I wanted to do a dish that had the unusual.  Tongue doesn’t come up very often nor do several of the spices I used.  Here is my redaction of this hearty stew of meat and chickpeas.

Qelyeh-yeSirab – A dish of tripe,tongue, stomach

Translation:

Its method of preparation is that the trip of mountain bovine should be cleaned and cut into small square pieces and the skin of sheep tail fat should be chopped according to the instructions for trip and boiled.  Then the meat of the bovine chest is cut into small squares and added along with peeled chickpeas, onions,spices, especially cinnamon sticks, and quartered bovine tongue and simmered overnight, and in the morning high quality vinegar with sugar and saffron is added and it must be thick. If bovine tripe is not available, sheep tripe can also be made according to this recipe, and a large amount of fat is pounded and added at the step of simmering. 

(ol-Hayat/Ghanoonparvar, pg, 37)

Ingredients:

Tripe (if available)

Beef (I used brisket)

Beef tongue

Cinnamon sticks

Two onions

4 C. garbanzo beans

3.5 Tbs spices containing nutmeg, allspice, ginger, gallingale, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, long pepper, grains of paradise.

½ C. Balsamic vinegar

¼ C. sugar

Large pinch of saffron

Redaction:

            Tripe is one of those items that isn’t usually available at most stores.  I…skipped the tripe.  Terrible of me and even though I cook  weird and a usual even I can’t make tripe palatable to everyone.  I used beef brisket, the flat portion leftover from a full brisket that wouldn’t fit into a baking pan.  The tongue was perfect. 

           Gather your ingredients together.  Don’t worry if you think you have more than anyone will ever eat.  Freezers were made for a reason!

            Even though I was using the smallest possible portions, I had a mountain of meat, roughly four pounds worth.  This required a minimum of two onions sliced and four cups of garbanzo beans.  Even if you have a large crock pot, feel free to add more onions and chickpeas as this will be mostly a meat dish otherwise.

            The brisket was easy enough to cut into squares. More fat should have been added. Feel free to add olive oil or even a bit of sesame oil if beef tallow or sheep tail fat isn’t available. I would even suggest ghee/butter.

           The tongue was a pain.  First you have to boil the tongue for 10 minutes in either water, broth or wine.  I used broth I had on hand from a pot roast done the night before.  

              Next you have to skin said tongue.  The skin on the tongue is rough, touch and totally inedible unless you are starving.  Just don’t try it unless you want to eat shoe leather and the shoe leather will probably be preferred.  

              After skinning the tongue, I cut the tongue into pieces, as square as possible.  Please note how the outside looks done but the inside is still raw.  The boiling phase was only to loosen the outer skin/taste buds of the tongue.

            The spices were fun.  I had made an aratif a few months earlier for a different project and much left over.  For those wondering: *Aratif’s are spice mixtures, unique to merchants and households who had their own ideas of what tasted great.  I used the common and the unusual(by today’s standards) because it smelled amazing.  In period, every cook and household had their own secret blend.  Whatever was preferred by the head of the household or passed down through the generations.

          Every thing went into a crock pot.  It’s a full crock pot.  Don’t worry though, everything fit…mostly.   *Note the whole cinnamon sticks.  Once you use a stick you can’t use it again.  Throw it away. 

           No slow burning fire was available though I would LOVE to have an indoor fire place where I could keep a fire going slowly with the correct pottery pots, just for dishes like this.  Don’t be afraid to work with what you have.  If you don’t have a fireplace or charcoal grill, use a crock pot or an oven.  Put the oven on 200 and let the dish cook for 8-9 hours or on low for the crock pot for 8-9 hours.  Remember brisket and tongue are tough; these meats need long slow simmers to tenderize. 

            Once the dish is almost done, add the vinegar, sugar and saffron.   You don’t need a lot, just another layer of flavor.

            This can be served on its own or over rice or noodles.  See which you like!

        Those green things, aren’t green.  It’s the onions.  The chopped pieces absorbed the coloring of the spices during cooking.  

***Tongue: is an organ meat and will be tough with an unusual flavor if you’re not use to it. Tongue does require long slow cooking time and if not in a period dish, it’s excellent sliced with horseradish and mayo between sourdough bread.