Perde Pilavı: The Siirt Curtain Rice and the Secrets of the Kurdish Wedding Table

Dala Sarkis
26 minutes ago
6 min read

Perde Pilavı: The Siirt Curtain Rice and the Secrets of the Kurdish Wedding Table

Perde pilavı means curtain rice: the perde, or curtain, is the soft dough that wraps around the rice filling and conceals it, and when the finished dish is turned out onto the plate — a dome of golden pastry studded with almonds on its outer surface, hiding the fragrant chicken and pine-nut rice within — the curtain is lifted. This is Siirt’s great celebration dish, the one that appears at weddings and at the table of a new household, and it carries a language of symbolism that no other dish in this series has matched: the dough is the secrets of the home, kept inside the family; the rice is fertility; the almonds are the grandchildren to come. The dish is a complete domestic wish rendered in food. Siirt is a Kurdish city in the deep south of Bakur, in the mountain territory between the Tigris headwaters and the Iraqi border, and it has already appeared in this series once — as the home of büryan, the pit-roasted whole lamb that has been cooked underground since before anyone can remember. Perde pilavı is Siirt’s other great dish, completely different in character: not the lamb of the outdoor pit but the rice of the indoor kitchen, not the fire and the earth but the oven and the pastry dome. Where büryan is elemental, perde pilavı is refined. Where büryan says ‘this is what the land gives us,’ perde pilavı says ‘this is what the house means.’ This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-third article in the series. Siirt has given two articles to this series; perde pilavı is the one that requires a kitchen, a mould, and a wedding.

Key Takeaways

• Perde pilavı is Siirt’s celebration rice — chicken and pine-nut rice wrapped in a pastry dome, served at weddings

• ‘Perde’ means curtain — the dough hides the rice inside, symbolising the secrets kept within the new home

• Rice = fertility; almonds = grandchildren; the pastry = the secrets of the home — a complete domestic wish in food

• From Siirt (Bakur) — the second great Siirt dish in this series after büryan, the pit-roasted lamb

Quick Facts

Name: Perde pilavı / perdeli pilav — curtain rice (perde = curtain; pilav = rice pilaf)

Origin: Siirt (Bakur, Kurdish southeast Turkey); considered one of the oldest dishes of the Siirt region

Filling: Chicken (or lamb), rice cooked in chicken broth, pine nuts, currants, almonds, mint, spices

Occasion: Weddings and celebrations; served at the new home or at the wedding table; a dish of blessing and good wishes

Inside the Curtain

Making perde pilavı requires patience and care, which is exactly why it is reserved for celebrations. A whole chicken is poached in seasoned broth with vegetables until tender. The broth is kept; the meat is shredded from the bone. Butter is melted in a heavy pan and pine nuts and almonds are toasted in it until they colour, then the raw rice is stirred in and coated with the nut-scented butter. Chicken broth is poured over, and the rice is cooked until two-thirds done — not fully, because it will finish in the oven. Currants (or raisins), dried mint, paprika, and black pepper go in with the shredded chicken, and the whole fragrant mixture is taken off the heat to cool. The pastry is made from flour, egg, yogurt, butter, oil, and a little baking powder — a soft, pliable dough — and the moulds or the bundt pan or the single large dome-mould is generously buttered and the inside surface studded with blanched almonds, pressed into the butter so they stick. The dough is rolled and used to line the mould, hanging over the edges. The cooled rice filling goes in. The edges of the dough are folded over to enclose it completely — the curtain is drawn. The top is buttered and the whole thing goes into a hot oven for fifteen to twenty minutes, until the pastry is golden and the rice has finished cooking in the steam inside. Then it is turned out — unmoulded onto a plate — and the dome appears: golden pastry, almonds set into it like studs, the whole thing steaming and fragrant. The curtain is lifted. The rice inside, invisible until now, is the meal.

The Language of the Dish

This series has covered 133 dishes and most of them carry meaning beyond their ingredients. The kavut of Van encodes the mountain honey and the walnut. The helavî encodes the shape of Kurdish grief. The murtuga encodes the dawn of the Van kitchen. But no dish in this series has a symbolic language as precise and explicit as perde pilavı. In Siirt, when the mother-in-law presents the new bride with the perde pilavı at the threshold of the house, she says: ‘This house is now your home. You should keep the secrets and problems of this house as your own secrets, and not reveal them even to your own mother and father.’ The dough curtain that hides the rice is the home’s privacy. The rice is fertility: just as the bride pours rice over her head on entering the new house to bring abundance, the rice inside the pilav holds the promise of children. The almonds in the filling represent those grandchildren, and the almonds pressed into the outer dome of pastry are the ones the whole family can already see coming. The pine nuts and currants represent the richness and sweetness that the couple will share. The dish is a complete blessing, a prayer rendered in flour and rice and nuts, and the eating of it is the community’s answer: yes, we wish this for you. The connection to büryan is the connection of a city: Siirt is a city of two great dishes, and they could not be more different. Büryan is the fire in the earth, the whole lamb cooked underground, the oldest possible form of Kurdish cooking — prehistoric in its simplicity. Perde pilavı is the refined kitchen, the pastry dome, the symbolic gesture, the thing cooked for the wedding rather than the mountain. Both are entirely and proudly Siirt.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is perde pilavı?

Perde pilavı (curtain rice) is the celebration dish of Siirt, in Kurdish Bakur. Chicken and rice — cooked with pine nuts, currants, almonds, and spices — are enclosed inside a soft pastry dome, then baked and turned out to reveal a golden exterior studded with almonds. It is served at weddings and special occasions and carries a rich symbolic language: the pastry dough represents the secrets kept within the home, the rice represents fertility, and the almonds represent grandchildren.

Why is perde pilavı given to a new bride?

In Siirt tradition, the mother-in-law presents the new bride with perde pilavı at the threshold of the new home, telling her that just as the dough conceals the rice inside, she should keep the house’s secrets within the family and not reveal them even to her own parents. The dish is a formal communication of the home’s values: loyalty, privacy, and the shared life inside the walls of the new household.

How is perde pilavı different from regular rice pilaf?

Regular rice pilaf is boiled or steamed in a pot and served directly. Perde pilavı encases the rice inside a pastry dome that is baked in the oven — the rice finishes cooking inside the sealed pastry, absorbing the moisture and developing a texture impossible to achieve by boiling alone. The pastry exterior becomes golden and crisp; the interior remains soft and fragrant. The dish is presented as a dome, unmoulded at the table — a form entirely absent from the rest of the Kurdish rice tradition.

Conclusion

Perde pilavı is the one-hundred-and-thirty-third article in the series, and the one that gives Siirt its second great dish. Büryan was the lamb in the fire. Perde pilavı is the rice in the pastry dome. Between these two, Siirt contains the oldest and the most refined of the Kurdish Bakur kitchen: the prehistoric pit and the elaborated wedding table, the mountain outside and the home inside. The curtain is drawn around the rice, and in drawing it, the mother-in-law says everything she needs to say about what a home is. One hundred and thirty-three articles in, perde pilavı is the dish that understands — better than any other in this series — that food is not just what you eat. It is what you mean.