Yes, that's right, the people your media has led you to believe are a bunch of self-flagellating religious zealots in search of nuclear weapons actually celebrate the world's oldest pagan ritual in a very colorful manner, and it's a very big deal. Ok, some of us do wear a lot of black and get into the whips and chains, but not in the way you see it on CNN. But come this time of year, it's all about Norooz. The Vernal Equinox. The Rite of Spring. March 20, 2009 at 17:32 GMT. Whatever you want to call it, there's only one way to properly celebrate it: Copious amounts of food. (It's the Iranian way.)
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| Haft-sin: The traditional Norooz spread made of seven (haft) items that begin with the Farsi letter S (sin). No, you don't eat these. |
Luckily, my wife likes being stuffed with a whole lotta Persian. So much so that immediately after we got together, she started learning how to make the stuff. Don't tell my dad, but some of Alannah's dishes are even better than grandma's... But Iranian cookery is complex. So we'll start with the simple stuff, as we did for this Norooz: Maast-mousir. Essentially, it's yogurt with minced elephant garlic and a dash of salt to taste. Maast is yogurt, and mousir is the elephant garlic, often badly mistranslated as shallot.
Elephant garlic is tough to come by, although some Trader Joe's stores carry it in cute little wooden baskets in the US, and in Europe it can be found in Middle Eastern stores under names like "Oriental garlic" or in French "ail de cheval." As is often the case with Iranian food, using anything else simply does not work. This is a very stubborn, persnickety culture.
The dish is typically served as an appetizer or snack. It looks absolutely non-descript, but the elephant garlic packs a pretty powerful punch. And, of course, the tang of a real yogurt (not that runny, sweet Dannon crap) carries its own dimension. But you don't simply spoon it up. If you order it at an Iranian restaurant (half of whom use regular garlic, rendering it too hot and utterly inauthentic) it will be served with lavash flatbread. But in just about every real Iranian household – and Iranian-Japanese-American households in France – it's best eaten with that über-Persian form of carbs: Potato chips. That's right. Take an ancient dish made with an elusive wild leek bulb... and scoop it up with plain potato chips. If you want to feel more exotic, call them by their French name: Chips à l'ancienne. Classy, no?
Next stop, salade Shirazi. Which means "salad from Shiraz." We're only moving up slightly in complexity here, finely dicing sweet onion, tomatoes, and Persian cucumbers. Despite the opposite being the case in figurative, innuendo-loaded terms, Persian cucumbers are much smaller than the usual English cucumbers, thicker skinned, and bitter on the ends. So when prepping them, you should chop the ends off and peel the skin in stripes – you want to leave some green for both appearance and taste. The dressing is simple: Lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. I like to add some dill and black pepper.
It's best to only lightly dress the Shirazi. The vegetables' own juices will leech out after a short while, both adding a sauciness to the overall dish, and toning down the acidity of the dressing. This is a huge problem at restaurants, where the salad has been sitting in a mixing bowl all day: By the time it's served, it gets very soggy. So if you plan to serve this, don't add the dressing until maybe 15 minutes before dinner time.
So far, neither of what we've made is mandatory Norooz fare. The main course, on the other hand, is. Sabzi-polo va mahi quite simply means "herbed rice with fish." Typically the fish is a white fish of some sort, but we went with salmon... Mostly because that's how my parents sometimes did it, because growing up it was hard to get any sort of brackish water white fish that was up to their standards. (Again, Iranians are very persnickety about ingredients. And apparently so are Japanese wives of Iranians. And now by osmosis, American wives of Japanese-Iranians.) It actually does not matter. The important part is to get good, fresh fish, dredge it in flour, and fry it in a skillet without drying it out. To give it the proper golden color, drizzle it with a mixture of lemon juice and saffron.
