Iranians are among the world’s most accomplished rice cooks. Their fluffy,
fragrant pilafs are works of art. In this workshop, you’ll learn about
key Persian ingredients and watch chefs work with rice, pomegranates, quince
and an unusual fermented wheat.
Meet Your Guest Chefs
Your guides for this adventure in Silk Road cooking
are four Iranian chefs now working in the United States. They will introduce
you to the principles of Persian cooking and demonstrate essential techniques,
including the secret to seeding a pomegranate. Let’s meet them now:
Najmieh
Batmanglij is a Persian-American chef and cookbook
author. She currently lives in Washington, DC, where
she teaches master classes in Persian and Silk Road
cooking. Her books include Ma Cuisine d’Iran;
New Food of Life; Persian Cooking for a Healthy Kitchen;
and Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey.
Faz Poursohi owns three Faz Restaurants in the San Francisco
Bay Area, as well as Faz Catering. He grew up in Tehran, moving to the United
States in 1974. While pursuing an engineering degree at the University of Illinois, he began working for Rich Melman and was instrumental in the opening of several
successful restaurants. In 1981, Poursohi moved to California to join Spectrum
Foods, a restaurant company, venturing out on his own three years later. His cuisine
is classic Mediterranean, much of it prepared in smokers and wood-burning
ovens.
Mehrdad Dabir is the chef at the Metropolitan Club
in San Francisco. Immigrating to the United States from Iran in 1973, Dabir
worked as a diamond and gemstone broker in Los Angeles before enrolling in
the California Culinary Academy. He has worked with Joyce Goldstein at Square
One and Paul Bertolli at Oliveto, at Moose’s in San Francisco and at Wente Vineyards. Dabir’s
own restaurant, offering innovative presentations of traditional Persian
dishes, is in the planning stages.
Michael
Mir owns Bha! Bha! Persian Bistro in Naples,
Florida. Mir moved to the United States from Iran
in 1973, earning a degree in architecture from Catholic
University in Washington, DC. After graduation, he
opened his first restaurant in Maryland, featuring
the food he grew up eating. Many years later, he moved
to Florida, opening his restaurant there in 1997.
“Bha! Bha!” is Farsi slang to express
bewilderment, ecstasy or shame.
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| Pomegranate Walnut Spread |
“Persian cooking is one of the oldest schools of cooking, and yet it
is the least known in the West,” says Najmieh Batmanglij. “But
you (Westerners) know more about Persian food than you think. When you ask
for pistachios, or saffron, or pomegranate or peaches, you’re using words
derived from the Persian.”
According to Batmanglij, most
food scholars agree that pasta originated in Iran,
not in China as the Marco Polo legend has it. A 10th
century Arabic cookbook calls noodles by their Persian
name three centuries before Marco Polo. These early
pasta dishes were probably sauced with yogurt.
Persia was a great entrepôt of the ancient and medieval world, a crossroads
for goods, foodstuffs, recipes and ideas. Peaches, for example, traveled from
China to Persia, which then introduced the fruit to the rest of the world.
Many spices and aromatics—rose petals, saffron, nigella, cumin—got
their big break in the Persian kitchen.
Persian cooking is exuberantly
fragrant. Cooks use not just rose petals but orange
blossoms; rose and orange
flower waters; cinnamon, cardamom, curry powder
and cumin; and numerous fresh herbs such as thyme,
dill, tarragon, parsley, cilantro and mint. Sweet
and sour dishes abound, with the sweet provided by
sugar or dried fruit, the tart by barberries,
yogurt, sour cherries, sumac,
lime juice or sour orange juice.
Persians pride themselves on presenting food beautifully, garnishing platters
with pomegranate seeds, pistachios or sprays of fresh herbs. Great appreciators
of the garden, they adorn both their carpets and their tablecloths with flowers.
In Iran, food is not served in courses. Instead, all the dishes appear at once
and diners eat according to their fancy, in no particular order.
Grapes have been cultivated in Persia since ancient
times, and some of the oldest evidence of winemaking comes from this region.
