About a month ago, I visited a good friend of mine who is Iranian, and she treated me to what I believe to be a pretty traditional Iranian lunch.
First up was Iranian tea, which is brewed with cardamom. The teapot is brewed on top of a bigger vessel, which has hot water inside. Because the tea itself is very concentrated and fairly strong, it’s diluted down with the water for a milder taste. We had our tea with some chickpea cookies (nokhodchi), usually eaten during the Persian New Year.
The main course was lubia polo, Iranian green bean rice, a mixture of aromatic basmati rice, bits of beef, tomato paste, green beans, turmeric and onions. My friend insisted on a dollop of Greek yogurt on the side to temper the strong flavors of the rice, which was served with a simple salad.
Overall a simple, savory lunch that packed strong flavors in small sips and bites.
d’Eon: “#05”
Maybe it’s because I’ve been flipping through too many breakfast pictures or maybe I’ve just wanted to give this science experiment-like procedure a try myself, but I’ve been craving poached eggs for quite some time now.
I tried my own hand at it a couple times this week, and the results have been not as bad as I had imagined, although next time I would like to try with fresher eggs to hopefully have a better shape in the end.
The first time around, I think I over-cooked the eggs a little bit. The yolks weren’t as runny as I had wanted, and the whites were a little too springy, but overall the texture was still great. I served them on a bed of leftover veggies (tomatoes, celery, green peppers, onions) on a thick slice of toasted challah.
The second time around, the whites didn’t form as well as the first time, and so the yolk was a little exposed as a result. This time I put the egg into a bowl of cold water after only about 3 minutes (as opposed to about 5 like last time) to stop the cooking, and the yolk, despite being exposed, had a great runny texture. I served the egg (exposed side down…) on a toasted bagel with some thin slices of cheddar-gruyere melange cheese and garnished with some seaweed salad for added texture and contrasting flavor. I gave myself some additional presentation points when I used some of the scraps of cheese to puncture the egg.
