Saffron...oh so delicioso!!!

Well as I promised I wanted to share my favorite recipes throughout the weeks and months with you!
Today I made this absolutely delicious Persian Lamb Stew...mmmmm simply incredible!
Here is the recipe and the changes I made to it because I lacked some of the ingredients (I know that this is not the authentic version but it's really good), make it as is but I can tell you that my version was amazing to say the least!!!


Recipe:   
Persian Lamb and Chickpea Stew (Qormeh Sabzi)

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
• 1 1/2 lbs lamb shoulder, finely chopped (I bought the lamb stew meat from Publix it was about $4 for a lbs and worked great, I only used the 1lbs and it was plenty!)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt
• fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp turmeric (I couldn't find this so I used 1/2 tsp ground dry mustard and a pinch of saffron threads, I soaked the saffron in the called for 1/2 cup of warm water. don't worry if you don't have saffron or turmeric you can use dry ground mustard alone as well)
• 1/3 cup lemon juice (I used bottled but I think that fresh would taste a lot better)
• 1/2 cup of warm water (I added the pinch of saffron threads to this so it became a nice yellow color)
• 10 green onions, chopped thin
• 3 tbsp finely chopped celery leaves (this gave a really nice flavor!)
• 1/2 lbs fresh spinach chopped (I only had half a bag of baby spinach that I used)
• 3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 2/3 cup cooked garbanzo beans (I used 1 can of bush's chickpeas or garbanzo beans un-drained

Directions: 

1.  Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large pan (I had to use more than that because I have stainless steel pans). And saute the lamb until well browned on all sides.
2. Add the chopped onion, cooking until soft, then add salt, pepper to taste, turmeric (or dry ground mustard), lemon juice and water (mine had the added saffron in it) to a boil.
3. Lower heat and cover, simmering for 15min.
4. Heat 2 tbsp (again a little more if you have stainless steel pans) oil in a skillet and saute green onions, celery leaves, spinach and parsley for about two minutes.
5. Add these vegetables and the chickpeas (I added the whole un-drained can to the stew) to the meat and mix thoroughly.
6. Bring to a boil. then lower heat and simmer another 20min (I simmered it longer like another 10min cause I had bigger pieces of Lamb) or until meat is tender, adding water as necessary to keep up with consistency (I didn't need to add water because I had added the un-drained beans)
7. Serve over steamed basmati rice (I had made my own saffron rice by soaking another good pinch of saffron in the warm rice water before cooking the rice) 

Hope you enjoy! We definitely did!!!