benazir's blog

Saji With Rice

Hello Happy Belated Eid Adha Mubarak. Sorry I am late with this post but I am trying to still get used to life without my dad. Mr. Robert Jacobe was my Korean War vet dad. With what happened lately with what Natanyahu starting a war with Iran and he wants to drag us in to the fight too. Plus we have a loony tune TACO who is extremely dangerous. TACO is an accronym for Trump Always Chickens Out. This is so very true.

I am going to start with the saji masala the picture on the left in the offset. The saji masala which is used to make saji which can be made with 1 baby lamb leg or 1 baby goat leg or 1 whole chicken.

The masala is made like this: in a mortar and pestle add 1 pinch each of black peppercorns, ajwan, cumin seeds, black cumin seeds, shai zeera which are caraway seeds, coriander seeds, anar dana, 3 small cardomoms, 3 pinches of black salt, grind in to a coarse powder. Make this just before you put your meat in to the oven.

First thing is you have to take your choice of meat you want to use for making the saji and place it in a large mixing bowl. If frozen then you have to set it in the fridge. It took 2 days for my leg of baby lamb to thaw in the fridge. After the meat thawed I washed the meat and then poked it all over the place with a fork. This will make the spices seep deep in to the meat. Add 4 capfuls of white vinegar 3 pinches of either kosher salt, sea salt or pink salt, rub all over the baby lamb leg, baby goat leg or whole chicken and let it set in the fridge for until the next day.

The meat must sit in the fridge overnight. Preheat the oven to 350F or 190C. Take the meat and crush 5 cloves of garlic and smear this all over the meat along with 1 pinch of meat tenderizer all over the meat. Take the masla in the mortar and sprinkle that all over the meat and rub it all over the place in to the meat. If using a whole chicken then add some of the masala and rub it inside of the bird even including the garlic and meat tenderizer.

There is a huge roasting pan that is granite enamaled I have. It has a trivet inside. It is perfect because it is big enough to fit a small turkey. However rinse out the roasting pan just to make sure it is clean. Lay the trivet inside the roasting pan, add 2 cups of water, lay the meat inside and cover the roasting pan and place it inside the oven for 1 hour. Take out and baste the meat with a baster. It looks like a big glorified eye dropper.

This makes the meat juicy and then repeat for another hour or until the meat is done. After this take 3 tbs of plain desi yogurt and whip it until smooth. Add 1 pinch of cornstarch and mix some more and then add 3 tbs of water to make a slurry. Baste again and with a teaspoon and add the yogurt slurry all over the meat and cook for another 30 minutes.

Par boil 2 cups of basmati rice after rinsing in a coldero and 2 quarts of water in a coldero for 10 minutes on high heat for 10 minutes. This time pull the meat out of the oven and out of the roasting pan on the trivet on to a platter. Add the par boiled basmati rice in to the meat juices. Remove the meat from the platter and let it slide off the trivet carefully on top of the rice and meat juices. Cover and let cook for another 30 minutes just for the rice. It would make the skin crispy on the meat too.

Also you can empty the meat juice in to the coldero too and cook the rice that way if you chose but it would take 15 minutes then 20 minutes on dum. That however will be extra work so I chose to finish the rice in the oven and it was so very tasty when it was done. It is almost like you are eating dressing from Thanksgiving.

This is eaten with a salad and Pakistanis eat a salad consisting of 1 head of lettuce which I use Boston baby lettuce or the green leaf or red leaf variety, 4 red radishes sliced, 1 container of cherry tomatoes or 1 fresh tomato sliced, 1 onion sliced, 1 handful of radish greens which all have to be washed very well, 2 Persian cucumbers sliced, and either 1 lime or lemon cut in to small wedges. The juice is squirted on the salad and eaten this way with the saji and the rice.

It was an enjoyable eid meal.Also I will be thrilled to make this again and also using either chicken or goat too and when I have them made it is going in the offset too above.^^^^^ I hope you will enjoy this too as much as we did.

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