Khoresh 'eh Rivas
a beef and rhubarb stew
In the early spring, there are very few vegetables available fresh here. We have a small cold frame, so there are a few cold-hardy greens in there, and usually some parsley hanging on in the greenhouse from last summer, but not much and by the end of winter, we are ravenous for fresh green vegetables. Rhubarb comes up early and reliably, but once we had a few rhubarb plants in (they’re great plants to have, for groundcover and weed suppression), I had more rhubarb in the spring than I wanted for pies or cakes or the other typical rhubarb sweet foods. I love all those things, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to find ways to use it as a vegetable, without adding a ton of sugar. I began looking around for savory recipes using rhubarb — and why not? It’s very sour, so why shouldn’t it be useful in savory foods where some sourness is wanted?
One of the recipes I landed on during my search was this one. It’s for a Persian beef and rhubarb stew, and I’m not going to pretend to have any idea how authentic it is or how it’s pronounced or anything like that. What I can tell you is that it’s become one of our favorite spring (and usually again in the fall, right before the rhubarb freezes to the ground, and sometimes in winter with frozen rhubarb) meals. I have adapted that recipe somewhat to being cooked in the crockpot, so the instructions I give below are for the crockpot version.
Beef and Rhubarb Stew
Olive oil
2 lbs beef stew meat (IIRC, this is also good with lamb stew meat)
2 cups chopped parsley1, roughly chopped
6 sprigs fresh mint, finely chopped; or 1 tsp dried mint
2 onions, sliced
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
2 tsp grated garlic
1 tsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp saffron, dissolved in a little hot water
8 stalks fresh rhubarb
Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the beef cubes. You’re looking to brown the beef cubes which usually goes best when a) the cubes are dried off before being put in the pan and b) are not too crowded in the pan, as crowded meat tends to steam instead of brown. I am usually too lazy, honestly, to dry my beef cubes off, and I just hastily throw a hefty sprinkle of salt on them as soon as I put them in the heated pan. But if you’re the organized type who pre-salts meat for some time, then by all means, do that, and then dry the cubes off, if you like, and brown them. If you’re that kind of person, you certainly don’t need me telling you how to brown meat.
Remove the meat once it is nicely browned from that pan and put it into your crockpot. Add the onions to the skillet, with a little more olive oil as you see fit, and give them a nice sprinkling of salt, too. Saute them until they are turning translucent. They should have picked up some nice color from the browned meat, too. Now, add the roughly chopped parsley leaves and stems, the mint (dried or fresh), the turmeric, black pepper, garlic, and ginger to the onions. Saute another minute or so, to let the flavors bloom and meld a bit. Add all of this to the crockpot. If it looks like there is still delicious beef browning residue on the bottom of your skillet, pour a half-cup of water into the skillet and scrape it up, then add that water to your crockpot as well.
Add a total of 5 cups of water to the crockpot (including any water you used to scrape up the browned bits from your skillet). Add the saffron to the crockpot with its hot water. I really cannot recommend skimping on the saffron; it is not optional here. Turn the crockpot on high and go do something else for 2 hours.
Peel the rhubarb if it’s stringy and cut it into 2-inch pieces. Add the rhubarb to the crockpot (this is a handy time to check for salt levels, too, although you’ll want to check once more at the end), turn the thing to low, and let it cook until you’re ready to eat, hopefully around 2-3 hours or so, but a crockpot on low is a forgiving thing. If you need to eat before 2 hours would be up, leave it on high.
If you’re not going to be home and need dinner to be ready the minute you walk in the door, add the rhubarb at the start and probably cook it on low the entire time, depending on how long you’re going to be gone. You could add the rhubarb once you get home and turn it up to high for an hour or so and that would probably be fine, too, and might preserve the rhubarb’s texture better, but I haven’t tried either of these suggestions, as I’m usually home for much of the day. I do a lot of crockpot cooking, though, and I think those should roughly work out.
You can add a bit of sugar (1-2 tablespoons) at the end if you think it’s too sour, and, of course, add more salt if you think it needs it at the end.
We like this served over rice or couscous.
Like a lot of Middle Eastern recipes, this calls for a lot of fresh parsley. I have started imagining, thanks to such recipes, the entire Middle East and Meditteranean regions as one large herb garden. It must be for them to always have such large quantities of fresh herbs around. For those of us with small or unreliable herb gardens, you can get away with using only a cup of fresh parsley, although it’s better with the full two cups. Roughly chop it including the stems, unless those stems are very thick, such as when the plant is bolting.