Ash-e Mast

Ash-e Mast is a lightly spiced yogurt based thick soup with herbs,white rice,chick peas with addition of meat and/or vegetables. I decided to make this as I wanted to make a Persian dish that is a little spicy and that would suit the cold winter weather. My search for such a dish ended up on My Persian Kitchen, and by the looks of it, I knew it would be something my family would love to try out. Of course, as usual I substituted some of the ingredients with my own and came up with this modified version of the recipe.
Ingredients
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
2 cups soya granules
1 egg
1/2 cup chickpeas, dried
1/3 cup rice
1 bunch parsley, equivalent to 4 cups
1 bunch cilantro, equivalent to 3 cups
1 bunch mint, equivalent to 2 cups
1 bunch green onions or chives
1/4 + 1/8 tsp turmeric
yogurt
Method:
Saute one of the onions and 3 garlic cloves until translucent. Add 1/4 tsp turmeric and saute for another minute. Add 4 cups of water, a dash of salt and add chickpeas. cover and cook for one hour.If using a pressure cooker for 20 minutes.
In the mean time, puree the second onion along with one clove of garlic.Add 1/8 tsp turmeric, salt and pepper.Mix well together. Add soya granules and an egg and mix it all well.
Make little balls with the above mixture about the size of a cherry.
Add rice to the chickpeas along with 3 cup of vegetable broth (or water). Cook for 15 minutes more.If using a pressure cooker cook for another 8 minutes.
Rough chop your herbs.
Add soya balls to the chickpeas and rice.  Add salt & pepper to adjust seasoning.
Add herbs cover and cook for 5 minutes till the soya balls are cooked on  medium. While cooking make sure to stir the pot every so often to make sure that the bottom doesn’t stick.  Further adjust seasoning if needed.

Once the Ash-e(soup) is ready you can either add 2 cups of yogurt to the pot or a dollop of yogurt to each  bowl.  If you are adding the yogurt to the pot, let it warm through gently making sure it does not boil. Sending this over to A.W.E.D- Iranian by DK, hosted by Sweet Artichoke.