My friend Sara (who has an incredible garden in Honolulu) made this one evening pau hana and I just had to replicate it. This is her recipe.
2-2.5 pounds of either pork (say, pork shoulder and some pork belly if it’s on a lean side) or lamb pieces
4 - 5 large carrots (can do more, there’s never too much carrots)
1 1/2 large onions
5 cups of long grain rice (or even quinoa), adjust according to your pot size
1 head of garlic
spices*
salt
1/2 cup of vegetable oil (depending on how oily you want the pilaf, adjust amount accordingly)
*My friend used a “pilaf mix” which contains red sweet pepper, barberries, cumin, turmeric, coriander, salvia, laurel leaves, chili, savory; at the supermarket I was able to find a similar substitute spice mix - Rachael Ray 24/7 Everyday Seasoning Grinder which includes sea salt, coriander seeds, garlic, black peppercorns, red bell peppers, chili and cumin seeds. It’s ok if you can’t find all of these spices, but to get the typical yellow color you’d want some cumin.
You’ll need a thick-walled pot (for better heat distribution). Put the pot on med/high heat, pour the oil in. Cut meat into small pieces, dump into the oil, keep on mixing it every once in a while, in the meantime, chop the onions finely and dump into the meat once the oil is again transparent (may take five-seven minutes or so), keep on mixing, make sure the onions don’t burn.
Clean the carrots, cut in half if they are too long, use mandoline to cut carrots into thin long pieces (not too thin or they’ll disintegrate). If don’t have a mandoline just cut the carrots however you like but not too finely. Once the oil becomes transparent again as the onions are cooked (water evaporates), dump the carrots in. Add salt to taste (I like it to be rather salty at that point, it won’t be that salty in the end), spices, mix everything up and keep mixing up every now and then until again the oil becomes clear or the carrots are softish.
Wash the rice until the water is clear, spread it on top of the mix in the pot, don’t mix. Carefully add water (I like boiling it first to speed up the process) so that you have a couple of fingers over the rice. With heat on high wait until water disappears from the surface. Make a few holes with a chopstick.
Chop off the bottom part of the garlic head; try not to break the head while doing that, do not clean off the layers, it’ll help keeping it together; put the garlic in the middle of the pot, burying it in the rice until you can’t see it. Make a bit of a “mound” with rice at the center of the pot, make some holes around it with chop stick. Reduce heat to small, cover the pot, wait maybe 20 mins. Open the pot, mix everything up, rice should be almost cooked at this point (one on top may not be yet). Let it sit there on low heat for another 20 mins Mix it up before serving. Serve in bowls.
Optional:
The salad that goes with plov, make it just before the plov is done.
Tomatoes
Onions
Black pepper
Olive oil
Cut tomatoes thin (so more juice comes out) chop onions, also thin (can wash cut onions to cut on smell), mix it up, add salt and grind some black pepper on top, optionally a pinch of paprika. Serve separately but put on top of plov when eating.
