Ghormeh sabzi

Ingredients

• Lamb — in 3 cm cubes800 g
• Parsley300 g
• Coriander200 g
• Spring onion or leek200 g
• Dried fenugreek leaf1 tbsp
• Kidney beans — soaked overnight200 g
• Dried limes4
• Onions2
• Turmeric1 tsp
• Neutral oil100 ml
• Cooked rice600 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Fry the onion with the turmeric until gold, add the meat and brown it on all sides.

   15 min

2. 2

   Cover with water, add the beans and simmer for an hour.

   60 min

3. 3

   Meanwhile chop all the herbs fine and fry them in the oil for twenty minutes, stirring. They shrink to a quarter and darken; that is correct. Add the fenugreek for the last two minutes.

   22 min

4. 4

   Stir the herbs into the pot, prick the dried limes with a fork and drop them in whole. Simmer for another hour.

   60 min

5. 5

   Crush the limes against the side of the pot, season and let it stand fifteen minutes. The sauce should be dark and thick, with oil separated on top.

   18 min

About the dish

The herbs for ghormeh sabzi are fried for twenty minutes, to a dark, nearly black colour. It looks like a mistake and it is the key: raw herbs taste grassy, fried ones give the dense faintly bitter base the dish is known by.

Dried limes — limu amani — are pierced and go in whole. They supply acidity and a characteristic light bitterness lemon cannot reproduce. Towards the end they are crushed against the side of the pot.

Fenugreek in the herb mix is compulsory but goes in sparingly — a tablespoon of dried leaf to a kilo of herbs. Overdoing it ruins the whole pot with a bitterness that cannot be fixed.

Worth knowing

• — The oil rising to the top is a sign of doneness rather than greasiness. In Persian cooking it is called oil on the face and considered correct.
• — Do not break the dried limes early: the seeds inside give an unpleasant bitterness. They are crushed only at the end.
• — Frozen chopped herbs work and save half an hour, but they need longer frying because they release more water.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

640 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Iran

• Tahdig — Rice with a golden crust on the bottom of the pot, made from rice, potato or flatbread.