Sayadieh

Before you start

• the onions want a good half hour and cannot be hurried

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 350gfirm white fish — bream, hake or cod — something that will not flake apart in the pan
• 130glong-grain rice
• 2onions
• 1½ tbspolive oil
• 20gflaked almonds and pine nuts
• 2 tspcumin and cinnamon
• 1 tbsptahini
• 1lemon

Method

8 steps

1. finish · 3m

   Fish salted on both sides and left on a plate while everything else gets going.

2. chop · 6m

   Onions halved and sliced thin.

3. fry · 32m

   Onions into the oil on a low, patient heat until they are genuinely dark brown — well past golden, right up to the edge of burnt. That colour is where the whole dish gets its taste and its look; pale onions give a pale, dull plate.

4. simmer · 12m

   Fish poached briefly in water with the cumin and cinnamon and lifted out the moment it turns opaque. What it leaves behind is the stock the rice cooks in, and nothing substitutes for it.

5. boil · 18m walk away

   Rinsed rice into that stock with most of the onions stirred through, lid on, lowest heat.

6. rest · 10m walk away

   Off the heat with the lid still on.

7. fry · 3m

   Nuts turned in a dry pan until they colour. Watch them — they go from pale to burnt in about fifteen seconds.

8. finish · 4m

   Rice out onto a platter, fish laid on top in large pieces, the rest of the onions and the nuts scattered over, and tahini loosened with lemon and cold water alongside.