I don’t know if you’re having turkey this year? Or a goose? We are going for guinea fowl because they are so tasty, with a duck for the crisp skin. I quite like turkey but it makes a greasy stock, and a good stock is what you want for this pilaf.
Mehmet the Conqueror’s Grand Vizier used to serve this as a working lunch in divan, the council meeting held on a Friday. Into it he tossed a gold chickpea for some lucky pasha to discover (or break a tooth on): the Ottoman version of putting a sixpence in the Christmas pudding, perhaps.
Ingredients:
Basmati rice
Chickpeas, soaked overnight and boiled for an hour (but tinned chickpeas are pretty handy, too)
An onion
butter, salt, festive stock
Rinse the rice in cold water until the water is clear – this is to remove the starch, which would make the rice too sticky. Leave it to soak while you melt the onions in butter. When they are soft, add the chickpeas.
Drain the rice, stir it into the pan and add enough stock to cover the rice and a little more.
When the stock has all been absorbed, check the rice; it should be a little nutty, but almost edible. If necessary add a little more stock until the rice is almost done.
Now comes the strange pilaf magic: cover the pan with a cloth and a lid. Over a whisper of heat, or none, let the rice steam for fifteen minutes.
Turn the rice out into a dish, helping to fluff it out with a fork.
This rice method sounds like complicated alchemy, but it’s simple really – and it works.
Increasingly drawn to 19th century Istanbul life and Turkish cooking we are hosting a buffet of delicious Turkish food to be followed by a talk by Jason on what draws him to the city where East meets West. An accomplished travel writer he has in the past few years turned his considerable skills to writing detective novels set in Istanbul in the early 1800s. His first in the series The Janissary Tree introduced Yashim, the Turkish slipper wearing debonair detective which became a best seller and won the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America in 2007. This was followed by The Snake Stone and The Bellini Card. These have been translated into more than 40 languages. An Evil Eye is the latest in the series. A review of the book in the Independent says, ‘Historical novels may be sometimes lightly regarded, but this one is full of the virtues of that genre, bringing to life an immeasurably different world’ and ‘The bare outlines are enlivened by Goodwin’s skilful use of colour and detail, especially Yashim’s recipes, which set the reader drooling.’