Herodotus commented on the Persians’ wine habit in 500 BC. In modern
times, cuttings of Shiraz from Persia have been planted in France and Australia.
Since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, wine
has been officially forbidden to believers, says Batmanglij. “They
are promised a far more luscious wine in the next world,” says the
teacher. “However, Persian poets
then and later confirmed their love of wine in their verse.”
Batmanglij uses the names Persia and Iran interchangeably
because both refer to the same country. However, Persian is the preferred
adjective in some cases. “We
have Persian literature, the Persian language, Persian music and the Persian
Gulf,” says Batmanglij. “We don’t call it the Iranian Gulf,
although our country’s name is Iran.”
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| Duck Khoresh with Sweet Rice with Orange Peel |
It is curious, says Najmieh Batmanglij, that noodles reach such culinary heights
in China, Japan and Italy but occupy only a humble place in the cookery of
Iran. Rice is another story. This ancient grain is revered in Persia and is
the canvas on which cooks execute some of their most elaborate and beautiful
creations.
Except around the Caspian Sea, where it is grown, rice is not the anchor
of the daily diet in Iran as it is in China. Instead, bread fills that role
for most Persians, especially the poor. Persian rice dishes, called polows,
mark festivities and celebrations. Polows may be flavored with sour
cherries, with candied orange peel, with barberries, or with fresh fava beans
and herbs. The best cooks know how to produce a crunchy golden crust on the
bottom, called tah dig, which is the most desirable part.
“Like other good dishes, polow has
spread far beyond its Persian sources,” says Batmanglij. Under related names—pilaf, pilau, pilavy,
palau, even paella—this steamed rice dish appears in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan,
Turkey, Greece, India, Spain and elsewhere.
Aromatic basmati rice from India or Pakistan comes close to the Persian long-grain
rice used for polow. It must be washed several times to remove surface
starch so the finished dish will be fluffy, not gummy. Persian cooks always
treat rice gently, taking care not to break the fragile grains. Note in the
following video demo how carefully Batmanglij tosses the cooked rice with the
candied orange peel and carrots.
This sweet orange peel rice is a celebration dish, served at weddings and
other festivities. In the video, Batmanglij molds and steams individual portions,
which she pairs with a classic Persian khoresh, or stew, of duck breast
with walnuts and pomegranate.
“The path that stretches through the ages and
across half the world, connecting China in the east to the Mediterranean
in the west, was a network of ancient trading routes known today as the Silk
Road. Iran was positioned at the center of the Silk Road, looking both east
and west. For centuries, along with silk and other goods, foods and cooking
techniques passed from one civilization to another to be observed and transformed.
This process of mutual enrichment shaped the cuisines of far-flung cultures
in profound ways, linking distant and sometimes hostile cultures.”
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| Persian staples: yogurt, walnuts, pomegranates |
Ruby-red pomegranates with their gem-like seeds give many
Persian dishes their characteristic sweet-tart flavor. Crunchy pomegranate
seeds garnish creamy soups, yogurt dips, braised dishes and salads. Concentrated
pomegranate syrup flavors soups and desserts, and fresh pomegranate juice is
a favorite street food. Pomegranates are native to Iran and have been cultivated
there for at least 4,000 years.
Like the Chinese with their principle of yin and
yang, Persian cooks divide food into hot and cold categories. A healthy diet
provides the foods needed to balance your temperament. If your nature is
excessively hot, eating cold foods will restore equilibrium. Even individual
dishes should be balanced, which is why Persian dishes containing pomegranates
(a cold food) often include walnuts (a hot food). “The combination of these two, as my mother used
to say, makes a good marriage,” says Batmanglij. In her own home, recalls
Batmanglij, she would calm her hot-natured young son by giving him cold fruit
juices, such as watermelon or grapefruit juice.
“The concept of hot and cold does not refer to temperature or spiciness,” says
Batmanglij, “but to energy and specific, defined culinary properties.
This dualistic philosophy goes back to at least 1500 BC.”
Pomegranates can be troublesome to seed if you don’t
know how to do it properly. The juicy seed sacs are separated by bitter white
membranes, which must be discarded. Break the juice sacs and you release
the juice, which stains almost everything. Not surprisingly, Iranians have
devised a method for removing the seeds easily and cleanly.
