The New Persian Kitchen (5 page)

Look for wild sumac on roadsides and in open woods and clearings. In the late autumn, you’ll see the plants bursting with bright red cone-shaped clusters of seedless berries. Dry the berries and grind them up with a little salt to make your own stash of sumac powder. If you’re concerned about encountering poison sumac by mistake, don’t be; it’s almost exclusively limited to swamps, and luckily, the two plants look very different. Poison sumac has white, hanging berries and short, smooth leaves, as opposed to staghorn sumac’s red berries and jagged leaves. (
See photo
.
)

When tempered with sugar, tart tamarind fruit transforms into a deliciously tangy condiment. Although native to Africa, tamarind has been a key ingredient in Southeast Asian cooking for thousands of years, where you’ll find it in chutney,
pad Thai
, and various curries. It’s believed that the word “tamarind” comes from the Persian
tamar-i-hindi
, or “Indian date,” so named because the pulp looks similar to a date.

Tamarind and seafood have a special affinity and it’s common to find them paired in recipes like the spicy
Ghaliyeh Mahi
(
Persian Gulf–Style Spicy Tamarind Fish Stew
). Not surprisingly, tamarind is most often used in southern Iran, near the Persian Gulf, the part of the country closest to both Africa and India, and where there is an abundance of fresh seafood.

In Western markets you’ll usually find tamarind in the form of semidried pulp that needs to be soaked in hot water, worked with your hands to separate the flesh from the seeds and fiber, and pushed through a sieve.

To avoid the hassle of soaking, look for tamarind concentrate from Thailand labeled “Thai fruit” or “pure fresh tamarind concentrate.” Thai tamarind concentrate, a puree with a texture similar to applesauce, is made of tamarind and water; you can easily pass it through a sieve to remove bits of seed. Its light caramel color and clean taste make it a good counterpoint to other ingredients. Find Thai tamarind concentrate at Asian food stores or online at Grocery Thai and Kalustyan’s (see
Resources
). If you can’t find Thai tamarind concentrate, a prepared tamarind chutney cooked with spices and sugar makes an acceptable substitute.

Ground turmeric is used in virtually every Persian stew, and the mustard color that it gives to food is a memorable feature of Persian cuisine. Turmeric is a rhizome, like ginger, and its papery skin conceals bright yellow-gold flesh. It is native to India, a nearby neighbor of Iran, and is responsible for the signature yellow color of curry powder.

In Persian cooking, ground dried turmeric is used in small quantities, usually no more than a teaspoon per recipe, because it has an earthy, bitter aftertaste. When cooked down slowly, however, it adds a warm background note that subtly enhances the overall taste of a dish. Just a small amount is enough to color an entire dish. Be careful when handling turmeric, as it can stain hands and surfaces. Try using a small spoon to scoop the turmeric directly into the cooking pot, avoiding contact with your fingers.

In recent years, turmeric has been the focus of several studies documenting its potential to heal a range of ailments without causing side effects. Curcumin, the active component in turmeric, is an antioxidant, which means that it fights the free radical cells that are associated with cancer. Turmeric helps to make food more digestible because of its anti-inflammatory properties, and it has even been linked to the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s entirely likely that the ancient Iranians and their turmeric-loving neighbors in India understood the health benefits of this powerful spice.

It’s rare to eat a Persian lunch or dinner without yogurt—it’s simply a fixture at the Persian table. (The only exception may be at a kosher meal, where dairy and meat can’t be eaten together.) Yogurt has its origins in Central Asia, and Iranians have been consuming it for literally thousands of years. Although you can purchase commercially made yogurt in Iran, many Persians there and abroad still prefer to make it at home. The now-popular thick yogurt that Americans call Greek style is everyday yogurt in Iran.

Like lemon juice, sumac, barberries, tamarind, and green plums, yogurt is yet another souring agent in the endless Persian quest for pucker-worthy substances. Yogurt makes a cool and creamy contrast to rich stews and meats, but like so many other Persian ingredients, it’s a vehicle for health and is widely understood to promote healthy stomach flora through the beneficial acidophilus bacteria it contains. Iranians have found myriad ways to cook with yogurt.