Tadig is served as a side dish, or sometimes – if the stars align and it comes out perfectly – the entire pot of rice is flipped on to a serving dish with the tadig on top, kind of like some sort of basmati upside down cake. Tadig can also be made with lavash flatbread or sliced potatoes (kind of like chips) lining the bottom of the pot. Either way, successfully making a good one is analogous to an American cook roasting a Thanksgiving turkey without drying it out: It'll be what every dinner guest will talk about. "Did you see that tadig? Perfection!"
Of course, in Iran, one is never done playing with saffron and rice. (Personally, I would play with Saffron every chance I got!) A festive holiday dessert is sholeh-zard, which literally means "runny yellow." It's a pudding consisting of basmati rice, sliced almonds, sugar, rose syrup and about US$500 worth of saffron per serving. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but as pointed out in our Drunken Paella episode, real saffron is not cheap. It is, by weight, more expensive than gold, cocaine and possibly printer ink. Half a teaspoon usually goes a very long way, but if you have Iranian guests and really want to impress them, your sholeh-zard needs to be more golden than a shower with Kim Kardashian.
Sholeh zard is typically served chilled (but not cold, as the saffron scent would be too muted) with a dusting of cinnamon and chopped pistachio on top. Fancy people like to write things in Farsi with their cinnamon, but I find that a bit lame. (Sorry, Mom!)
Of course, an Iranian host(ess) would have no credibility if their hospitality didn't reach a certain level of overkill. So it's always best to have a second dessert ready. For this occasion, we made halva. Like most Persian cooking, it's relatively simple in concept, but maddening in detail.
In a dry skillet, you toast flour... Once browned, you add an almost equal amount (in weight) of butter. We went off-script and used a demi-sel butter as opposed to sweet, which means that if my grandparents were alive today, we'd be disowned and written out of the will. The brown roux you've created needs to slowly cook over very low heat. Once cooked, you add a hot syrup of water, sugar, rose syrup, saffron and green cardamom and whip it until there are no possible lumps. The mixture is then poured into a dish to cool, with chopped pistachio sprinkled on top.
Of course, the halva is not eaten alongside the sholeh zard. It's the second dessert, meaning it would go best with your tea! Iranian tea is quite parallel to Iranian rice: There's an over-complicated preparation process, people are really persnickety about how it's made, and the principle ingredient comes from India – in this case, Darjeeling and Assam tea leaves. We added some green cardamom to tie it a bit to the halva, and also because my grandma would've approved.
Elephant garlic is tough to come by, although some Trader Joe's stores carry it in cute little wooden baskets in the US, and in Europe it can be found in Middle Eastern stores under names like "Oriental garlic" or in French "ail de cheval." As is often the case with Iranian food, using anything else simply does not work. This is a very stubborn, persnickety culture.
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| Maast-mousir |
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| Heart on. |
Next stop, salade Shirazi. Which means "salad from Shiraz." We're only moving up slightly in complexity here, finely dicing sweet onion, tomatoes, and Persian cucumbers. Despite the opposite being the case in figurative, innuendo-loaded terms, Persian cucumbers are much smaller than the usual English cucumbers, thicker skinned, and bitter on the ends. So when prepping them, you should chop the ends off and peel the skin in stripes – you want to leave some green for both appearance and taste. The dressing is simple: Lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. I like to add some dill and black pepper.
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| Salade Shirazi. Do not add Feta cheese. That's Greek, not Persian. And no, 300 was not an accurate portrayal of either culture. |
So far, neither of what we've made is mandatory Norooz fare. The main course, on the other hand, is. Sabzi-polo va mahi quite simply means "herbed rice with fish." Typically the fish is a white fish of some sort, but we went with salmon... Mostly because that's how my parents sometimes did it, because growing up it was hard to get any sort of brackish water white fish that was up to their standards. (Again, Iranians are very persnickety about ingredients. And apparently so are Japanese wives of Iranians. And now by osmosis, American wives of Japanese-Iranians.) It actually does not matter. The important part is to get good, fresh fish, dredge it in flour, and fry it in a skillet without drying it out. To give it the proper golden color, drizzle it with a mixture of lemon juice and saffron.
