Plov for One

When the cafés closed I bought a sack of rice and a kilo of carrots and decided the season belonged to plov. Everyone else, from what I could gather through the thin walls and the group chats, was baking bread. I chose cumin. The pot I owned was meant for soup for two, which made the whole enterprise slightly comic from the start, grains crowding the rim like passengers who had not checked the capacity.

I learned the ratios the slow way. Too many carrots and the sweetness took over; too few and the dish felt ascetic, which was not the point. The garlic head went in whole, pressed down into the centre until only the top showed, a pale knuckle in the orange.

On the third attempt the bottom almost behaved. Kazmag, that thin crust people speak of with reverence, formed in patches rather than a clean sheet, but the patches were shattering and fragrant and I considered them a private success.

I ate it three days running, reheated in the same pot with a spoonful of water to wake the rice. By the second evening the flavours had settled into one another; by the third the garlic had gone soft enough to spread.

I felt no regret, only the ordinary contentment of a meal that had asked for attention and repaid it. Outside, the city stayed quiet under a thin rain that came and went all afternoon. Inside, the cumin lingered on my fingers when I turned the shortwave dial, and that was enough.