Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Pilau of Lamb
Pilau of Lamb
Cut the meat of a leg of lamb into small pieces, and make a little broth with the bones. Cut half a pound of streaky bacon in squares and fry in a stewpan with one chopped onion; put the pieces of lamb in with it, sprinkle a little salt over and fry over a brisk fire for ten minutes. Cover the lamb with the broth that has been prepared from the bones. Skin and chop two ripe tomatoes and after picking out the seeds, put them in with the lamb, adding two green peppers, cut up a bunch of fine herbs, a sprig or two of parsley and a pinch of saffron; when the broth has boiled for five minutes throw in some rice, put the lid on the stewpan, move it to the side of the fire, and let the contents stew for twenty minutes or until the rice is quite tender. When ready to serve turn the pilau out onto a hot dish.
A one-pot braise in which the rice finishes in the meat's own liquid, so the two variables that decide the dish are the amount of broth and the heat under the pan. The original gives neither in numbers.
- Quantities to fill inA leg of lamb boned out gives roughly 4-5 lb of meat, which is a great deal; half that, with 8 oz bacon and a proportional cut of everything else, serves six. For rice, allow about 1 cup long-grain per 4 servings and 1 3/4 cups of the lamb broth for every cup of rice.
- "Move it to the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant off the hot plate to a cooler spot: a bare simmer with no visible boil. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting with a heat diffuser. Rice boiled hard here will break up and stick before the twenty minutes are out.
- Streaky baconBritish-style unsmoked streaky, or American side bacon, both work. Heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the saffron; blanch it briefly in water first if that is all you have.
- Green peppersIn 1896 the phrase usually meant sweet bell peppers, though it could also cover small hot green chilies. Two whole bell peppers, seeded and sliced, suits the rest of the seasoning; two green chilies would give a much sharper dish.
- A bunch of fine herbsProbably fines herbes: parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, chopped fine, though the phrase may mean no more than a mixed bunch of herbs. If chervil is unavailable, more parsley and a little tarragon carries it.
- SaffronA pinch means 15-20 threads. Crush them and steep in a spoonful of the hot broth for a few minutes before adding, or the colour stays locked in the threads.
- The bone brothWorth roasting the leg bones before simmering them; an hour and a half gives enough body. Keep it unsalted, since the bacon salts the dish and the liquid reduces into the rice.
- RestingLet the covered pan stand off the heat for ten minutes before turning it out. The grains firm up and the pilau leaves the pan in one piece rather than as a mound of wet rice.
Pilau — pilaf, pilav, pulao — reached English and American cookbooks by way of the Ottoman and Persian kitchens, and by Oscar Tschirky's day the word had been in English use for well over two centuries, long enough to be thoroughly domesticated. This version is closer to a Provencal or Spanish treatment than a Turkish one: bacon, tomato, sweet pepper and saffron are the vocabulary of the Mediterranean rice dishes that hotel kitchens of the 1890s drew on freely, and the technique of frying the meat, wetting it with its own bone broth and finishing the rice in that liquid is shared with paella and risotto alike. Oscar was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel rather than its chef, and his 1896 book gathers what a large New York hotel kitchen actually cooked. That a leg of lamb should be boned for the pot and the bones simmered for the moistening broth tells you something about the scale of the operation: nothing was bought in portions, and nothing went out.