I decided to add this page as I think Iranian culture is not known much by other countries due to the low rate of tourists. To make this page more relevant to myself I try to mostly put photos of foods or things I have made myself.
I enjoy trying new recipes and if I had the chance I would have made a new meal every single day. I also love learning about other countries, and you can find my experiences from other cultures in gallery format under the Travelogue tab.
As each culture has its own food style, I put photos of some of the foods or deserts I find delicious and/or interesting that might be unfamiliar to many people. All the food types here have different recipes from region to region and of course from person to person, so I’ll write the most common ingredients. I have not brought the full cooking instructions as there are so many recipes available online but if anyone is interested I can tell them my own recipe. Also, you can find a Persianized variation of international dishes that I really liked.
Persian culture is full of cooking traditions or using different kinds of food in occasions. For example, in Nowruz which is our new year, people go to friends’ and families’ houses and welcome each other with fruits, sweets, and nuts and it is common to drink black tea or herbal tea. For another example, one day of the year is called “Cheragh Barat” and it is a tradition to remember the ones who have passed away. In this day, people go to graveyards and offer other people with dates, candies, chocolates, and foods such as “Aash” and homemade sweets such as “Halva”. It is believed that the good vibes of doing this passes good energy to the deads’ souls.
Yalda Night
Yalda Night is the longest night of the year in Iran, families gather usually in the eldest family member’s house, like the grandparent’s house, and celebrate the night for having the family they love and appreciate every single minute of spending time with them. A table designed with nuts, fruits and anything else depending on the person’s creativity is a tradition in Iran.
Serving Guests in Different Regions
Each region of each country has its own style of serving and eating food, which is amazing. These photos were taken while I was a guest. In the photo with rice, khoresht and juice, the stew or khoresht is “Ghormesabzi khoresht” and rice cooked this way is called “chelow” and the chicken is prepared with tomato paste. The yellow rice dish is “tahdig” which is rice scorched with yoghurt and saffron. Other than the main dishes there are jelly and a typical kind of salad, vegetable and juice. The salad is made of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and carrot. The vegetable plate usually consists of parsley, leek, basil and mint. This table needs to be prepared from the early morning or the day before.
The photo on the left belongs to Gonabad city in Khorasan Jonubi province, containing “Aash Lakhshak” and pan Kabab. The bread is called “Sangak” and is baked on top of small stones in a bakery, that is the type of bread I really miss whenever I’m living outside of Iran. The salad is mainly made of pickled cabbage and tomato paste.
The egg breakfast is served with cheese in an house turned into a tourist hostel in Riab village close to Gonabad. This kind of bread is mainly baked in this region of Iran and is very thick in comparison to other types of bread you can find in typical bakeries.
The bowl being served contains “Aash Joosh Pareh”. Aash Joosh Pareh is a traditional food cooked mainly in special regions such as Gonabad, the city I talked about under the travelogue tab and in the Khorasan Jonubi Province page. This Aash contains a kind of thick “Reshteh” called “Lakhshak”. Reshteh is dough, dried in straw shapes. Unlike what is said on websites, Reshteh tastes nothing like noodles. In Aash Joosh Pareh, Lakhshak is wrapped around ingredients such as lentil, sesame, poppy seed, and cannabis seed and then it is boiled with spices such as turmeric. A similar food to this kind of Aash is dumpling. This food is designed with walnut and cumin powder. I like to mention that we also have “Aash Lakhshak” but in this type of Aash, Lakhshak is not wrapped around anything. Actually I think Aash has the potential of having a complete website for itself.
Sweets
Halva is frying mainly flour, oil, sugar, cardamom, rose water, and saffron. Ranginak is the same as Halva but dates are used instead of sugar which makes it taste different and be healthier. There are loads of types of halva, with milk or syrup or many other ingredients but the most common and traditional type has the ingredients I said earlier.
Fereni is stirring starch, milk, rose water, cardamom, and saffron or vanilla, when you cool it down it becomes sturdy enough to hold its shape like the one here.
Sholezard is rice, milk, saffron, cardamom and rosewater usually designed with cinnamon, slivered pistachios and/or almonds and any other pretty edibles.
