Passport & Plate -
Iran | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 2 photos
Ingredients
[For the stew]
?250 g tinned sabzi mix*
?2 kg beef short ribs?1 tsp ground turmeric?
1.5 tbsp tomato paste?
3 tsp tamarind paste?
1 can (400g) kidney beans, drained and rinsed?
1 can (400g) butter beans, drained and rinsed?
3 Persian dried limes*?
1L beef stock
[For the chelow]?
4 cups basmati rice?
100g unsalted butter?
2 tsp turmeric?
1 tbsp oil?
2 tbsp salt
How to prepare this recipeFor the stew, fry off a sabzi mix in a little oil on medium heat till it’s fragrant and slightly dried out. Add the turmeric and tomato paste, and cook out the tomato paste for another minute or two.
Add the short ribs and tamarind paste, and cover with the beef stock. If it’s not quite enough to cover the ribs, add a little more water.
Pierce the persian limes carefully with a knife and, using a wooden spoon or spatula, press them down into the simmering liquid.
Simmer for 2 hours till the beef is tender and falls off the bone. Just before serving, add the drained and rinsed beans to the stew and simmer for another 10 minutes to warm through.
For the rice, bring a large pot of water to the boil (about 5L). Add the salt, and the rice, stirring briefly to make sure that the rice doesn’t clump together and the grains remain separate.
Once the grains are par cooked - about 10-15 minutes - drain the rice in a colander.
Return the pot to the heat with the butter, oil and tumeric. Once the butter is melted and foaming, swirl the pot to make sure that the butter is coating the base of the pot.
Add the rice back to the pot with 1/4 cup of water, and use the back end of a wooden spoon to make ‘holes’ in the mound of rice, mimicking steam vents. Cover the pot and leave on high heat for about 2 minutes.
Then turn down the heat to low and leave the rice to steam for another 20-30 minutes. This will create the tahdigg. The rice is done when you can smell the butter frying the base layer of rice. Turn the heat off and rest the rice for 5 minutes before serving.
*These ingredients can be found in most Persian supermarkets.
The story behind this recipeI fell in love with a Persian man.
He came from a troubled family - his mother had passed away, his father exiled by the Iranian government, and he had to be smuggled out of Iran eight years later with his sister and his uncle. Travelling first through Pakistan with little funds, before finally making it into Australia.
Since he was separated from his dad for so long, it was up to his grandmother to raise him. He would tell me stories of going to school in the middle of a blizzard, and the welcoming smells from her kitchen as he arrived home. Family dinners were enjoyed sitting on a rug on the floor with all the food laid out - there were just too many people to fit at a table - and the dishes varied with the amount of money his grandmother had to make do with that week. Life was hard and funds were limited, but he remembers an abundance of delicious meals - a testament to her cooking.
His grandmother didn’t come with him to Australia, and he doesn’t know whether she’s still alive. But family meals whipped up by his grandmother remain a fond memory for him, and his sister had kindly agreed to teach me how to create his favourite dish - ghormeh sabzi.
Ghormeh Sabzi is a stew - sabzi refers to the herb mix that forms the base of this fragrant pot of comfort. The sabzi mix can vary from recipe to recipe - I’ve seen versions that include spinach, dill, parsley and other herbs - but most families get a tinned or dried mixture for convenience.
This beautiful dark stew is also spiced with tumeric, echoed in the chelow that it’s served with. Chelow is long grain rice cooked in a Persian method: first by boiling, then steaming, with some butter added to the pot with turmeric to create a fragrant crispy base of rice called tahdigg, which literally means “bottom of the pot”.
These methods can seem lengthy and tedious, but are worth every step. Perfect for winter, there is little more comforting than a heaping scoop of chelow, topped with this rich hearty stew.
