Bademjan la Polo is one the most delicious and fantastic Iranian foods. It means eggplants and meat layer by layer cooked with flavorful Iranian rice. The mix of eggplant and meat is really tasty; when you serve that with cooked rice, it becomes a wonderful dish!
Some people cook Bademjan la Polo with minced meat and also someone like to cook that with chopped meat, both of these recipes are delicious and it depends on you to choose to your taste. My mom always used to cook this dish with chopped meat and I recommend you to cook Bademjan la Polo with chopped meat. Let’s take a look at my mom’s recipe for this yummy dish…
Ingredients:
. 4 cup rice
. 1 kilo meat, chopped
. 3 large onions
. 6 medium eggplants
. 1 tablespoon tomato paste
. Salt and pepper to taste
. 1 teaspoon turmeric
. Oil for frying
To start your cooking, in a suitable pot add the chopped meat, cut the onions into four parts, and add them into the pot so that cook the meat and onions with water. While the meat is cooking, wash and take the heads of eggplants, cut them in half, and fry eggplants with oil in a separate pan. The key is not to chop eggplants before frying because it effects on the food taste, first fry them and after that chop eggplants to small pieces
When have fried all the eggplants, chop them into preferred pieces following that, add cooked meat to the pan, and also all the fried eggplants. In this step, we just want to combine all the tastes of meat, eggplant, and spices, so stir them and add pepper and turmeric to the pan of meat and eggplant (Taste the dish for salt and add more if necessary). After mixing well, add the tomato paste and stir again until all ingredients are well combined.
Now, it’s time to cook rice. First pour rice, water, and salt into a pot and let them boil. If you like to feel the taste of meat more in your food, you can cook the rice with the broth of meat which we cooked at the first of the recipe. Once the rice water has been reduced to the desired level, take the pot off the heat and begin layering the ingredients.
First, add a layer of cooked rice to the bottom of the pot, making sure it’s spread out evenly. Then, spoon a layer of the meat and eggplant mixture on top of the rice. Continue layering the rice and mixture until you’ve used up all of the ingredients. Make sure to end with a layer of rice on top. Once you’ve finished layering, put the pot back on the heat and let it cook for a few more minutes until all the flavors have melded together. Enjoy your delicious and flavorful rice dish! If you want you can mix your cooked rice with brewed saffron for more color, taste, and aroma in your dish
Make a sweet and colorful mix of Zereshk, sliced pistachio, and almonds, for preparing that in a pan pour the amount of Zereshk (Iranian barberry) with a little water and sugar (you can use honey instead of sugar) then put the pan on the heat and wait until the barberries take the sweet taste. Be careful not to burn the barberries, when the barberries are cooked add slices of pistachio and almond to the barberries (Zereshk). You can use this sweet and flavorful mixture in your layers or for garnishing the Bademjan la Polo.
Side Dishes:
Torshi
You can serve different types of pickles with this dish like garlic pickled
Fresh herbs always are good combination for meat dishes
