Haitian · Side
Diri ak Djon Djon
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, real fire that builds and stays, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 25g dried djon djon mushrooms
- 900ml boiling water
- 400g long grain rice
- 150g cooked lima beans
- 60g shallots, minced
- 30g epis
- 45ml neutral oil
- 1 scotch bonnet, whole and unpierced
- 4 sprigs thyme
- 3 whole cloves
- 8g salt
Equipment
Fine sieve
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedSalted water & the float testStraining & passing through a sieve
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pour the boiling water over the mushrooms and leave until the liquid is opaque and inky and the caps have gone pale and spent, about 20 minutes. Strain through damp muslin, squeezing the caps hard, then discard them and measure out 750ml of the black liquor. 20 min
- Rinse the rice through several changes of cold water until the water runs clear, then drain it well. Surface starch left on the grain is what glues the rice into grey clumps instead of separate black ones.
- Sweat the shallots in the oil until translucent, stir in the epis and cook until the raw parsley smell turns sweet, then add the drained rice and turn it until every grain is slicked and just going translucent at the edges.
- Pour in the measured mushroom liquor with the lima beans, thyme, cloves and salt, lay the whole chilli on the surface and bring to a hard boil.
- When the liquid has dropped level with the rice and craters open across the top, clamp on a tight lid, drop to the lowest heat and leave 18 minutes untouched. Lift out the chilli and thyme and fork the grains apart. 18 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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