 Watch
Faz Poursohi demonstrate an efficient method for seeding a pomegranate.
Love
pomegranate juice but hate the mess? Watch
Najmieh Batmanglij juice a pomegranate without even opening it . Iranians
call the technique ablambu, and it’s worth knowing about if
you’re
a pomegranate fan.
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| Kurdish Bean Soup with Fermented Wheat and Caramelized
Onion |
Looking for Connections in a Golden Grain
Greeks call it trahana, Iranians call it tarkhineh, but
it is essentially the same thing—a way of preserving summer’s
plentiful milk and grain supply for the harsh winter months. Cheese is another
method of preserving milk, of course, but tarkhineh is even more clever
because it takes no particular skill to make and lasts for months.
Iranian cooks make tarkhineh with bulgur and yogurt, mixing the
two into hand-shaped patties that are then left to ferment and dry in the sun.
Young children are recruited to keep the birds off the drying cakes during
the day. Once dry, the patties can be packed in sacks and put away for aash (rhymes
with squash), Iran’s thickest, heartiest soups. Reflecting the Persian
cook’s aesthetic sense, aashes are often garnished decoratively,
with the garnish stirred into the soup at the table.
Typically, tarkhineh is crumbled and reconstituted
in water before adding to a soup or stew, where it imparts body and a buttermilk-like
tang. Sometimes it’s softened in milk and eaten for breakfast, like
cereal. And sometimes the patties are eaten as is, as a nutritious snack.
Diane Kochilas, the Greek-American food writer, says that trahana is
one of those healthful foods that parents are always trying to get their children
to eat and children are always resisting. It is perhaps an acquired taste,
best appreciated by an adult palate. But its persistence in the Iranian and
Greek pantry, even in homes whose occupants don’t have to worry about
surviving the winter, attests to its deliciousness and its role in many dishes.
It is one of many preparations and ingredients that Greeks and Iranians share—kebabs,
yogurt, feta cheese, stuffed grape leaves, baklava, rice pudding—courtesy
of their shared history under the Ottoman Empire.
Watch
chef Michael Mir prepare a Kurdish peasant soup using tarkhineh.
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| Quince Paste |
Humans have a natural attraction to sweetness, but
the Iranian sweet tooth is impressive. Iranians drink tea with multiple lumps
of sugar. They love syrup-drenched pastries, such as baklava, and fruit preserves
that they stir into yogurt or tea. Even many ostensibly savory dishes—such
as polows—contain
sweet elements, like dates, dried apricots or candied shredded carrots. Of
course, good Persian cooks will counter that sweetness with a tart ingredient,
adding sour cherries, barberries, or the juice of limes or sour oranges.
Where did Persia get its sweet tooth? History tells us that India and Persia
were the first countries to make cane sugar, with evidence that India was doing
so by 500 AD. The Persians improved the technology, and the Arabs did the rest,
spreading sugar cane and sugar making throughout their empire. As evidence
of the Arab influence in moving food ideas around, Najmieh Batmanglij points
to the Persian khoresh, a stew that typically contains dried fruit
or other sweet elements and may have inspired the Moroccan tagine.
Citing Herodotus, who described a Persian almond
pastry similar to baklava in 500 BC, Batmanglij claims that famous filo pastry
for her country. “I
know there’s a fight between Greeks, Turks and Persians about where baklava
comes from, but I think it’s Persian,” she says. Sherbet is certainly
Persian in origin, from the word sharbat. Persian sharbat is
a refreshing fruit drink made with fruit syrup, water and ice, always offered
to guests on a hot day.
Persians are passionate about good fruit and can
claim some of the world’s
best, from summer stone fruits like peaches, apricots and cherries to autumn
quince and pomegranates. The fragrant quince is particularly popular, enjoyed
as a paste, a preserve, a sharbat syrup and an addition to savory
stews.
Watch
chef Mehrdad Dabir prepare quince paste, a sweet with applications from the
cheese course to the post-dessert mignardises.
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