Although the goal of this book is to shed light on Persian food, I also want to show you a sustainable approach to cooking that’s good for both your body and the environment. For that reason, I’ve kept fried food and red meat to a minimum, and I’ve highlighted
all of the vibrant seasonal ingredients that make this cuisine unique. In order to make these delectable dishes more nourishing, there are a few key areas where I’ve modified the recipes from what you might find in a standard Persian cookbook. In particular, you’ll find healthy alternatives in the areas of cooking oil, sweeteners, and grains.

Olive oil is still the tastiest oil that I know of, and it’s certainly one of the most healthy. However, extra-virgin olive oil is not considered viable for high-heat cooking, as it has a low smoke point of 375°F. I mostly save extra-virgin olive oil for marinades, low-heat cooking, and for drizzling onto food as a garnish just before serving. If you’re very partial to olive oil, you’ll find that extra-light olive oil, with a smoke point of around 468°F, is suitable for frying and other high-temperature applications. My number one choice in these recipes, however, is grapeseed oil, a pleasantly neutral-tasting, all-purpose oil with a similarly high smoke point; it also doubles as a reliable option for vinaigrettes. The fats and oils listed below are excellent alternatives to explore.

I recommend avoiding white sugar if possible. The reasons are simple and hardly controversial: it’s bad for your health, as well as harmful for the environment and questionable in terms of human rights. In terms of how they affect your body, natural sweeteners like the ones below aren’t so different from white sugar, but they have more nutrients and do
not entail the same chemical processes and environmental hazards. I believe that
sugar has a place in our diet when used in moderation, and it’s good to be aware of how much of it you consume, both for your health and to keep the enjoyment of sweets a special and celebratory experience.

For most of the recipes in this book, my sweetener of choice is organic cane sugar, a light beige sugar that’s slightly less processed than regular white cane sugar and is widely available in natural food stores (plain white sugar can be swapped out for organic cane sugar with little difference in the final result). However, all of the
sweeteners on the list below are good ones to experiment with. If a recipe calls for organic cane sugar, you can substitute one of the dry sweeteners; and if a recipe calls for honey, you can use any one of the liquid sweeteners. Experimenting with these ingredients means you will have varying tastes, colors, and textures in your dishes, but trying them out is the best way to learn about their subtleties and sweetness levels. Look for these sweeteners at natural foods stores or at online retailers (see
Resources
).

As much as possible, I’ve tried to integrate unrefined
whole grains and traditional Middle Eastern flours into these recipes. I’ve done this partly because of the lack of nutrition in white flour and processed grains, and of our growing awareness about gluten intolerance. Mainly though, I love the interesting tastes and textures of grains such as millet, quinoa, and brown rice, along with flours made from foods like coconut, chickpeas, fava beans, and tapioca. These whole grains and grain flours can be found at natural foods stores and online (see
Resources
). If a recipe calls for whole-grain flour, you can always use regular white flour in its place.

Iranians use white rice to create all kinds of spectacular rice dishes. Although white rice is easy to prepare and has a sweet, pleasing taste, it can be unhealthy if eaten on a regular basis. White rice is a processed grain that has had the bran and germ stripped out, so it has a low nutrient content. White rice hits the bloodstream a lot like white
sugar, and there’s new research that links eating white
rice to type 2 diabetes. Fortunately, you can cook any of the rice dishes in this book using quinoa, brown rice, millet, or other whole grains.

The recipes in this book were all tested with fine-grain sea salt, unless otherwise specified (as in the pickle recipes). Sea salt is made by evaporating seawater, which allows trace minerals to remain and gives the salt a mild flavor. Sea salt does not, however, contain substantial amounts of the essential nutrient iodine. Table salt, which is mined from underground salt mines, has the minerals removed and often contains added iodine, as well as an additive to prevent clumping. There’s no proof that one is healthier than the other, but I think sea salt has a better, more subtle taste.

Feel free to use any salt you have on hand to make these recipes, but be aware that table salt has a sharper taste and a higher concentration of sodium than sea salt. If using a salt other than fine sea salt, I recommend using less salt than is called for in a given recipe, and instead seasoning to taste as you cook.