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This beautiful colorful recipe was found on one of my favorite blogs, thekitchn.com, and I wanted to bring you this recreation with all its beautiful ingredients. This author clearly has a love of beautiful ingredients, which is translated so perfectly here in this presentation.
I recently spent a few days with Najmieh Batmanglij — known to many as the Queen of Persian Cooking — who opened me up to the cooking of her native Iran, and in particular to a rice dish called Jeweled Rice, or Javaher Polow.
When I took my first bite, I almost cried from a near overload in flavor, fragrance, balance and a notable infusion of love in the grains of rice, tart little barberries, and strands of candied orange peel.
Named for its gemstone colors — saffron, carrots and orange peel make gold, barberries make rubies, pistachios make emeralds, almonds make pearls — jeweled rice is traditionally served at wedding celebrations. Or in my case from now on, at my dinner table and in my daughter’s lunchbox.
Rice is a central and ancient staple of the modern Iranian kitchen, though the varieties traditionally cultivated in Iran are not easy to come by in the West. Here, we can come close using basmati, or in a pinch, other varieties of long-grain rice. What’s beautiful about basmati is how it fills the home with the scent of flowers as it cooks.
Barberries are a tiny red berry once used in a lot of European cooking but now only found in Iranian cuisine. You can order them online from Sadaf, find them in some middle-eastern groceries (I go to Kalustyan‘s in New York City), or replace them with unsweetened dried cranberries.
This version is adapted from Najmieh, cutting out some of the oil and sugar in her version for a lighter take on what’s usually a decadent dish, both in its ingredients and in the time it takes to prepare it. It is not a dish you should expect to bang out after work and have dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, unless you can prep out your ingredients ahead of time like I did below.
nstead, for your first go, make it a celebration. Take your time, source the best ingredients, treat each step of this recipe like a precious stone.
Check out Najmieh Batmanglij’s books on Amazon!
Iranian Jeweled Rice
Serves 8
3 cups long-grain white basmati rice
2 tablespoons salt, divided
2 large oranges, preferably organic
1 cup whole dried barberries or chopped unsweetened dried cranberries
1 teaspoon loosely-packed saffron (about 1/2 gram) or 1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric
1/3 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/4 cup orange blossom water, divided
2 tablespoons oil, butter or ghee
1/2 cup sliced raw almonds, toasted
1/2 cup chopped raw pistachios, toasted
1/2 cup golden or green raisins
2-3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch long matchsticks
One 4-inch whole cinnamon stick
2 teaspoons freshly ground cardamom
For the rest of the directions, please click here to finish making this exquisite dish.
