<< previous   next >>

pot luck

“My Bibi's Rice”

There’s a wide glass bowl sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s filled with rice that’s soaking in salted water. It’s been there since yesterday afternoon and it will stay there five or six more hours, for a total of 24. This is the old-fashioned Persian way of cooking rice. Most modern recipes will just tell you to rinse the rice and pop it in the rice cooker, or a pot of boiling water. But for Persian rice (made from long grain basmati), there’s a method and it dates back centuries. First, you wash it. Not once, not twice, not three times, but five times in lukewarm water. Then, you let it soak in salted water overnight. This is the way my Bibi, my maternal grandmother, made her rice, and the way she taught me to make mine.

But I’ve never made rice without her. The few times I have ever made it (emphasis on few—I’m much better at eating it than making it), I’ve been standing next to her, well, more like hovering over her, in her narrow, poorly lit, linoleum-tiled kitchen in her pre-war apartment in Kew Gardens Queens. Today, I am in my sunny kitchen in Cobble Hill, six months pregnant and thinking of her, missing her, wishing I could call her. But I can’t. Bibi isn’t here anymore for me to talk to, or for me to call with questions. I’ll never be able to sit next to her and drink tea from a glass etched in gold as she reaches back into her life, parsing through time, spooning out memories of her childhood in Mashed where a tree stump served as a chopping block for meat, of her life in London in wartime when the bombs fell so close that the ceiling in her kitchen caved in, of her dinner parties in New York where she cooked rice in pots the size of oil tankers.

Bibi died the day before Christmas. It was close to 4am when my mother called me from her bedside in the hospital. I heard her words through tears: “Bibi is dying. She won’t make it until morning.” I heard her, but I didn’t understand what she was saying. When Craig and I had left her at around midnight, she was fine. Well, fine in that she was coherent and was yelling at the doctors to let her go home. But then, apparently, she wasn’t.

I guess it shouldn’t have come as such a shock. After all, Bibi was somewhere around 88 years old (no one really knows for sure). She had lived a remarkably full and beautiful life with a husband she cherished, three children she adored, and four grandchildren she loved and fed with gusto. Bibi was the center of our family. She was the cook, the entertainer, the backgammon fiend, and the card shark. Maybe it was the way she lived her life—with strength, courage and a deep love for all of us—that made me feel like she would never die. Or maybe there’s some trick of the mind we play on ourselves where we somehow push reality into a dark far away corner where we don’t have to look at it or think about it until it crawls out of the shadows and shows up, not leaving you much of a choice.

After the rice is done soaking, I boil it for a few minutes, and then rinse it again, and prepare my potato crust—a layer of quarter-inch of potato circles that (if things go well) will form a giant crisp and golden pancake on the bottom of the pot. I layer the potatoes into the bottom of an oiled pot, cooking them over medium heat to make sure the crust sets. Then I spoon the barely boiled rice over the crust in a pyramid-shaped mound, puncturing it with a few holes with the end of a wooden spoon (this lets the crust set better) and cover it with a dishcloth and the top it tightly with the lid to make sure the rice steams well. It will steam for about an hour over very low heat. After about twenty minutes, the kitchen is filled with the aroma of basmati rice—a soft, gentle exotic perfume that smells exactly like Bibi’s house.

To go with the rice, I am making Khoresh Qormeh Sabzi. Khoresh is a general term for Persian stews and it is always served with Chelow—the steamed saffron rice I am already working on. Bibi, who is from the small village of Mashed where many Jews lived before they had to flee, made all different kinds of Khoresh: Fesenjan (with pomegranates), Bademjan (with eggplant), or a basic Khoresh made just with chickpeas. Khoresh can be made from lamb, beef, duck, what have you. But for her Khoresh, Bibi always used first cut chuck (beef stew meat), and that’s what I will use.

I brown the meat with sliced onions, and add salt, pepper, tumeric, cinnamon and cumin. In a frying pan, I sauté a mess of chopped fresh herbs—cilantro, dill, parsley and scallions—with chopped spinach. Once the herbs are fragrant, I add them to the stew with kidney beans and a few Persian limes pierced with a fork. Two hours later, I lift the lid to the bright aroma of herbs and lemon, turmeric and cumin, but unfortunately, things have not fared as well with my rice as with my Khoresh. It’s overcooked. I am crushed. “Bibi, what did I do wrong?” I want to call and ask her. I am not one for ghosts, but as I stand there sulking over my rice, I wonder if I concentrate really hard if she will show up and show me what I did wrong. “Andy, it’s okay. You just let it cook too long,” I imagine she might say. But she doesn’t. And so I stand over my pot of overcooked rice and salt it a little more with my own tears.

