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Iraqi · Main

Quzi

  • Advanced
  • 40 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

warm-spiced · nutty-toasted · rich · sweet-edged Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, trailing gentle sweetness.

Ingredients

  • 1 lamb shoulder on the bone, about 2 kg
  • 3 tsp baharat
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 4 dried limes, pierced
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 6 green cardamom pods
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 500 g basmati rice, soaked 30 minutes and drained
  • 80 g ghee
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 80 g blanched almonds
  • 60 g raisins
  • 30 g flaked pistachios
  • 2 large flatbreads, to line the platter

The skills inside

Roasting in a hot ovenSteaming: basket, leaf and lidBlanching & shockingStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · nuts

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

  1. Rub the shoulder all over with the baharat, turmeric and salt, set it on a rack in a deep tin and put the dried limes, cinnamon, cardamom, bay and 500 ml water in the tin beneath it.
  2. Seal the tin tightly with foil and cook at 150C (300F) until a skewer slides in with no resistance and the blade bone turns freely in the joint, about 4 hours. 240 min
  3. Strain the tin juices, skim the fat, then cook the drained rice in the measured stock with a spoon of ghee until the surface is pitted with steam holes and no liquid pools at the edge.
  4. Fry the onion in the remaining ghee until deep brown, then add the almonds and raisins and cook until the nuts are gold and the raisins swollen and glossy.
  5. Uncover the lamb and roast at 220C (425F) until the fat cap is crisp and blistered, then set it on the rice over the flatbread and shower it with the onion, nuts and pistachios.

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.

Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes

  • The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
  • Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
  • Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
  • It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
  • The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.

Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

  • It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
  • The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
  • Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
  • The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
  • Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

At the Table

The Pour
Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
Also Right
Malbec
From the Taps
Porter
Zero-Proof
Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

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Film school

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