Ghormeh Sabzi
Iran's quietly contested national dish: lamb slow-cooked with mountains of fresh herbs, dried limes and red kidney beans. Served over plain chelo rice.
Overview
Onion fries deep golden in oil; turmeric and a touch of cinnamon toast in. Cubed lamb browns alongside. Herbs (huge quantities, 6 cups chopped) fry hard in their own pan in oil for 20 minutes until very dark. Everything combines with dried limes and stock; simmers for 90 minutes. Soaked kidney beans go in for the last 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 800 g lamb shoulder (or beef chuck) - 3 cm cubes
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil (split)
- 2 onions (large, chopped)
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 4 dried black limes (loomi - pierced, whole)
- 1 litre hot stock
- 1 (400 g) tin red kidney beans (drained, or 100 g dried, soaked overnight and pre-cooked)
Herbs (fry separately)
- 200 g fresh parsley (leaves and tender stems, chopped fine)
- 200 g fresh coriander (chopped fine)
- 100 g chives (or spring onion greens, chopped fine)
- 30 g dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi, or 50 g fresh fenugreek if available)
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil (for frying herbs)
To serve
- 4 servings cooked chelo (Persian white rice - see tahdig recipe for technique)
- 1 lime (to finish, juice)
Method
Stage 1 - Brown
- Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a wide heavy pot.
- Soften onion 10 minutes until deep gold.
- Add turmeric, cinnamon, pepper; cook 30 seconds.
- Add lamb; brown 6-7 minutes.
- Add salt, pierced limes, hot stock.
- Bring to a simmer; cover; cook on low 1 hour.
Stage 2 - Fry the herbs
- In a separate wide pan, heat 4 tablespoons oil over medium.
- Add all the chopped herbs and dried fenugreek.
- Cook 15-20 minutes, stirring often, until the herbs turn very dark green (almost black) and smell deeply aromatic. Don't burn - adjust heat down if catching.
Stage 3 - Combine
- Add the fried herbs to the lamb pot.
- Cook another 45 minutes on low.
Stage 4 - Beans
- Add the kidney beans.
- Cook 20-30 more minutes, lid off for the last 10 if too loose. Sauce should be thick.
- Squeeze the limes with the back of a spoon against the pot side to release juice.
- Taste; adjust salt; add fresh lime juice if it needs lifting.
Stage 5 - Serve
- Spoon over chelo rice in deep bowls. The herb-meat stew should pool around a mound of rice.
Notes
- Herbs are not optional: The dish lives or dies on the quantity. 6+ cups raw chopped herbs is right; they reduce dramatically.
- Fry the herbs hard: The dark cooked-down character is the dish. Underdone herbs taste grassy.
- Loomi: Pierce them once or twice with a knife and add whole. Squeeze against the pot side at the end to release more juice.
Storage
- Refrigerate 4 days. Better next day.
- Freezes 3 months.
More like this
Gai Yang
Gai yang ("grilled chicken") is one of the cornerstones of Isaan cooking, the cuisine of north-eastern Thailand that has spread across the whole country and into Thai restaurants worldwide. The defining flavour is coriander root, an ingredient barely used in Western cooking but central to Thai marinades. Pounded in a granite mortar with garlic, white peppercorns and a pinch of salt, it forms an aromatic paste that's then mixed with fish sauce, oyster sauce and a touch of sugar. The chicken is butterflied (spatchcocked) so it lies flat on the grill, marinated for at least 4 hours, then cooked slowly over moderate charcoal. The proper Isaan technique is patient: 30 minutes or more, turning often, sometimes pressed flat between two bamboo splints, so the skin slowly crisps and the meat takes on smoke without burning. The flavour is savoury-funky from fish sauce, peppery-warm from white pepper, deeply garlic-and-herb from the paste, with no chilli in the marinade itself; heat comes from the dipping sauce. Difficulty is low for the home cook: a good mortar or a small food processor makes the paste in 2 minutes, butterflying a chicken is a single cut down the backbone, and any covered grill or kettle does the cooking. Eaten by hand with balls of sticky rice and dipped into nam jim jaew, the toasted-rice-and-tamarind dipping sauce.
Lomo Saltado
Beef strips are marinated briefly in soy and aji amarillo paste. Fries are cooked separately, pre-fried, set aside. The wok hits high heat; beef is seared in batches; red onion and tomato are added briefly so they keep their bite; soy, vinegar, lime and stock are poured in to sauce. The fries go in last, just before serving, a 30-second toss so they pick up flavour without going soggy.
Quzi
A bone-in lamb shoulder rubs with baharat, dried lime, garlic and yogurt; sits overnight; roasts long and slow until the meat falls from the bone. Saffron rice cooks separately with onion, raisins and toasted nuts. Everything assembles on a wide platter, rice mounded under the lamb, sauce spooned over, almonds and pine nuts scattered.
Hyderabadi Mutton Biryani
Bone-in mutton (or lamb) marinates for 4 hours in yogurt, ginger-garlic paste, deep-fried onion (birista), garam masala, chilli and saffron. Basmati rice par-boils for 4 minutes with whole spices to 70% done. Half the rice layers on top of the marinated mutton at the bottom of a heavy pot; saffron milk, mint, more birista and ghee drizzle on top; the rest of the rice on top of that. Sealed (cover + dough or foil tight), cooked on the lowest heat 1 hour. The meat cooks from raw inside the steaming rice. Opened at the table.