This soup, known as dizi, became one of our favourite quick-and-easy lunch dishes on our travels around Iran, and we would actively seek out specialist restaurants. Dizi is a simple enough idea: small chunks of meat on the bone are simmered slowly over several hours with potato, tomatoes, beans and lamb tail fat, which releases an unctuous richness. To serve, the broth is poured into a bowl onto pieces of flatbread and slurped up with a squeeze of sour orange or lemon. The bone is then fished out and discarded, and the remaining meat, fat and vegetables are pounded to a coarse paste. This tasty mush (for want of a better word) is eaten with plenty more flatbread, pickles, onion, sour orange (or any citrus, really) and fresh herbs (try tarragon, mint and basil). It’s far from refined, but unspeakably delicious.
This version omits the lamb tail fat to suit western palates, and it is probably a tad more spiced than authentic dizi. The longer you can simmer the lamb, the better the result.