Ghormeh sabzi

Before you start

• dried limes and dried fenugreek leaves, from a Middle Eastern grocer
• soak the kidney beans overnight, or use a drained tin
• about 3h, nearly all of it the pot on its own

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 350glamb shoulder — cut into large cubes
• 220gbasmati rice
• 80gdried red kidney beans — or a drained tin, stirred in near the end
• 600gparsley, coriander and chives
• 2 tbspdried fenugreek leaves
• 4dried limes — limoo omani — pierced, never cut open
• 2onions
• 1½ tbspoil
• 1 tspturmeric

Method

9 steps

1. soak · 8 hours walk away

   Kidney beans under plenty of cold water overnight.

2. boil · 12m

   Drained, covered with fresh water and boiled HARD for a full ten minutes before they go anywhere near a slow pot. Undercooked red kidney beans are genuinely poisonous, and only a proper rolling boil deals with it — a long gentle simmer does not. Then drained again.

3. boil · 50m walk away

   Fresh water again, and simmered until they are tender right to the middle.

4. chop · 25m

   Herbs washed, dried properly and chopped fine. This is the long job and there is no way round it: it should look like an absurd amount of greenery before it goes near the pan.

5. fry · 20m

   Herbs and fenugreek into the oil over medium heat and stirred until they collapse and darken almost to black-green and smell nutty rather than grassy. Underfried, the whole stew tastes of lawn.

6. fry · 14m

   In a second pan, onions cooked to gold, then the lamb browned hard in batches with the turmeric.

7. simmer · 2 hours walk away

   Everything into one pot with water barely to cover, and the dried limes pierced twice each and dropped in whole. Lid ajar, barest bubble. Split one open and the pot turns bitter for good.

8. boil · 20m walk away

   Rice on separately, rinsed, lid, lowest heat.

9. finish · 5m

   Beans in for the last half hour and salt only at the very end. It should read sour first and rich second, which is the opposite of most stews.