Ash-e mash: Ash (thick soup) is traditionally served in the winter. It is the type of soup that Seinfeld made famous through the character the “Soup Nazi,” aka Ali Yeganeh. Ash is a fantastic soup that tastes so good that it is impossible to have one bowl, but falling deep into a food coma is quite common after eating one bowl. This hearty and nutritional soup is very flavorful, and an array of different types of ash are made. Ash-e mash is a thick soup that uses mung beans as the base. I have made some changes to this soup. Typically, the only bean in this soup is mung beans, but I added lentils and chickpeas. Also, it usually has winter squash or fresh pumpkin, but I went with what was in the kitchen. Lastly, because of dietary restrictions, garlic and onions were not added.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of Mung beans
- 0.5 cup chickpeas
- 0.5 cup lentils
- 0.25 tsp of black pepper
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 2 cups diced turnips
- 0.5 cup rice
- 4 cups chopped arugula, spinach, kale, chard
- 1 cup of liquid why or sour cream (kashk)
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 2 bay leaves
Start by soaking the beans overnight. When you are ready to cook, strain and rinse the beans. I have always cooked ash (Persian soup) in a crockpot, but I decided to use an electric pressure cooker this time. Place the beans and rice in the pressure cooker and add water. With an electric pressure cooker, little to no water is lost, so you can easily get away with adding enough water so that the water line is 1-1.5 inches above the beans. Add your spices, mustard seed, and bay leaves. Set the pressure cooker to cook for 25 minutes on high. What I found that works best is once the time is up, do not release the pressure. Allow the pressure to release that way, and the beans can thoroughly cook slowly.
Once the pressure has been released, add your veggies and set the pressure cooker to cook for another 5 minutes. After it’s all done, add 1 cup of liquid whey or sour cream. If you have Kashk that would be the best to add. The dish doesn’t call for salt because kashk has a salty taste; if you use liquid whey or sour cream, add salt to taste.
For a garnish, you can fry mint flakes and turmeric and make a lovely pattern with kashk before mixing everything. I decided to dig in and skipped that step.
