Reheating Tah Dig

Tah Dig is a Persian rice dish, carefully cooked to have a crunchy golden layer. At a recent dinner at a Persian restaurant, a Persian friend of mine refused to take the leftovers, claiming there was no way to reheat the rice while keeping the proper consistency and taste throughout. I took it as a challenge.

The leftover tah dig we had was mostly topped by a stew (ghormeh sabzi).

Here's some experiments I tried and how each turned out.

• Reheating in microwave. Makes tah dig chewy.
• Reheating rice, uncovered by stew, eight inches under the broiler for five minutes. Burns rice.
• Reheating rice, uncovered by stew, eight inches under the broiler for two minutes. Makes rice properly crispy. However, it's not that hot throughout. Be careful! Keep an eye on it -- thirty seconds more and it can easily get burnt.
• Reheating rice, covered by stew, eight inches under the broiler. Rice becomes no longer crispy. (I think some of the stew juices soaked into the rice.)
• Reheating stew in microwave. Decent. Baking in an oven or under a broiler far from the coils both work slightly better. (I think the microwave makes one flavor slightly odd.)

Conclusion: bake tah dig, uncovered by stew, and the stew itself in an oven until each is hot, then watch carefully while rebrowning the rice eight inches or so under a broiler for two minutes.

Incidentally, tah dig isn't the easiest thing to make in the first place. I've tried twice and twice achieved results I wouldn't call passable.