Skoudehkaris

Djibouti's national rice: lamb browned with cardamom and cumin, then rice cooked in the same pot until it takes up all the broth

Origin: Djibouti City & the Gulf of Tadjoura

From the journey of Rice.

Skoudehkaris is the national dish of Djibouti and it is a one-pot rice in the great Indian Ocean tradition: meat browned with spice, liquid added, rice cooked in the resulting broth until it has absorbed all of it. The family it belongs to runs from Persian polow through Gulf kabsa and Swahili pilau to Somali bariis, and Djibouti sits almost exactly in the middle of that arc. The port is the explanation. Djibouti City faces the Bab-el-Mandeb, the strait that carries traffic between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and it has been a coaling station, a free port, and a terminus of the Ethiopian railway. Rice is not grown in the country in any quantity; it arrives by sea, as do the cardamom and the cumin, and the national dish is built entirely on imports assembled in a Djiboutian way. What marks the local version is restraint. Where a Gulf kabsa carries dried lime, saffron, and a long spice list, skoudehkaris keeps to cardamom, cumin, and chilli over a tomato and onion base, and the result tastes more of lamb than of spice. It is finished with fresh coriander and eaten with a raw chilli and lime relish. It is a Ramadan dish above all, cooked for iftar in enough quantity to feed whoever arrives, and it is what Djiboutian families abroad make when they want to eat at home.

Ingredients

  • 800 g lamb on the bone, in pieces
  • 500 g basmati rice, rinsed and soaked 20 minutes
  • 3 onions, finely sliced
  • 4 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 thumb of ginger, grated
  • 8 green cardamom pods, cracked
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 2 green chillies, slit
  • 4 tbsp ghee or oil
  • 1 small bunch coriander, chopped
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 900 ml water or light stock

Method

  1. Heat the ghee in a heavy pot and fry the onions over a medium heat until deep golden, twelve to fifteen minutes. Lift out a third and reserve for the top.
  2. Add the cardamom, cumin seeds, and cinnamon to the pot and let them sizzle for thirty seconds until fragrant.
  3. Add the lamb and brown it well on all sides, then stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for a minute.
  4. Add the tomato purée and cook it out for three minutes, then the chopped tomatoes, and cook down for ten minutes until thick and the oil separates.
  5. Pour in the water, add the salt and the green chillies, cover, and simmer for forty minutes until the lamb is tender.
  6. Taste the broth now and correct the salt: once the rice goes in it cannot be seasoned properly again. It should taste slightly too salty on its own.
  7. Drain the soaked rice and stir it into the pot. The liquid should sit about 1.5cm above the rice; add a little hot water if not.
  8. Bring to a boil, then cover tightly, drop to the lowest heat, and cook undisturbed for fifteen minutes.
  9. Take off the heat and leave covered for ten minutes more. Fork through gently, scatter over the reserved onions and the coriander, and serve with lime and a raw chilli relish.

Notes

Seasoning the broth before the rice goes in is the step that decides the dish. Soaking the rice for twenty minutes and no longer gives separate grains; longer and it breaks up. The ten-minute rest off the heat is not optional, as it lets the last of the steam finish the grains at the top. Goat works as well as lamb and is common in Djibouti.

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