Pilaou

the Comorian wedding rice, browned onion and whole spice cooked into the grain until it turns the colour of the caramel it started from

Origin: Moroni & the Comoros

From the journey of Rice.

Pilaou is the dish of Comorian celebration, and above all of the grand mariage, the elaborate and ruinously expensive wedding that confers adult social standing in Grande Comore and can take a man years of saving. It is cooked in vast pots for hundreds of people, and a household is judged on it. The Comoros sit between East Africa and Madagascar on the old Swahili trade routes, and the islands' cooking is the sum of that position: Bantu, Arab, Malagasy, Indian, and French, with the spice trade running through the middle. The archipelago grows cloves, ylang-ylang, and most of the world's bourbon vanilla, and it is one of the very few places where the spices in the pot were grown within sight of the kitchen. The technique that sets Comorian pilaou apart from a Swahili pilau is the depth of the onion. The onions are taken well past golden to a genuine dark brown, close to the edge of burning, and it is that caramelisation rather than any colouring agent which gives the finished rice its colour. Get it wrong in either direction and the dish declares itself: pale and it tastes flat, burnt and the bitterness runs through everything. It is eaten with achard, the sharp pickled vegetable relish that the islands share with Mauritius and Réunion, and traditionally from a shared platter.

Ingredients

  • 800 g beef or goat on the bone, in pieces
  • 500 g basmati or long-grain rice, rinsed and soaked 20 minutes
  • 4 large onions, finely sliced
  • 6 tbsp oil or ghee
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 large thumb of ginger, grated
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 8 cloves
  • 8 green cardamom pods, cracked
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 potatoes, quartered (optional)
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 900 ml water or stock

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot and fry the onions over a medium heat, stirring often, for eighteen to twenty-five minutes. Take them well past golden to a deep even brown. This is the colour of the finished dish and the single step that matters most.
  2. Watch closely in the last five minutes. The line between deeply browned and burnt is short, and burnt onion cannot be salvaged from a pilaou.
  3. Lift out a third of the onions and reserve. Add the cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, and peppercorns to the pot and let them sizzle for thirty seconds.
  4. Add the meat and brown it well, then stir in the garlic, ginger, and ground cumin.
  5. Add the tomatoes and cook down for ten minutes until thick and darkened.
  6. Pour in the water, add the salt, cover, and simmer for forty-five minutes until the meat is tender. Add the potatoes, if using, for the last fifteen minutes.
  7. Taste the broth and correct the salt now, before the rice goes in.
  8. Drain the rice and stir it in, with the liquid sitting about 1.5cm above the surface. Bring to the boil, cover tightly, and cook on the lowest heat for fifteen minutes.
  9. Rest off the heat, still covered, for ten minutes. Fork through, scatter the reserved onions over, and serve with achard and lime.

Notes

The onions are the recipe. Twenty minutes over a moderate flame, stirred regularly, gets you a genuine dark brown; rushing them over high heat gives patchy burnt edges and a raw centre. Whole spices are used rather than ground so they perfume the rice without clouding it, and they are left in and eaten around. Cloves are grown in the Comoros and the local hand with them is heavier than a Zanzibari cook would use.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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