Bozbash

The green version of the mashed stew: herbs and leeks where the other has potato and tomato.

Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains lamb.

Ingredients

• 1 kg lamb shoulder, on the bone, in large pieces
• 250 g dried white or red beans, soaked overnight
• 3 leeks, sliced
• 100 g parsley, chopped
• 40 g fenugreek leaves, chopped, or 15 g dried
• 30 g mint, chopped
• 2 onions, sliced
• 3 dried limes, pierced twice each
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• flatbread and a pickled green-vegetable relish, to serve

Method

1. THE GREEN VERSION OF THE MASHED STEW: HERBS AND LEEKS WHERE THE OTHER HAS POTATO AND TOMATO. Its own article gives the composition in one sentence and that sentence is the whole difference -- meat, usually lamb, with red or white beans, green vegetables, herbs such as parsley, fenugreek and mint, onions and leeks, dried limes and little more than salt, pepper and turmeric. There is no potato in it and no tomato. So where the other version of this stew is starchy and faintly sweet, this one is green, bitter at the edge from the fenugreek, and sharp from the limes. Its other name says it plainly: the herb abgoosht.
2. IT IS STRAINED AND MASHED LIKE ITS RELATIVE, AND ITS ARTICLE SAYS SO. When the ingredients are thoroughly cooked the solids are lifted out and mashed to a pulp -- gusht-e kubide -- and the broth and the pulp are then served separately with flatbread and a pickled green-vegetable relish. Same two courses, different contents.
3. THE HERBS GO IN RAW AND LATE, NOT FRIED FIRST. Unlike the fried-herb stew on this site, nothing here is sauteed: its article has everything simmered together in water over low heat for several hours. So the parsley, fenugreek and mint go in for the last forty minutes, which is long enough to soften and release into the broth and short enough that the broth stays green rather than going brown.
4. THE LEEKS ARE SLICED THICK AND GO IN EARLY. Three of them, in two-centimetre rounds, in with the beans and the meat. They are a vegetable here rather than an aromatic and they are meant to survive into the mash.
5. THE BEANS CAN BE RED OR WHITE AND ARE SOAKED OVERNIGHT. Its article allows either. Twelve hours in cold water, drained, then into the pot from the start -- they need the full three hours.
6. SEVERAL HOURS AT A LOW SIMMER, WHICH THE ARTICLE SPECIFIES. Three is right for shoulder on the bone. Lid on, the surface barely moving, skimmed early.
7. THE SPICING IS DELIBERATELY BARE. Salt, pepper and turmeric -- that is the list its article gives, and with three herbs and three limes in the pot there is nothing for a spice blend to add. Cinnamon or advieh here would make it taste like a different stew.
8. IT IS SOMETIMES EATEN COLD, AND MEATBALLS ARE AN OPTION. Its article records it among meat stews and soups that are often eaten cold, and notes a version built around meatballs rather than pieces of meat. The mashing step makes no sense with meatballs, so that is a different serving altogether.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes