Albaloo Polo

The cherries are cooked down with sugar and their syrup is held back to pour over at the end.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 500 g long-grain white rice
• 3 tablespoons salt, for the soaking and parboiling water
• 600 g morello cherries, stoned, or 400 g drained from a jar
• 150 g caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, ground and steeped in 3 tablespoons hot water
• 2 teaspoons advieh
• 80 ml sunflower oil
• 30 g slivered pistachios, to finish

Method

1. THE CHERRIES ARE COOKED DOWN WITH SUGAR AND THEIR SYRUP IS HELD BACK TO POUR OVER AT THE END. Stone the cherries, put them in a wide pan with the sugar, and cook them over a medium heat for twelve to fifteen minutes until the fruit has slumped and the liquid is thick enough to coat a spoon. Then strain them, and keep the syrup in a jug. The fruit goes into the rice; the syrup does not. Poured in before the steaming it soaks through and you get a pink, damp, faintly jammy pot instead of white rice with dark fruit through it. It goes over the finished dish at the table, where it stays glossy and separate.
2. SOUR CHERRIES, NOT SWEET ONES. Morello or another cooking cherry -- albaloo is the morello. The dish is built on the sourness arriving against the saffron and the meat, and dessert cherries give you sugar on sugar with nothing to push against.
3. THE RICE IS SOAKED IN SALTED WATER AND PARBOILED TO A FIRM CORE. Rinse until the water runs clear, soak for two hours in cold water with two tablespoons of salt, drain. Hard-boiling water with the rest of the salt, six to eight minutes, until a grain gives at the outside and is still chalky in the middle. Drain and rinse briefly with lukewarm water.
4. THE ADVIEH AND THE SAFFRON GO IN SEPARATELY AND BOTH BEFORE THE STEAM. Two teaspoons of advieh -- the Iranian warm blend, cinnamon and rose and cardamom led -- tossed through the drained rice, and the saffron water poured over the top of the heaped pot. The advieh needs the steam to open up; the saffron needs to run down through the grains and stain them in streaks rather than tint everything a flat yellow.
5. IT IS LAYERED, NOT STIRRED. Oil in the pot, then rice and cherries in alternating layers, three of each, heaped into a cone. Stirred together the fruit breaks up and bleeds; layered, you turn out a pot with distinct seams of dark fruit.
6. THE LID IS CLOTH-WRAPPED AND THE HEAT IS LOW FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. Five minutes on medium to raise the steam, then as low as the hob will go for forty-five, with the lid wrapped in a tea towel so condensation cannot drip back onto the rice.
7. IT IS SERVED WITH SOMETHING PLAIN AND SAVOURY. Its own article names grilled chicken, minced-lamb kebab and a stew as the usual companions. The rice is sweet-sour and spiced and it needs a plain partner; served with another sweet dish it has nothing to be the contrast to.
8. THE PISTACHIOS AND THE SYRUP GO ON LAST, AT THE TABLE. Slivered pistachios over the top and the reserved syrup poured on in front of people, so it is still bright rather than absorbed.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes