My first try at Grormeh sabzi
Tender meat with greens, beans, and herbs
Cooking Time: 2–3 hours
Active cooking time: 1 hour
Skill level: if you can fry onions, you can do this
Yesterday I tried to make Ghormeh sabzi, which is a traditional Iranian cuisine dish, and is incredibly flavorful.
I improvised a bit and added lemongrass. Not my best idea. Lemongrass has too strong a flavor, and this dish should be a funk of flavors. Better stick to traditional dried lime, or at least lemon juice. Anyway, tasty. Here’s how the end product looks like:
It also smells like heaven thanks to the spice called fenugreek. Traditional dish requires fenugreek, but if you want to try the concept and don’t have fenugreek, use the strongest of your favourite herbs. Oregano would be not bad, I guess.
Ingredients
Greens set is flexible: if you can’t find something, take more spinach.
- Beef or lamb, for pot roast, 0.5 lb
- Half an onion
- Spinach 2 bunch
- Parsley 1 bunch
- Cilantro 1 bunch
- Scallions 1 bunch
- Fresh mint 1 bunch
- 1 lime or 1 lemon or their fresh juice, or 1–2 dried limes if you know were to get one, or not lazy — then you can prepare a few yourself (limes need to dry for a week or so, beware)
- 1 leek — optional, if you like it
- Few fresh garlic cloves
- Dried red beans, or canned red beans
- Common herbs: turmeric, dried mint, cumin, black pepper
- Rare herbs: zira, fenugreek leaves, dried lime. Substitute fenugreek with your favorite strong herb. Oregano is one suggestion.
- Salt
- Water
- Oil for frying (I used rapeseed, could be sunflower or corn)
Process
Better to cut all the greens in advance.
Regarding cookware, anything you usually use for stew is fine. Preferably with lid. Meat and onion frying is easier using something closer to skillet. I used huge deep stew-pan to heat up the greens, and a pan with thick bottom to fry and roast meat, putting greens in there later. Could do the opposite: put meat in wherever greens were stewing for final stage.
- Cut all the greens
Wash all the greens: leek, spinach, parsley, cilantro, scallions, fresh mint.
Cut them into small pieces, 1/3–1/2 inch.
Traditional recipe says “use only green parts of leek and scallions”, which I missed, and only used white parts of leeks ’cause that’s what I always do. Anyway a leek was less prominent in end product than 1 teaspoon of lemongrass I experimented with, and don’t advice you. Next time I won’t use leek at all, I think I’ll try bok choy.
Heat small amount of oil in deep stew pan, high heat, add greens, squeeze lemon or lime juice into pan.
In 2 min reduce heat to low, add half a cup of water, and cover pan with lid. Let it sweat for 5 minutes. Turn it off. It doesn’t have to be cooked-through, it’s just a beginning.
2. Fry onion and meat
Heat medium amount of oil in skillet (or whatever you’re using for frying). Cut an onion into small pieces, put it into skillet, add half teaspoon of turmeric, let it fry until golden brown (3–4 min, medium-high heat).
Cut meat into 1–2 inch chunks (removing big pieces of fat or joining tissue), add to onions, fry on each side (1-2 min, high heat). Don’t forget to salt it all!
Reduce heat to lowest possible, add half cup of water, let it bubble for 10 min.
3. Final stage
Wash red beans under cold water for 1 min. Optionally (better) to use dried beans, let them stand in water overnight before cooking.
Join “sweaty” greens, red beans and meat in one big pot (same you were stewing greens in is fine. I used other pan you can do pretty much anything in, which is especially good for long low-heat simmering due to thick bottom).
Add 1 table spoon of dried fenugreek, half a teaspoon of each zira, half a teaspoon of cumin, few tablespoons of dried mint, 2 dried limes if you have them. Thew in few garlic cloves. Try it for salt. Add half a cup / cup of water, depends on what texture you prefer.
Let is simmer for at least 1.5 hours!
I used caraway seeds and fennel, smashing them before putting in a pan. This makes spices more likely to share their smells with the food. For smashing I used cocktail muddler.
Next time I will try to find more traditional herbs: zira, cumin, dried mint, dried lime and fenugreek leaves (the one on picture is made of other parts of fenugreek plants, and is less suitable).
Cheers, Jane.
Original recipe: https://stalic-kitchen.livejournal.com/638877.html
