Persian · Soup

Ash-e Reshteh

Intermediate
45 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Vegetarian

herb-fresh · earthy · aromatic · warm-spiced Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, an earthy, grounding base, fading in warm spice.

Ingredients

150 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
150 g dried red kidney beans, soaked overnight
120 g green lentils
2.5 L water
450 g onions, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, sliced
100 ml sunflower oil
5 g ground turmeric
300 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped
300 g spinach, chopped
150 g coriander, chopped
150 g garlic chives or spring onion greens, chopped
250 g reshteh noodles
200 g kashk
10 g dried mint
12 g salt

The skills inside

Reducing a sauce Frying the paste until the oil splits Soaking dried goods back to life

The words inside

Flat-leaf Parsley

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Simmer the drained chickpeas and kidney beans in the water until they crush easily between finger and thumb, adding the lentils for the last 25 minutes. 25 min
Fry the onions in half the oil until deep brown and reserve half of them; soften the garlic in the same pan, stir in the turmeric and tip pan and all into the pot.
Add the parsley, spinach, coriander and chives by the bowlful, salt, and simmer until the ash is dark green and a spoon dragged across leaves a track that closes slowly.
Break in the reshteh and cook until soft, stirring often so it cannot settle and catch; its starch is what gives the soup its body.
Lift the remaining oil off the heat, wait fifteen seconds, then stir in the dried mint until it darkens and smells of mint toffee, no longer.
Take the pot off the boil, stir in three quarters of the kashk, then swirl the rest over each bowl with the mint oil and the reserved fried onions.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes

Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.

Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

At the Table

The Pour: Sauvignon Blanc (Sancerre)
Also Right: Grüner Veltliner
From the Taps: Berliner weisse
Zero-Proof: Cucumber-lime water

Green plates want green wines: vinaigrette’s acid meets its match, and the difficult vegetables surrender to Grüner.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Ash-e Reshteh The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Persian kitchen