SETH: Chef.

SEBASTIAN: Seth.

How you doing, buddy?

SETH: Doing pretty well, and, uh, I like whatever I'm seeing in here.

SEBASTIAN: That is a bone-in lamb shank, which is the signature dish on our menu, so.

SETH: Oh, wonderful.

SEBASTIAN: Depending on which part of the country you are in, uh, there's gonna be different variations of the lamb shank stew.

This one in particular is actually from the north western region of the country, uh, known as the Kurdish province.

SETH: Well, I do love lamb, and these things look like they've been, uh, kinda cooking away for a while, um... SEBASTIAN: Yeah, they've been braising for about six hours now.

SETH: Six hours.

All right.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah.

SETH: Um, so where do the rest of these beautiful ingredients come in?

SEBASTIAN: So the trick of making this dish is a two-part process.

Cook the, uh, the meat separately first.

It betters absorbs, uh, the spices.

Second part is assembling and combining all the ingredients.

So the first process is to add the olive oil, and you might want to be careful over here because we're getting ready to add the garlic and the onions.

You can see we are using a, a significant amount of onions.

SETH: A generous... A generous portion.

SEBASTIAN: So once you onion, onion, the garlic, the trick here is to make sure the onions get browned a little bit.

Now we're gonna go ahead and start adding the other ingredients, so we're gonna start out with the homemade tomato paste.

If you are in Tehran, typically the lamb shanks are just made with the broth, the saffron butter, the lime juice, the garlic, and the onions, okay?

That's it.

It's very tasty.

But if you go to the north-most part of Iran, that's when you start seeing tomato paste and a whole other new set of, uh, spices.

Now that we have a nice consistency going on with the to... With the base of the broth, this is where we add the saffron butter, and you're gonna add the fresh-squeezed lime juice, chili flakes, and red paprika.

Cinnamon, the Kurds love cinnamon for their stews, and it's not a dominating flavor but it's, it's one of those flavors you can... You can... You can sense it in the background.

We're gonna go ahead and add the cumin, rosemary, chili peppers, and last but not least, the turmeric.

SETH: Oh, so yeah, that will give it a nice color as well.

SEBASTIAN: That's the color.

So this is where you want to go ahead and lower the hea...

Uh, the, the temperature a little bit.

And so now that we have the, uh, the broth, uh, spices, and flavors, uh, completed, we're gonna go ahead and add it to the actual lamb shank broth.

SETH: Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

That smells so good.

SEBASTIAN: The meat at this point has, has been cooking for hours, and if you try to mix it with a spoon, what's gonna happen, the meat is gonna fall off the bone.

We don't want to do that.

This eventually will start getting mixed with the liquid.

SETH: All right, so you just want to be really, really delicate with these lamb shanks?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely.

The good thing is, before you arrived here I was already working on two shanks and I have those ready, so let me go ahead and... SETH: Oh, nice.

SEBASTIAN: And get those for you, and this is the final product.

SETH: That's a beautiful shank, and I can see where all that meat has pulled away.

It is so good.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, and see how... Like, and you can tell if you just hit it with a fork.

You don't even need a knife for this shank.

You just, you can pick at it with a fork and the meat will come right off the bone.

SETH: You could, uh, even eat this thing with a spoon?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely.

So now I'm going to go ahead and plate it, serve it with some rice, and we're gonna go ahead and enjoy it together in the dining room.

SETH: Chef.

This thing is a Flintstones level cut of meat right here.

This is a beautiful lamb shank.

SEBASTIAN: Thank you, Seth.

I couldn't think of a better dish to, for you to try.

So typically we grab a little piece of the, the, the meat with the broth and then we enjoy it with, uh, with the rice, so.

SETH: It's all part, you gotta have it all together?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely.

And the spoon is actually used to pour the br, broth over the meat as well.

There you go.

SETH: All right.

SEBASTIAN: Hits the spot, huh?

(laughs) SETH: That meat is truly fall off the bone.

SEBASTIAN: All right.

That's the whole purpose of braising it for that long.

SETH: That is really, really good.

SEBASTIAN: Glad to hear that, man.

That's, that's the type of reaction I look for.

SETH: And, uh, you know, it's funny.

Sometimes it's hard to pick out individual ingredients, but definitely getting some of that saffron as well.

SEBASTIAN: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, saffron is... You know, it's at the base of the Persian cuisine.

It's literally in every single recipe you can think of, even in the Persian ice cream.

SETH: And rice, that's just kind of a key part of Persian cuisine?

SEBASTIAN: Absolutely.

You gotta have rice.

SETH: And I see this beautiful, uh, rice over here.

SEBASTIAN: So this is tahdig, okay?

So when we cook, uh, big pots of rice, the bottom part of it, you usually add a little bit of saffron butter and a little bit of olive oil.

What it does, uh, it... We cook it to a point where the bottom portion of the pot has become crispy, so it creates this really nice crunchy texture that Persians, they, they fight over at the dinner table for.

Tahdig, the salad, the rice, the meat, combined together, it just, uh, gives you a variety of different textures for your meal.

SETH: All right.

SEBASTIAN: Okay, just grab a piece and then, and enjoy it.

SETH: All right.

Dip it in a little bit of sauce.

How about that?

(crunching) Such a nice counterpart as well to that meat.

Since I'm getting all the textures here, Chef, I do feel like need to add a little bit of salad too.

SEBASTIAN: Yes.

SETH: All right.

SEBASTIAN: So it's diced cucumber, tomatoes and onions that's tossed in homemade... SETH: Mm-hmm.

SEBASTIAN: Mint vinaigrette.

SETH: I love all these different Persian flavors and how nicely they all play together.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, mean, it's... You know, Persian cuisine is...

It's complex, um, in, in so many ways, but it's also simple in so many ways and, and you can see that a... on, on one table at a... at a dinner setting.

Like the shirazi salad, which is actually from the Ri... uh, the Shiraz region of Iran, uh, and the tahdig is more of a Tehran type of, uh, recipe.

It's a combination of different regions that come together.

It's a perfect balance of flavors.

SETH: Well, it's so good.

Um, I got a little more work left to do with this lamb shank.

SEBASTIAN: Enjoy yourself, buddy.

It's gonna take you a minute to finish all that, but yeah, enjoy it, man.

Glad you guys, uh, got to see what Persian coo, cooking is all about.

SETH: Thanks, Chef.