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Tomato Pilau
Put one and one-half pounds of ripe tomatoes into a mortar and press them to extract their juice, which strain through a fine hair-sieve; then pour it into a saucepan with an equal quantity of broth. Peel and chop fine two onions, put them into a fryingpan with a lump of butter, and fry until well browned. Drain the onions, put them in with the tomato juice, add a pinch of salt, and place the saucepan over the fire. When the liquor boils put in one pound of well-washed rice, and allow it to simmer at the side of the fire until the moisture is absorbed. Heat four ounces of butter, stir it in with the rice; put the lid on the saucepan again, and let it stand on the stove for twenty minutes. Turn the pilau onto a hot dish, sprinkle over a little pepper, and serve while very hot.
A straightforward pilaf in the Franco-Levantine style Oscar's kitchen favored, though the liquid measurements need checking before you commit a pound of rice to the pan.
- The liquid is shortA pound of rice is about 2 1/3 cups; 1 1/2 lb of tomatoes yields roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of strained juice, so with an equal quantity of broth you have around 3 cups of liquid for rice that wants 4 to 4 1/2. Have extra hot broth at hand and add it as the pan dries, or the grains will stay chalky.
- Mortar and hair-sieveBoth are simply a way of getting seeded, skinless tomato juice. A blender pulse followed by a fine mesh strainer does the same work in a minute; press the pulp firmly to get everything but the seeds and skin.
- "At the side of the fire"On a coal range the pan was slid off the hot centre to a cooler edge. On a modern burner that means the lowest setting with the lid on, and a heavy-bottomed pan will hold the heat more evenly than a thin one.
- The twenty-minute standThis is the hinge. Once the butter is stirred in and the lid returns, the pan should be off direct heat entirely, resting on a warm part of the stove. Left over a live flame the bottom scorches; the twenty minutes are for steam to finish the grains, not for further cooking.
- RiceUse a long-grain rice and rinse it until the water runs clear, as instructed. Basmati works well here. Arborio or other short-grain rice will turn the dish creamy rather than separate.
- Four ounces of butterThat is one full stick, half a cup, folded into cooked rice. Two ounces gives a lighter result without losing the gloss.
- BrothUnsalted or low-sodium stock, since the tomato reduces and concentrates. The single "pinch of salt" assumes a home-made unsalted broth; taste before serving and adjust.
- YieldA pound of dry rice makes a generous eight to ten side servings. Halve the recipe for a household of four.
History: Pilau is one of several English spellings, recorded from the seventeenth century, of a word that comes through Turkish pilav from Persian (pilāw/polow) — rice cooked in seasoned broth until the liquid is absorbed, a technique that traveled west through Ottoman and Levantine kitchens and reached British and American tables by more than one route, including colonial trade and service in India and the Near East. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, gathers the wide repertoire a large New York hotel kitchen was expected to produce, and dishes with Eastern names sat comfortably beside the French service that governed the dining room. The instruction to work the tomatoes in a mortar and strain them through a hair sieve is a period marker: sieves woven from horsehair were common kitchen equipment through much of the nineteenth century, though wire-mesh sieves were already in use alongside them well before this book appeared.