Once I pull myself together I taste the rice again. Maybe it’s not so bad. I give some to Craig. He thinks it’s great. He is biased, but I have to agree that despite the slightly overcooked texture, the flavor is spot on. Its beautiful fragrance is all I need. And, you know what? The Khoresh is pretty darn good. I think Bibi would have been proud. Though, to be sure, she would have laughed at my rice.

Craig and I sit down to dinner and toast to her memory and her life. We eat until our bellies bulge. But I know our overstuffed tummies would have made Bibi happy. No one ever left her dinner table without being forced to eat enough rice to pop buttons off pants.

But it is so strange to be eating her food without her. It doesn’t seem right. Persian food was always the food I ate with her, in her apartment, around her 12-seat dining room table. (Who has those anymore?) I am happy I have made Persian food but there’s a part of me that is heartbroken at the same time.

And that’s the thing about death, about grieving someone’s death. It’s not a neat or finite experience. There’s the shock of it at first, and then it kind of lingers and sneaks around like some amorphous force. I see it almost like a bruise, the kind you get after you really bang into something. You know it’s gonna be bad but at first nothing quite shows up. It’s only days later that the deep blue, green and purple mark begins to bloom, borderless and tender.

The days immediately following Bibi’s death were almost cathartic, with groups of family and friends sitting together every night for Shiva—a week of remembering her. And then life resumes. It’s then that the bruise emerges. On days when I want to hear one of her stories, when I want to sit with her and drink tea, when I want to call her for help with a recipe that I know I’ll never be able to make like she did. And I wish I could because I want desperately for my daughter to know the foods that I grew up on. I really want her to know Bibi, but that’s not gonna happen. I suppose her recipes are the next best thing. Who knows, maybe one day, I will sit with her, like Bibi did with me, and cook, and talk, and drink tea and tell stories of her Bibi’s life, and maybe some of mine too. But Bibi’s were so much more interesting.

Serves Six

2 large onions, sliced thin
1 ½ pounds top cut chuck (beef stew meat)
½ cup oil
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cumin
½ cup dried kidney beans
4 whole Persian limes (preserved lemons will work here too), pierced with a fork
4 cups finely chopped fresh parsley
1 cup each finely chopped fresh dill, scallions, fenugreek, and cilantro
1 bunch of fresh spinach, chopped

In a Dutch oven, brown the onions with the meat in 3 tablespoons of oil. Add the salt, pepper, turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin and stir to coat the meat and onions. Add four cups of water, kidney beans, and Persian limes (or preserved lemons). Bring to a boil and cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, fry up all your greens and herbs in the remaining oil for about 20 minutes or until the room is fragrant with the aroma of herbs.

Add the herbs to the stew and let simmer for another 1 and a half hours. Check to see if the meat and beans are tender. It may take 2 hours.

Transfer to a serving bowl. Serve spooned over a generous plate of Chelow.

Serves 6 Americans or about 3 Persians
4 cups long grain basmati rice (See Note)
1 teaspoon ground saffron that’s been soaked in 4 tablespoons hot water (saffron water)
1 cup vegetable oil
2 Idaho potatoes, peeled and sliced into ¼-inch rounds

Note on rice: Before you get to cook the rice, pick it over for any grit and then wash it five times in lukewarm water (cover it with water, run your hands through the rice to stir it up, then pour the water off and repeat). After you’re done with your five times, soak the rice overnight in 8 cups of water salted with two tablespoons of salt. This process helps the grains become silky and not sticky.

Boil your rice: Bring 8 cups salted water to a boil (2 tablespoons salt) and then add the drained rice boiling briskly for about five minutes, then test the grain in your mouth. It should be firm but just softened in the center. This is the part that’s really where you have to get the touch. It may take some time (as it’s taking me). Once the rice reaches that sweet spot, drain it and wash it in 2-3 cups of cold water.

Next, make your crust. Mix a few spoons of rice with a few drops of saffron water and the potatoes. Pour a thin film of oil (about ½ cup) into the bottom of the pot and layer in the rice and potato mixture, forming a nice full crust over the bottom of the pot. Pat it down with your hand or the back of a spoon. Cook the crust over medium heat so it starts to turn color a bit on the edges (maybe 5 minutes).
Now, add your rice, mounding it into a pyramid shape on top of the crust and poke a few holes in it with your wooden spoon. Pour the remaining oil over the top of the rice and place a clean dish towel or two layers of paper towels over the top of the rice and top it off with the lid. Check your rice after about 30 minutes for texture. ITt will probably need to cook for 45-50 minutes over low heat. But you don’t want to overcook it like I did!

Remove the rice pot to a cool damp surface, which will help loosen the potato crust on the bottom.

To serve the chelow, spoon the steaming rice onto a large serving platter. Once all the rice is out, bang on the bottom of that pot to get the crust out. In my experience, it never comes out in one golden pancake, so I have to dig it out with a spoon. But that’s fine too. It’s delicious.

<< previous   next >>

Posted: February 13, 2009

Share ! Post a comment