Casseroles

When the Iranians aren’t cooking over fire, they tend to eat khoresht, or stew. Now our word stew, or even its rather grander cousin, casserole, is resonant of school dinners, Bisto-flavoured bowls of overcooked ingredients, food as a punishment. In Iran it is an art-form, and there are hundreds of varieties. Some, like the rich, sharp ghormeh sabzi, are national classics, and others, like cardoon casserole, are regional favourites, unheard of in other parts of the country. Some are eaten with rice, and others with bread. They are mostly gloriously simple to make – one-pot affairs. Jamshid’s family eat a lot of khoresht, and so we have developed very much our own style of preparing them.