving a dish, and sometimes these components of the dish are served even in separate dishes.
If so, then vegetable pilaf is a popular and beloved dish all over the world, because even pilaf can be added to it, where rice, in fact, is a side dish or vegetable stew with rice in modern culinary representations. Whatever it was, but boiled rice is delicious, from which it follows that it remains to supplement your culinary notebook with new and tasty recipes.
Recipe 1. Pilaf with vegetables in Bulgarian - "cucumber" with rice or stew "Slavic"
Ingredients:
Light pepper (fleshy, sweet)
Chicken legs 1.5 kg
Tomatoes 500 g
Ground coriander
Rice 400 g
Bay leaf
Onion 0.5 kg
Butter 120 g
Carrot, red 350 g
Ground pepper (allspice and black)
Cooked ham 700 g
Red, ground pepper
Blue eggplant 200 g
Sugar
Olives, salted 250 g
Salt
Fresh parsley 100 g
Cooking:
All vegetables are washed, peeled and chopped: peppers, onions and eggplants are cut into straws, olives are cut into rings, parsley is chopped, and tomatoes without skin are cut into small cubes. Chicken legs are cut in half along the joint, ham is cut into large pieces. Rice is washed and kept in cold water. Onions are fried with carrots, adding a spoonful of oil. The meat is also fried in oil, after which added onion, carrots and a cup of water are added to it. Fig is added. Another cup of water is taken and all spices are mixed in it. Tomatoes are stewed with a little oil and water is poured with spices: this is a sauce with a spicy and sweet and sour taste. All other vegetables are also individually fried and added to tomato sauce. When the vegetables in the sauce boil, transfer them to a pan with meat and rice. Check rice readiness. It should be slightly undercooked, and a little liquid should remain in the pan. Put chopped greens on top, make a few holes so that the liquid evaporates from the bottom of the pan and cover the hood with a lid. Remove from the stove, and after 15-20 minutes serve.
Recipe 2. Vegetable pilaf with lentils and onion dressing - traditional Arabic cuisine
Ingredients:
Rice (thin, long-grain)
Green lentils
Oil (olive or creamy)
Bow
Pepper and zira, ground
Salt
Unsweetened yogurt with chopped herbs
Cooking:
Wash rice and lentils, hold in water and cook. Cut the onion into rings and fry it in oil until golden brown. Combine the components of the dish in one dish, season with spices. You can put onion rings on top of pilaf. Serve "green" yogurt for pilaf.
Recipe 3. Provencal style vegetarian vegetable pilaf
Ingredients:
Tomatoes 300 g (net)
Zucchini, peeled 200 g
Butter 50 g
White rice 400 g
Onion 150 g
Garlic 20 g
Tomato Sauce 150 ml
Olive oil 70 g
Vegetable broth 500 ml
Provencal herbs
Pepper (red and yellow), sweet 250 g (net)
Parsley (greens)
Cooking:
Prepare vegetables and cut them into cubes, 1x1 cm. Remove seeds from tomatoes and peppers. Combine tomato sauce with dried Provencal herbs, chopped garlic and half olive oil. Use the second half for frying vegetables, except for tomatoes - add them to zucchini, onions and peppers last. Add tomato sauce to the fried vegetables, and immediately after boiling, remove from heat.
Melt the butter in a stewpan, put the prepared rice in it, heat it and, pouring the hot vegetable stock, cover the stewpan with a lid. Stew until half-cooked, then add the vegetables in the sauce and simmer until tender. Sprinkle with chopped herbs at the end of cooking.
Recipe 4. Pilaf with vegetables and pork
Ingredients:
Loin 200 g
Boiled rice 900 g
Asparagus, green 250 g
Butter 50 g
Pork tenderloin 800 g
Tomatoes 1.2 kg
Greens: celery (leaves and roots), lemon balm, dill
Wine Vinegar 30 ml
Shallot 120 g
Pepper (ground pepper mixture)
Clove
Vanilla
Meat broth (chicken) 150 ml
Sugar 40 g
Beer, light 150 ml
Balsamic vinegar 100 ml
Cooking:
Cut asparagus, chop fresh herbs and onions. In a small container, mix wine vinegar, pepper, sugar. Boil and let cool. Pour asparagus mixed with herbs with this dressing, mix thoroughly and set aside.
Salt the tenderloin, grate with a mixture of peppers and bake in the oven until browned. When cool, cut into strips. Mix balsamic vinegar with pepper and chopped lemon balm. Marinate chopped strips for 2 hours.
Strip the loin into strips and heat it in a deep cast-iron skillet until the fat melts. Drain and mix with beer. Pour back by removing the fried remains of the loin. Put the pork in the mixture and stew.
In another bowl, melt the butter, add chopped celery root (50 g), chopped shallots, lemon balm and simmer slightly, pour in the broth, add chopped tomatoes, without skin and grains, ground cloves and vanilla, bring the sauce to a boil and pour it into the stew meat.
Put rice, meat and pickled asparagus on top of the dish.
Recipe 5. Vegetable pilaf with Korean carrots, breast and green peas
Ingredients:
Jasmine Rice 400 g
Korean carrot 250 g
Fresh green peas 200 g
Chicken breast 1.2 kg
Ghee 150 g
1.5 L broth
Sour cream 300 g
Saffron
Mixture of peppers
Cooking:
Prepare the ingredients: wash the meat and cut into cubes. Soak rice in clean and cold water.
Heat the oil and put the carrots in it for five minutes. Add the slices of the breast and fry until crusty, and then put the rice on top and pour in the broth, combined with sour cream and spices. When the rice is half ready, add the washed peas. Stew peas until soft.
Pilaf with vegetables - tricks and tips
Try to slightly undercook rice while cooking pilaf. It will be steamed for a while, until the temperature inside the dishes reaches a mark below 60Ϲ, and continue to draw in water. Try the rice and turn off the stove immediately when it stops crunching, but still stiff enough. It is good if at this moment a little non-evaporated liquid remains in the dishes.
Pilaf is cooked in an open dish, but as soon as all the ingredients are placed in the pan, close the lid so that all the flavors of the dish combine and soak.
Fresh chopped greens do not need to be subjected to prolonged heat treatment, given its fragile and delicate structure. In addition, after prolonged digestion, its aroma from the dish disappears. It is enough to chop it into a boiling dish, cover and let stand: hot steam will bring it to the desired degree of readiness.
Salt in a hot dish is felt more than in warm, which can already be eaten. Keep this in mind when salt the rice, especially since it requires more salt. But do not rush to salt the rice at the beginning of cooking. It is better to do this 10 minutes before its end.