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| Sabzi polo - mahi |
As for the rice, I could write an entire volume on properly preparing Iranian rice – which is pretty much Indian basmati rice about 99% of the time, but basmati taken to an extreme of perfectionism. It is the most persnickety of persnickety food components, and the technique takes half a lifetime to perfect. To be frank, I still suck at it at times, and Alannah is still learning. It's a long, drawn out process that requires parboiling the rice until just a shade crunchier than al dente, rinsing and cooling it, then very slowly steaming it until it's relatively dry and fluffy. The trouble with sabzi polo is that you're introducing a melange of herbs in the steaming process - chopped flat-leaf parsley, coriander (cilantro), chives and fenugreek, as well as thinly sliced garlic. These bear both water and weight, making it more likely that your rice will come out less than fluffy – and possibly soggy! The necessary adjustments come naturally after making the dish many times, knowing your rice (stick with one particular brand for consistency!), knowing your pot, and knowing your stove. Seriously.
Then there's the matter of making part of your sabzi polo yellow with saffron. This is done by stirring the desired amount of rice in a mixture of saffron and hot water (this is after the parboiling and draining) and lining the bottom of your pot with it for the steaming round.
Speaking of the bottom of the pot, one can not forget the tahdig. Which means – wait for it – "bottom of the pot!" This crunchy layer of (saffron-infused) rice is the golden ticket in the crazy Wonka land that is Persian cuisine. You spend years perfecting the perfect white, fluffy rice... only to crave the hard, crackly crust at the bottom of the pot.
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| A perfectly round bottom. |
Of course, in Iran, one is never done playing with saffron and rice. (Personally, I would play with Saffron every chance I got!) A festive holiday dessert is sholeh-zard, which literally means "runny yellow." It's a pudding consisting of basmati rice, sliced almonds, sugar, rose syrup and about US$500 worth of saffron per serving. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but as pointed out in our Drunken Paella episode, real saffron is not cheap. It is, by weight, more expensive than gold, cocaine and possibly printer ink. Half a teaspoon usually goes a very long way, but if you have Iranian guests and really want to impress them, your sholeh-zard needs to be more golden than a shower with Kim Kardashian.
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| Sholeh zard. Not as runny as the name implies. |
Of course, an Iranian host(ess) would have no credibility if their hospitality didn't reach a certain level of overkill. So it's always best to have a second dessert ready. For this occasion, we made halva. Like most Persian cooking, it's relatively simple in concept, but maddening in detail.
In a dry skillet, you toast flour... Once browned, you add an almost equal amount (in weight) of butter. We went off-script and used a demi-sel butter as opposed to sweet, which means that if my grandparents were alive today, we'd be disowned and written out of the will. The brown roux you've created needs to slowly cook over very low heat. Once cooked, you add a hot syrup of water, sugar, rose syrup, saffron and green cardamom and whip it until there are no possible lumps. The mixture is then poured into a dish to cool, with chopped pistachio sprinkled on top.
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| Halvascape. |
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| Halva and Chai |
Incidentally, the Farsi name for tea is "chai" just like in India. In China and Japan, it's cha. That whole Silk Road connection is pretty amazing, eh?
With few exceptions, Iranian food is very colorful and aromatic, whether you're celebrating the arrival of a new year or not. None of what we made is specifically for Norooz: While the sabzi polo – mahi is mandatory, it's also eaten year-round. So really, every day is a colorful celebration. Each dish has colors that are a tribute to various forms of what the French call terroir. It's a cuisine full of life, vibrance, and color; fiercely proud of where it comes from, resistant to meddling, and more ubiquitous than you'd likely think – just like the people.
Persian culture is not about head-to-toe veils, headscarves, big beards or turbans. More than anything it's about pride. Generosity. And eating really, really well.
Saal-e no mobarak!
