Saturday 26 May 2012

Zereshk polo- Chicken with barberries sauce

This is my all time favorite and I have  not put it on the blog so far because I thought it is far too simple, but then I thought it is way too good not to be shared. This serves 2-3.
Ingredients:
Barberries: 1 cup
Chicken: 2-3 pieces
Onion: 1 medium
Water: 2 cups
Turmeric: 1 tsp
salt: 1 tsp
pepper: 1tsp
Butter: 1 Tsp
Sugar: 2.5 Tsp

Fry the onion for 2-3 minutes, then add the chicken and fry it for 10-12 minutes until golden. Cover it with boiled water and let it cook thoroughly. In a small pan, add the butter and fry the barberries for 1-2 minutes then add the sugar and  1 cup of the water from the chicken mixture and fry them all together for 5-7 minutes. If you like add more sugar ( I personally like it very sweet) towards the end add a dash of saffron to the chicken.Cook some fluffy rice and dish it up. Enjoy!

Sunday 20 May 2012

Lamb lever scotch egg

There is a nice and local butcher which I get all my meat from and occasionally they have lamb lever, nice and shiny, I know the best way to cook lamb lever (at least for Iranians) is to dice it and skew it and grill on a BBQ, but at the flat I am living, I cannot BBQ (sigh) . On the other hand, I love scotch eggs, but to be honest the idea of it being deep fried does not go very well with my diet, so here is my oven baked lamb lever scotch egg. The recipe is for one (quite big) ball of scotch egg :-)
Lamb lever: 200 grams
Egg boiled: 1
Bread crumbs: 1 cup
Salt and pepper: to taste
Vegetable oil: 1Tsp


Chop or blend the lever until it is like a lumpy mash, add bread crumbs, salt and pepper to the mixture. Wrap it completely with a boiled egg. You don't need to dip it in beaten egg as the mashed lever is quite moist any way and you can just cover it with breadcrumbs. Put it on an oven tray covered with a bit of vegetable oil and let it be for around 20-25 minutes in a 190degrees oven. Serve it with nice greens with a dash of balsamic.



Celery Khoresh

Celery is one of my favorite greens and they say they are really good for burning fat. This is recipe is a khoresh with celery and fresh/dried herbs, its tasty and refreshing and like other types of khoresh, its great for dinner parties as you can make it beforehand and it goes a long way. So here is the recipe for 2-3.
Onion: 1 medium
Celery : 4-5 sticks-diced (2-3 cm pieces)
Lamb: 5-6 pieces- diced
Dried herb (Dill, parsley): 2 Tsp
Dried lime/ lemon juice: 1-2 (to taste)
Water (boiled): 1 pint
Beef cube: 1
Turmeric: 1tsp
Salt and pepper: to taste
Vegetable oil : 1 Tsp


Fry the onion in the pan until nice and golden, add the celery and fry them as well. Add the lamb and a lot of pepper (black pepper),  turmeric , do not add the salt yet or the lamb will go chewy, also the beef cube which we will add towards the end is quite salty, so taste before adding any more salt. Add the dried lime and the herbs and introduce them to each other in the pan, add the boiled water to the mixture and let it be until the lamb is tender (around 1 hour or so). Then add the beef cube and maybe some lemon juice to taste. Serve it with nice fluffy rice with maybe a dollop of yogurt.