This title is a little misleading.  This really should say aromatic rice in ghee with nuts not just rice in clarified butter.  So while the title is misleading don’t pass this dish by!  Give it a try the next time you have a little of everything on hand (the only thing I was missing for this dish was the coconut) and give your dinner guests a fantastic rice treat of their life!

Baranj Hus

(Rice in Ghee)

Translation:

…Put good ghee in a cooking pot.  When it becomes hot, flavour it with camphor, rosewater and white ambergris.  Then, having mixed rice with saffron and salt, put it in the ghee and fry it well.  Then add water, pine kernels, pistachio nuts, peeled almonds, cardamoms, cloves and shelled white coconut.  Break them into pieces, do not mince them.  Mix them all together and put them into a cooking pot and cook them well.  Then having added leaves of sweet basil and sacred basil or sour-oranges, serve it.  (The Nimatnama, pp. 15)

Ingredients:

2 C Ghee (Clarified butter)

1/8 tsp rosewater

2 C Jasmine rice

1/16^th  saffron

1 tsp salt

1 ½ C water

1 C pine kernels

1 C pistachio nuts,

1 C almonds

½ tsp ground cardamom

¼ tsp ground cloves or 8 whole cloves

1 C flaked/chunked UNSWEETENED coconut.

Redaction:

I had to do a couple of work arounds, when I started this recipe.  Those being camphor and white ambergris are a bit hard to find.  I chose to omit these items; however I did include the rosewater.  Remember a little goes a very long way!

Mix the rice with saffron and salt.  I don’t use the expensive saffron.  I use the cheaper saffron as it is available with out costing an arm and a leg.  Amazon or a good Indian grocer will work very well for saffron shopping.

I put 2 C of clarified butter into a pot.  Clarified butter can be argued to be the same as ghee and others will disagree.

I clarified my own butter and called it good.  For the butter solids I had bread on hand for dipping and munching while I cooked.  Good stuff.  Then added the rose water once the butter became hot.

Next mix in the rice/saffron/salt

and stir till the ghee is well absorbed.

Add the water after the butter has been absorbed by the rice then add the nuts, cardamom, cloves and coconut.

I had to make a slight substitution here as well.  I did not have any pistachios on hand so used walnuts instead.  Two different flavors yet the walnut still complimented the overall dish flavors.

Stir very well again, then bring to a boil and turn the heat to the lowest setting.  Place a lid on the pot and let cook for 10 minutes.  Check in 10 minutes, stirring.

Take a taste.  If the rice is just the way you like it, then you are ready to serve.  If the rice is still a bit al dente, cook for another 5 minutes and taste again.