Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 10, Rice, Reduction and the Country Beyond the Kebab House
Aash lakhshak
Binabaj, Ferdows and Gonabad, Khorasan
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 49 sources in the brief
Aash lakhshak is a thick Khorasani soup of home-made dough, lakhshak, cut and cooked with greens and fried onions, and finished with kashk and fried mint. Fariba Kahani, who registers intangible heritage for South Khorasan, told the Young Journalists Club it is cooked in the village of Binabaj, in Qaenat county, and in Ferdows, for family gatherings and on Shab-e Chelleh, the longest night of winter. The skill of cooking it went on Iran's national list in October 2022.
The Khorasani lexicographer Parvin Gonabadi wrote that in Ferdows and Gonabad lakhshak is an aash of dough pieces cut and cooked in water, also called aash-e barg, leaf aash. Dehkhoda, as quoted, says lakhshak was eaten by everyone and aash reshteh by the gentry. No Binabaj or Ferdows recipe with quantities was found; the quantities here are the Gonabad version's, from the next county along, as the Iranian culture site Seeiran gives it. Mashhad's version adds lentils; Gonabad's has none.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. A Shab-e Chelleh aash.
Ingredients
- 500g spinach, cleaned
- 3 onions, sliced
- 3 to 4 tbsp oil
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 9 cups water
- to taste salt
- to taste black pepper
- 500g lakhshak, dried dough pieces
- as needed kashk, ground
- for garnish fried mint
- to taste saffron
Method
- Cook the spinach with a little water over low heat for 20 minutes, then chop it fine.
- Fry the onions in the oil until golden and add the turmeric.
- Add the water, salt and black pepper and bring it to the boil.
- Break in the lakhshak and stir with a wooden spoon so the pieces do not stick. Simmer gently for half an hour.
- Add the spinach and cook 15 minutes more.
- Take it off the heat until it stops boiling, then stir in the kashk. Finish with more kashk, the fried mint and the saffron.
Notes
The national heritage officer says the ingredients of the Binabaj aash are native herbs, and names none. Kourosh, a supermarket's magazine, gives a lakhshak dough of flour, salt, egg and water, rested an hour, cut in strips two fingers wide and dried; no source from the region gives the dough.
What a modern chef changes
The dough made fresh, the kashk tempered, the mint fried to order
Rung 3
Method
- Make the lakhshak yourself and cut it in pieces, as Gonabadi describes, not ribbons, and dry it a day so it holds in the pot.
- Temper the kashk: thin it with a ladle of the hot aash before it goes in, off the boil, so it does not split.
- Fry the dried mint in oil to a deep green, just short of black, and pour it over at the table. Rung 3: the herb's depth is made in the fat, and a few seconds too long turns it bitter.
- Use beet leaf for half the spinach, as Mashhad does, for a greener, earthier aash.