Ash-e reshteh

Before you start

• soak the chickpeas and white beans overnight
• kashk from a Middle Eastern grocer, or thick yoghurt in its place
• a big pot — this makes a great deal

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 120gdried chickpeas
• 70gdried white beans
• 60gbrown lentils
• 90greshteh noodles — or linguine, broken in half
• 600gparsley, coriander and spinach
• 100ggreek yoghurt — kashk if you can find it — sourer and saltier
• 2onions
• 3 tbspoil
• 2 tspdried mint and turmeric

Method

9 steps

1. soak · 8 hours walk away

   Chickpeas and white beans in cold water overnight, in separate bowls — they cook at different speeds.

2. boil · 12m

   Both drained, covered with fresh water and boiled hard for ten full minutes before they go into the slow pot. White beans are kidney beans under another name and are toxic undercooked; a rolling boil is what deals with that, not hours at a simmer.

3. simmer · 1 hour walk away

   Fresh water, and left until tender, with the lentils added for the last twenty minutes.

4. chop · 20m

   Herbs and spinach chopped — far more than looks sensible, because they cook down to almost nothing.

5. fry · 28m

   Onions sliced thin and fried slowly in most of the oil until deep brown and sweet. Half comes out for the top: this is piaz dagh, and a good half of Persian cooking begins with it.

6. simmer · 30m

   Greens into the pot with plenty of water, stirred now and then, until they go dark and the soup thickens by itself.

7. boil · 10m

   Noodles broken straight into the soup rather than cooked separately — their starch is what gives it body. Stir, or they weld to the bottom.

8. fry · 2m

   The last of the oil taken off the heat and the dried mint stirred into it for a few seconds only. Mint scorches instantly and turns acrid.

9. finish · 5m

   Yoghurt loosened with a spoonful of hot soup first, then stirred in well off the boil, with mint oil and fried onion over each bowl.