Khoresh-e Rivas

A seasonal dish of central and northern Iran, tied to the short window in spring when fresh rhubarb (rivas) appears. It belongs to the broad Persian tradition of souring meat stews with a tart plant — here rhubarb stands in the role that dried lime, sour plum or unripe grape play elsewhere. As a home stew bound to a fleeting harvest, it has no single dated origin, but the practice of cooking lamb with herbs and a spring souring agent is an old strand of Persian cookery.

A green-flecked stew, the sauce darkened by long-fried mint and parsley, with cubes of soft lamb suspended in it. Pale pink-green lengths of rhubarb lie on top, just cooked through and beginning to slump. The taste is sharply, cleanly sour from the rhubarb — almost lemony — over the deep savor of the herbs and meat, with a faint sweetness rounding it. The smell of fried mint is unmistakable. Eaten over plain rice.

The mint and parsley are fried in oil before the braise — this tames their raw greenness and builds the dark aromatic base of the sauce, the same logic behind ghormeh sabzi. The rhubarb is the opposite: it is added only in the last ten to fifteen minutes, because it cooks fast and falls apart into stringy mush if left in too long. Its sourness is potent and grassy, so the cook tempers it with a measured amount of sugar rather than letting it dominate.