Persian food blog

When I posted the recipe for Salad Olivieh, one of the regular readers Eric asked if there was a difference between regular dill pickles and Persian pickles. This is the best time for me to post about what we Persian refer to as Khiar Shoor, which translated means salty cucumber. Read More

I have always been very fascinated by the fact that Rice Pudding per se exists all over the world.  What makes it even more fascinating to me is how its ingredients and preparation vary from country to country.  What remains constant in this recipe is the rice and milk, however, depending from country to country, or even from region to region, the rest of the ingredients are different. Read More

Tahcheen is a delicious rice that can be either baked on made on the stove.  I am sure you will agree with me that Tacheen is such a pretty sight to look at because of it’s brightness in color, all thanks to amount of saffron that is used in it.

This is a simple dish to make, for best results I highly recommend you marinade the cooked chicken in yogurt over night.

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Raise your hands if you like stuffed eggplants!

Dolemeh-ye Bademjan, stuffed eggplants, are simply delicious!

Some people refer to them as  eggplant while others call them aubergine or melongene. I personally love them and for today’s recipe  I could not resist buying the small kind.

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I can’t even begin to express how much I love Salad Olivieh. I love it soo sooo so much! It is our version of potato …
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Mast-o-khiar is such an easy and quick dip to make.  Literally translated the name of this dip means yogurt and cucumber.  It is one of the staples at Persian …
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In the aftermath of our Norouz party we were left with a lot of left over fresh herbs.  I knew exactly what to do with some of the parsley: Chimichuri, baby! But then I was still left with hell of a lot more parsley, cilantro, dill, chives, and mint.

Instead of just freezing each herb on its own I started to think ahead. I took in consideration future Persian dishes that I am planning on making and the amount of herbs needed for each dish when cooking for the two of us.   Since I had a bit of cilantro and chives left I decided to make a Sabzi Polow mix to be used sometime in the future.

The rest of the herbs I just measured and froze on their own.

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I am so excited and thrilled to feature a guest post by my friend Payman today. I met Payman last year around May or so through twitter.  Payman is your go to guy for any cocktail that you might have any questions about.  I love reading  his weekly post where each Wednesday he introduces his readers to a new cocktail.  I had the honor of meeting him and his lovely wife Vanessa last December while they were in town visiting his family. I thought it would be fun to ask him to come up with a cocktail and be a guest host on MPK. I hope you will enjoy this post as much as I did!

I present to you, Persian Rose!

Spring has finally arrived, which marks the beginning of a new year for the Persian Diaspora. However you don’t have to be Persian to appreciate the significance of Spring. For most cultures around the world—even the ones which observe the Gregorian calendar—Spring symbolizes hope, renewal, and perhaps casting off of the ills of the past.

For obvious reasons, many also associate the color green with Spring. Incidentally, for many Persians green has taken on a deeper significance these days than it did in years past. It has come to represent the aspirations of Iranians seeking a democratic government, having become the color adopted by the renewed freedom movement in Iran. It is said that hope springs eternal, so it’s all the more appropriate that the color of Spring has also become the color of national hope.

Since Sanam was kind enough to invite me to contribute to her blog, I decided to share a cocktail I recently created in celebration of the Persian New Year. The traditions of the Persian New Year, or Norooz as we Persians call it (which means “new day”) date back thousands of years to the time of the ancient prophet Zoroaster, whose philosophies were the basis of the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroastrianism, which predates the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam; ironic how closely related those three religions are, right?), was the primary religion of Persians until the brutal Arab conquest in the 7th century.

The cocktail I created highlights traditional Persian flavors and ingredients, and despite all my waxing on, is not green in color. Ultimately it was too difficult to make a green-hued drink without coming off as contrived. In the end I realized it was more important to represent culture and history through ingredients and flavors common to Persian cuisine, than to simply present a color, which could have easily been done with a few drops of artificial food coloring. However as we’ve learned from both Iran’s democracy movement and the environmental movement—two movements that have embraced the symbolism behind the color green—the color itself is meaningless if it’s devoid of a meaningful underlying philosophy. That’s what I focused in creating this cocktail.

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I finally set up my Haft Seen yesterday. I was waiting for the gold fish to hit the Persian stores.  My Haft Seens have been slightly different every year …
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Today’s post is the last of the recipes for the traditional meal consumed for Norouz.

Kuku Sabzi is by far my most favorite type of kuku.  This dish is …
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