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Indian Pilau
Cut up a fowl and fry it in butter, add a spoonful of curry powder, a tablespoonful of capers and gherkins, mixed, also a cup of tomatoes and a cup of rice. Stir and cook, and serve hot.
A terse pilau in the Anglo-Indian manner, written for a cook who already knew how much liquid rice takes. The instructions as given will scorch unless you supply that liquid yourself.
- The missing liquidA cup of raw rice needs roughly two cups of liquid beyond the cup of tomatoes; the original assumes you know this. Add water or chicken stock, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook 18-20 minutes without stirring once the rice is in — the instruction to "stir" belongs to the frying stage, not the rice.
- "A fowl"In older usage this meant a mature laying hen, tough and full of flavour, needing 40 minutes or more of moist cooking. A 3 to 4 lb chicken, cut into eight pieces, is the modern equivalent and will be done in about 30 minutes of simmering; take the thigh to 165F.
- Vague spoonfuls"A spoonful of curry powder" is ambiguous — read it as a rounded tablespoon for this quantity. Bloom it in the butter with the chicken for a minute before any liquid goes in, or the powder tastes raw and dusty.
- Capers and gherkinsThey plausibly stand in for the sour note that lime, tamarind or amchur would give in India. A tablespoon of the two chopped fine is enough; add them near the end so the vinegar does not dull during the long simmer.
- A cup of tomatoesEither canned or fresh will do; the recipe does not say which. Chop them and count their juice as part of your liquid measurement.
- Rice choiceUse a long-grain rice, basmati included, and rinse it until the water runs clear. Short-grain will turn the dish into a porridge, which is not what pilau means.
- YieldServes four as a main course.
Pilau — variously pilaf, pilav, pulao — is the great rice dish of the Persian and Mughal kitchens, and it reached English cookbooks through the households of the East India Company, where returning officers and their cooks brought back a taste for curry powder and rice cooked in seasoned broth. The version here has been thoroughly domesticated: capers and gherkins come straight from the English store cupboard, and "a spoonful of curry powder" points to the commercial blends, sold by grocers from the late eighteenth century onward, that stood in for a spice box a British cook would not have known how to fill.