An intense dish of herbs and joy!

I've got so captivated by Persian food that I decided to try make something with herbs and spices for my church's congregational dinner. Here comes my improvisation. I bought the dried herbs mixture from Persian grocery stores. They come in packages ready to use.


Recipe: Rice with herbs and meat


Ingredients:
Rice:
- 2 cup jasmine rice (dry)
- 1/4 cup herbs mixture of parsley, leek, cilantro, fenugreek, dill
- finely ground dried lemon peel
- 1 tablespoon (TB) oil
- 1/4 teaspoon (tp) salt
- 4-5 cranberries, cut to small bits
Meat and stock:
- 1 lb of meat with bones, ribs or shoulder cut, chopped to big pieces
- 1/2 onion, cut to 1" pieces
- 2 cloves garlic
- ginger, about 1" cube
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 TB turmeric powder
- dash of cumin
- 2 TB Hormel chili
- 1/4 tp salt


Procedure:
1. Prepare stock by broiling meat pieces in oven at 450F to brown. Then boil meat and its juice with onion, garlic, ginger and bay leaves in a large pot of water for 2 hours. Let sit overnight. Skim of fat. Save 5 cups of stock for use. Keep meat in fridge to cool. Then de-bone and remove any visible fat from meat. (Note: the bones and connective tissues can be boiled in vinegar to make gelatin.)
2. Boil meat with turmeric, cumin, 1/4 tp salt and chili in 2 cup of stock until the liquid thickens to a gravy of about 2 TB. Set aside for use.
3. Wash rice and drain of water. Mix with dried herbs, oil and salt. Add about 1.5 to 2 cups of stock. Let sit for 30 minutes for herbs to hydrate. When the rice mixture is placed in rice cooker, the liquid should barely cover the rice. Then cook in rice cooker. Check frequently to look out when water dries out. Stir to loosen rice. At this point the rice should be a little hard because of the lack of water. If rice is so hard that it's not chewable, then add 1/2 cup stock. Add in the meat with gravy. Stir. Continue to cook for 5 minutes. Then keep warm for 30 minutes. Add cranberries and serve.

My husband enjoyed the rice greatly. I made a huge pot of this dish to share with people on the day of our first snow of this winter. That evening, my husband gave me a very warm hug for doing that.