The beans in their initial soak.

Cilantro

Parsley

Chives from the garden.

2 peppers also from the garden. Most Persian food isn’t spicy, but I wanted to spice it up a bit.

A quick call to Nooshins mother revealed that dried mint is a decent replacement for the fenugreek in this stew, something the internet couldn’t tell me.

The rice cooks like pasta in a large amount of water, then it is drained before it is finished cooking and set up in the pan to form the golden crust.

Rince the rice after it’s first cooking portion.

The recipe called for salt, but I was unsure of how much to put in. this is because usually when you cook dried beans, you are not supposed to put salt in until the last 5 minutes of cooking. Here I salted the beef and onions, but didn’t add anymore salt when I added the beans.

mix half the rice in melted butter. Here we added some chives.

The beans and water go in after browning the beef.

The buttered rice goes at the bottom of the pan, and unbuttered in a layer on top.

This step was interesting cause we don’t normally sauté herbs like this. The smell was amazing.

Nooshin is a workhorse in the kitchen.

We added some lime juice and dried kaffir lime leaves to the pot since we didn’t have dried limes.

This mix goes in after 20 minutes of cooking.

half way through the forming of the rice crust, a towel goes in the pan to absorb moisture..

Awesome! Next time I make this I am hoping to have a better pan so I can just turn it over and have the crust still fully intact.

Delicious.