The New Persian Kitchen (4 page)

Dried limes are thrown whole into soups and stews. Unlike whole spices like bay leaves or cinnamon sticks that you would discard after cooking, you can cut up the
softened limes and eat them—rind and all—along with the dish. The taste of a cooked dried lime is truly remarkable.

It’s essential that the limes be perforated before cooking, so that the cooking liquid can be easily infused with their flavor. The limes are hard, like hollow rocks. Before cooking, soak the limes in very hot water—just enough to cover—to soften their exteriors. After fifteen minutes, you can easily pierce them with a fork or make incisions with a paring knife. You can then add the limes to whatever you’re cooking. Depending on the recipe, you can add the soaking water, too, as it’s full of concentrated flavor, or dilute it with water and drink it like lemonade. When cooking limes in a stew or rice dish, press on them every so often with a wooden spoon to extract their juice as the dish cooks.

Dried limes are sold both whole and ground, and the ground form is used as a seasoning similar to lime zest. (
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Ghee is pure butterfat—it’s melted butter with the protein and milk solids skimmed off. It is considered a healthy food in the Indian Ayurvedic tradition and can be used for cooking at temperatures up to 400°F, unlike olive and other vegetable oils, which will smoke and become toxic at high temperatures. Ghee is sold in Indian stores, or you can make it at home.

Fresh and dried green herbs play many roles in Persian food, from colorful garnish to flavor component to main ingredient. The best example of the latter is
ghormeh sabzi
stew (
Green Herb and Kidney Bean Stew
), a steaming herbal gumbo colored emerald green by the volume of parsley, cilantro, scallions, and spinach that is melted down to form its thick vegetal bouquet.

The herbs most commonly used in Persian cooking are dill, mint, parsley, cilantro, basil, chives, and tarragon, while marjoram and oregano make occasional appearances. Smoky, bitter fenugreek leaves are also a major player in Persian food, but they are tricky to find in the United States, so I’ve left them out of the recipes. If you find fenugreek, throw several large handfuls into your
ghormeh sabzi
! For the most part, you can mix and match the herbs liberally in recipes where they’re called for, swapping out cilantro for parsley or mint as needed.

It can be time-consuming to clean and chop the volume of herbs that’s called for in Persian recipes, and many Persian cooks use dried herbs for just that reason. Often, dry herbs can make a fine substitute (in particular, it’s frequently preferable to choose dried mint over fresh), but in many recipes, like the
ghormeh sabzi
, using fresh herbs really
does result in a better-tasting dish. Fortunately, there are a few shortcuts for
prepping herbs:

Both full-flavored dried mint and mild fresh spearmint are used often in Persian cooking. Although in the West we usually associate mint with dessert or tea, Iranians use mint the way that Americans use cilantro or parsley.

For cooking, spearmint is the best choice. It has a more resonant, savory taste than sweet peppermint, which is primarily used to make mint tea, or generic “mint,” which has a milder flavor. Look for dried spearmint in the spice aisle of gourmet and Middle Eastern food markets. At
Kalustyan’s
in New York City, I buy a delicious variety labeled “Egyptian spearmint.” When shopping for fresh mint, look for either spearmint or the more common generic mint, a fine substitute.

Because mint is used so often in Persian cooking, and because dried mint is just as good if not better than fresh, it’s helpful to keep a stock of dried mint in the pantry. To make your own dried mint, separate fresh spearmint leaves from their stems, wash them in cold water, and dry them thoroughly in a salad spinner. Turn your oven to its lowest setting and spread the herbs on baking sheets in a single layer. Dry the herbs in the oven, stirring gently every 10 minutes or so to prevent burning, until they’re dry and crackly. Store the dried mint in airtight containers.

