Name: Plov review by Gamze at Taste of Samarkand, Berlin, Germany
Item: Plov
Rating: 4.6
Author: Gamze

Plov is the rice dish of Uzbekistan and the wider Central Asian table: rice cooked in a kazan over a base of lamb or beef, onions and a great deal of carrot, fried in fat and seasoned mainly with cumin, with whole heads of garlic, chickpeas, barberries or raisins buried in it depending on the city. Every region claims its own version and they differ in ways locals argue over: Tashkent plov uses yellow carrots and a darker, browner base, Samarkand plov is layered and never stirred so the rice, carrots and meat arrive as separate strata, and Fergana plov is made with devzira, a reddish, high-starch local rice that holds its shape under long cooking. The dish is cooked outdoors in enormous quantities for weddings and funerals, usually by a man whose only job is plov, and the morning plov centres in Tashkent serve it from a single kazan to hundreds of people before noon.

The structure is the zirvak and the rice on top of it. Fat, traditionally rendered lamb tail fat with cottonseed or sunflower oil, is heated until it smokes in the kazan; onions go in and brown hard, then the meat in large pieces, then carrots cut into matchsticks and fried until they start to soften and colour. Water covers the base and it simmers for forty minutes to an hour with cumin, salt and whatever the region adds. Rice that has been soaked in salted water is spread in a layer on top and water is added to sit a finger above it; the pot boils hard and uncovered until the liquid is absorbed, then the rice is heaped into a mound, holes are poked through to the bottom with a stick, and the kazan is covered and left on the lowest heat for twenty to thirty minutes to steam. Only then is it mixed, or not, depending on the style.

Good plov has separate, slightly glossy grains that are soft right through but hold their shape and are not sticky; the colour is uniform from the fat and carrot, and a spoon of it should not leave oil pooling on the plate. The carrots stay distinct and sweet rather than dissolving, the meat pulls apart, and the cumin is forward. The garlic head, when there is one, should be soft enough to squeeze out of its skin. Mark down wet, clumped rice, a base that tastes only of oil, carrots cooked to orange mush, scant meat, and plov that is grey because the onions were sweated rather than browned. It is served with a salad of thinly sliced tomato and onion and with green tea, and nothing else is needed.

Plov

Germany

Taste of Samarkand

Everything was very tasty 😋 
My favorite place for Uzbek food!
Chichken and beef samsa and plov are my favorites!


Plov review by Gamze at Taste of Samarkand, Berlin, Germany

Plov

Taste of Samarkand

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