Another Damn Cooking Blog

The last time I made ghormeh sabzi, I was too worn out to list the ingredients or a recipe. This is an all afternoon kind of meal, but it is worth the work. I started by going to the market around noon and picking up fresh herbs and vegetables, and I stopped cooking around 7:00PM. Here are the rest of the ingredients:

To start: chop all of the greens up, or put them into the food processor.

Remember all of those veggies at the top? They turn into this:

Cook this down for about 10 minutes, until it is not longer steaming. Then put a tablespoon or so of oil in, and saute them until they look like this:

At this point, I’ve been on my feet for a couple of hours, cutting, standing at the stove, doing dishes, cleaning up for the next big mess I’m about to make…and since I no longer partake of the narcotics, and I really don’t like weed that much…out comes the Riesling.

That vegetable concoction needs to be stirred pretty continuously, so while you are at the stove, you’ll want to start heating up the seeds and whole spices in another good sized pot.

When you can really smell those spices, throw in the onions, garlic, ginger, and shallots.

Cook that until browned. It’s all green and healthy so far, right? Here comes the meat!

Then comes the beef:

Put the meat in with the onions, and brown it, but don’t cook all the way through. Just enough so that the onions can caramelize and the meat gets a nice brown crust.

Add 3 or so cups of water to the mix, bring to a boil, and simmer for 15 minutes. It will look something like this:

Now it’s time to add the cooked greens and all of the spices! I don’t measure this stuff…I just keep putting it in until it looks and smells right.

Simmer for half an hour, and then add two cans of kidney beans.

Simmer for another hour, and it’s done!

Serve over Persian rice with tah dig, which I attempted again yesterday. It came out pretty well. I’m getting close, I can feel it!