Dizi (Abgoosht)

As tradition built it

Serves 4. 3 to 4 hours.

Ingredients

• 500g lamb shank or neck
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 tin chickpeas
• 1 tin white beans
• 2 whole limoo amani, pierced with a knife
• 1 potato, diced
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• to cover generously water, to cover generously
• to serve flatbread, to serve
• pinch a pinch of salt, for seasoning the pounded solids at the table

Method

1. In a small stoneware crock or a heavy pot, combine the lamb, sliced onion, chickpeas, white beans, pierced dried limes, diced potato, tomato paste, turmeric and enough water to cover generously.
2. Simmer, covered, at the barest bubble for three to four hours, until the meat is falling from the bone.
3. To serve, pour the broth off into a separate bowl and eat it first with torn flatbread, tilit.
4. Then pound the remaining solids, meat, beans, potato, in the pot itself with a hand masher, goosht-koob, into a coarse paste, seasoning at this point with a pinch of salt, and eat the pounded mixture with more bread, the diner completing the dish's own construction at the table.

What a modern chef changes

Rung 6

Method

1. Cook the shank itself sous vide first, at a precise low temperature for several hours until properly tender but not yet falling apart, then finish it in the traditional broth for a shorter final simmer, so the meat's texture is controlled independently of the broth's own reduction rather than both happening at once and fighting each other.
2. Follow Kerman's own boz ghormeh variant and fold kashk and a generous quantity of fried garlic through the pounded mixture at the table, rather than leaving it plain, a genuine regional practice rather than an invented flourish.
3. Serve the poured-off broth first through a fine sieve for full clarity, a small, deliberate act of polish that changes nothing about the dish's substance but everything about how it reads on the plate.