If you receive an invitation to an Iranian home, purchase good-quality roasted pistachios in the shell and take them as a gift. Your host will be delighted. While Iranians prize their dried fruit and nuts—which are often sold in upscale boutiques comparable to chocolate shops in the United States—pistachios are possibly the most beloved treat of all. Pistachios are native to Iran and are deeply intertwined with Iranian food history. Today, these nuts are cultivated in the hot desert oases of southeastern Iran. They are still used so often that they may appear many times in the course of a Persian meal.

For snacking, buy pistachios in the shell because they’re the freshest, but when following a recipe that calls for pistachios, use shelled pistachios, rather than shelling them yourself. Although they may not match the quality of pistachios in the shell, it can take a long time (and many battered fingernails) to shell even a small quantity. Select the best nuts you can find, and check before buying to make sure they’re not rancid. Once purchased, store pistachios in the refrigerator or freezer to preserve their freshness. (
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Pomegranates are perhaps the most iconic of Iran’s native foods. They are believed to have originated in Iran, and to this day more than half of the world’s pomegranates are grown there. It’s no wonder then that they play such a big role in Persian cuisine.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of Persian cooking is the pairing of sour fruits with savory ingredients like lamb, chicken, caramelized onions, and nuts. Pomegranates demonstrate the perfection of this pairing more than any other fruit. A good example is the northern Iranian–style
Lamb Kebabs in Pomegranate-Walnut Marinade
, in which pomegranate molasses gives the dish its signature sweet-and-sour taste.

If you visit Iran or its neighbor Turkey, you can enjoy a glass of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, a tart, refreshing pick-me-up that’s pressed by hand by brawny young street vendors right before your eyes. This bracing treat aside, pomegranates usually show up in Persian cuisine in one of two forms: fresh seeds or a reduction of pomegranate juice known as pomegranate molasses.

Pomegranate molasses is made from pomegranate juice that has been cooked down, and it may or may not have added sugar. These days, you can find pomegranate molasses at many gourmet and natural foods stores. Alternatively, if you can find pomegranate juice—which has become very popular in the last decade—you can make your own molasses by reducing the juice in a pan over high heat until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. You may come across a product labeled “pomegranate syrup,” which is much thinner and sweeter than pomegranate molasses; it’s meant for use in mixed drinks as opposed to cooking and is made with artificial pomegranate flavoring as opposed to real fruit juice.

Roses have been an integral part of Persian cooking and culture for thousands of years. In Sufism, the mystical branch of
Islam most famous for its whirling dervishes, the rose is extolled as “the Mother of Scents and the Queen of the Garden,” its “beauty and sweetness” symbolizing “the mystic path to God and enlightenment” (from
The Book of Sufi
Healing
by Shaykh Hakim Chishti). It’s believed that they were first cultivated in Iran, and that the process of making rose
attar
, or “oil”—the basis of all rose perfumes—was developed there, as well. In Persian culture, the rose transcends gardens and bouquets and becomes an essential ingredient, in the form of either rose water or rose petals (usually dried).

Think of rose water as the Iranian equivalent of vanilla extract. You’ll encounter its flavor in baklava, rice pudding, cookies, and ice cream. The taste of rose water can be off-putting at first—we’re not used to such flowery flavors in the West—but it can really grow on you.

Rose petals lend a surprisingly savory flavor to rice, and they make a graceful garnish for yogurt and salads. When buying dried culinary roses, look for full buds, which retain their flavor better than petals. Before cooking, pull the rosebuds apart and remove the white outer petals and the remains of the stem, both of which are bitter. A good option for sourcing rose petals is your own garden. Unfortunately, virtually all store-bought roses are sprayed with pesticides, so your best bet is to dry roses that you grow yourself, without chemicals. A good culinary rose is one that has a strong, pleasing scent, no matter the color. Take a bite of a petal, and if it tastes good, you can eat the rose fresh or dried. Fresh petals can be cooked just like dried ones; in addition, you can add them to salads, lay them in sandwiches, or chop them up and stir them into honey or jam. To make aromatic rose sugar, submerge fresh (but not wet) roses in sugar and let them infuse for about a month.

