Beef Stew
Abgousht
(By Mrs. Soheila Amiri)

Ingredients:


One cup of Garbanzo beans (nokhod).


One cup of dried white beans (loobia sefeed).
1/2 pound of meat with bones (mAheecheh).
One medium onion, peeled.
One medium potato, peeled.
Half a cup long grain rice.
One medium tomato.
One table spoon turmeric (zard-choobeh).
Salt and pepper to the liking.
Two heads of whole dried lemons (leemoo-amAnee) or
4 tablespoons of lemon juice if you can't find dried lemons.


Directions:


Wash the meat and put it in a medium size pot (deezee
for traditionalists), half filled with water, add the beans, the onion,
turmeric, salt and pepper and let it cook for 1-2 hours on medium-low heat.


Next, add the potato, rice, and the tomato (they get too
soft too soon if you add them at the beginning), and let it cook on low
heat until all the ingredients are soft.

Take the pot out, separate the juice from the ingredients
and pour the ingredients in a bowl, separate the bones and using a potato
masher (gousht-coob) or something similar, finely mash the whole mixture.
Taste a small portion and add more salt/pepper if needed. When the mixture
has a smooth texture, it can be served.

The soup (juice) is also served in a separate bawl. The
idea is to mix it with small pieces of bread (not American bread loaves,
more like pita bread, tortilla bread, or any kind of Iranian bread you
can find in specialty stores).


Hints:


Soak the dried beans and the rice before hand. It speeds
up the cooking process.

The best kind of meat for this dish is what is called
muscle meat (mAheecheh) which has plenty of meat, fat, and bones (the name
used to refer to it escapes me unfortunately. Shank maybe?).

The tomato, potato, and the rice are all optional. They
give richer flavor, color and texture to this dish. In more traditional
versions they don't use any of these ingredients.

While mashing the ingredients, you can also add finely
chopped raw onions. The onion juice gets mixed in and gives it a different
flavor.

At the table, this dish is served with Iranian bread,
raw onions, radishes and fresh herbs such as parsley, basil leaves, mint
leaves, leeks, etc.