Saffron blazes an orange trail across the whole of Persian cuisine, flavoring entrées, desserts, and rice with its unmistakable scent. Long used as a medicine and a perfume, saffron is almost certainly the world’s sexiest spice. In the dialogue of seduction known as the Song of Solomon, from the Old Testament, the man compares his lover to a fertile garden, full of fragrant plants like “spikenard and saffron.”

Saffron is believed to have originated on the island of Crete. The Persians carried it east around 500 BCE, and today Iran is the world’s biggest producer of the spice. Iranian saffron is considered the world’s best, and if you’re lucky enough to obtain a thin plastic disk of it etched in gold Persian lettering, you will have enough to make several excellent batches of saffron-scented rice, stew, or pastry.

Saffron is infamous for its high price, worth more than gold by weight, because it is painstakingly harvested by gently plucking the stigma from the center of the fall- flowering purple crocus. Fortunately, a little goes a long way. It takes only a teaspoon or less to flavor a whole dish—more than that and it can take on a metallic, bitter taste. When purchasing saffron, always buy the full strands rather than the ground spice; that
way you’re assured of getting real saffron and not a cheap imitation or a mixture diluted with other spices—a common scam throughout the ages that continues to this day. (
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When using saffron in a recipe, first measure out the amount that’s called for. Then, using a mortar and pestle, grind the strands to release their volatile oils and draw out their flavor. Iranians typically grind saffron in a small mortar made out of brass, but the more common ceramic or stone variety works just as well.

If your saffron is even a little moist, it can be hard to grind. To make sure it’s dry, heat your oven to its lowest setting, spread the saffron on a clean, dry baking sheet, and put it in the oven for about 5 minutes. Let it cool, then transfer the saffron to the mortar. Add a pinch of sugar or salt, which makes grinding easier, and grind the saffron into a powder.

Now, transfer the saffron to a small bowl. Bring some water or stock to a boil and let it cool for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can heat milk, butter, or oil. Pour hot liquid equal to two to three times the amount of saffron into the bowl. The hot liquid helps to both activate the flavor and intensify the color of the saffron. Gently swirl the saffron with the liquid, and let it steep until you’re ready to use. When the recipe calls for adding the saffron, add the entire contents of the bowl.

The process of preparing saffron with a mortar and pestle takes a few minutes and requires a special piece of equipment, but there is something magical about grinding the spice using the same method that’s been used for thousands of years, and it’s a good way to adjust your mindset to the ancient traditions in which Persian cooking is rooted.

To save time, take a tip from Persian cooks who use the spice on a daily basis: grind up a large batch of saffron, steep it in liquid, then cool and store it in the refrigerator in a sealed jar for the next several weeks, using a teaspoon or two of the liquid in recipes as needed. You can also use a clean electric spice grinder to grind the saffron, which works most effectively if you grind at least a tablespoon at a time, along with the equivalent of a cube of sugar.

Purplish-red sumac is a tart, coarse powder made from the red berries of the sumac shrub. Seasoning food with sumac has a similar effect to seasoning with lemon juice, but sumac has a milder, brinier taste because of the salt that’s added to facilitate the grinding process. You may have tasted sumac before in
za’atar
, the Arabic spice mixture that combines sumac with thyme and sesame seeds. In Persian cooking, sumac is used to season the saffron rice that accompanies kebabs. You’ll find it on the table at a Persian restaurant
as surely as you will see salt and pepper in an American establishment. The fruity sourness of sumac complements fish, chicken, and vegetables equally well.

The edible staghorn variety of sumac grows wild in the United States and has a place in Native American cookery. In fact, a traditional Native American drink is “sumac-ade,” made by submerging the berries in water and rubbing and crushing them to extract their flavor. Strained sumac-ade is high in vitamin C and can be sweetened and enjoyed just like lemonade. On their own, fresh sumac berries make a tart, chewy trail snack.