We love Saffron, rosewater and cardamom in our sweets, cinnamon is also popular for doughy sweets like biscuits or cookies. It might be interesting for you that in Iran, there are only a few types of cookies called cookie, all other types have their own names, for example, “Raisin cookie” is called “Raisin Sweet” so it’s considered a sweet and not a cookie. “Rice Bread” is the English translation of “Nan-e Berenji” but it is not bread, it’s another type of cookie. Another interesting fact to mention is that almost every area has its own type of cookie and some of them are even famous such as the Fuman cookies belonging to the beautiful city of Fuman. To be honest, I’m not sure what specifies a sweet as a cookie in Persian, and any explanation that comes to my mind has a counterexample.
The fish-like sweet is made of cotton candy. Here cotton candy can be found as fluffy as the ones sold on stick every where, but you can mostly find it thicker and packed in different styles in plastic bags. I made this shape for my son’s first birthday party with vanilla and cocoa cotton candies.
Food
These are chosen from Persian routine cuisine.
Tahchin is when cooked chicken is mixed with yoghurt and saffron and fried on the bottom of the cooking rice pot.
The middle photo is “Aash Reshteh” designed with “Kashk”, fried onions and dried pepper mint. This kind of “Aash contains peas, beans, vegetables and “Reshteh”. Reshteh is tall thin sticks made of wheat flour and soften by cooking. There are various kinds of Aash, the type of food I believe would be extremely popular in countries with cold weather.
The very green dish of Kookoo Sabzi is made mainly from vegetables of chives, parsley, and coriander, other ingredients are spices such as turmeric or curry, you can add Zereshk and Sumac to give it a bit of sour taste and walnut is a great match with this food.
When someone says Pirozhki (Pirashki), something like the photo here comes to my mind with ingredients of minced lamb meat, potato, onion, garlic, and maybe bell pepper. There is a jock in Persian that says someone asks an Iranian “how often do you use onion in your food?” The Iranian answers “first we fry the onion then decide on what to cook!”
Nature Gifts
All the items here are common nature gifts in the area I live: northeast of Iran. The fruits I’m going to talk about in this part have a sour sweet taste, my favourite taste, so it is difficult for me to explain these fruits as even thinking about them makes me wanna have some.
Barberries have a sour an a bit sweet taste. Barberries in the photo have 2 forms of dry and fresh, they can also be kept frozen. The barberry juices here are from two different kinds of barberries, one red barberry and the other black wild barberry. Candies are not merely for photo decoration; as the juices here are not mixed with sugar you might need them for drinking such sour juice!
As stated in Wikipedia ” The first true greengage came from a green-fruited wild plum which originated in Iran. ” Many Iranians madly love greengage plums, I guess one of the reasons is the fact that even their ancestors used to eat them, another reason is that we love the sour sweet taste! What’s in the bowl is a very delicious greengage plum jam and I eat them instead of candies.
Black mulberry here has 3 forms of raw fruit, jam and condensed juice.
I put 3 forms of sour cherries in one plate, one of them is its fresh form. It is very common here to dry sour cherries and eat them as a snack. The other form of sour cherry on the plate is its jam.
Saffron is called red gold in Iran. Iran is the best saffron producer in the world and Qaen city has the best saffron in Iran. I’m proud to say that the second-best saffron in the world comes from the place my grandparents used to live in, Gonabad. The quality of saffron in this region is close to Qaen and our relatives harvest saffron in November. When the saffron flower is ready, you must pick it and separate the petal from the stigma, and even one day delay will result in petal withering and a difficult separation task.
Smudge is a stick made of herbs and is burned to produce a good odour and release positive energy. This smudge is made of rosemary and lavender and designed with miniature roses, the herbs I could easily pick in our garden. I took the Smudge photo on top of a bunch of herbs useful for cold and flu.
Breakfast
These two photos are similar to common breakfasts in Iran, a bit fancier though. Scrambled eggs are mainly cooked with onion, and sometimes garlic, but here it is with cheese to go with strawberry. It is common to have traditional cheese as a breakfast. Cheese sandwiches can contain raisin, parsley, walnut and tomato to give a combination with sweet and salty taste.
Normal Dishes + a hint
In these plates, I used ingredients that might be a bit unfamiliar for people from other countries. I cooked them in Norway, so I enjoyed combining Norwegian Salmon with the taste I like. In rice and shrimp plate, I used black seeds and fish roe with rice and shrimp which was a good mixture. Garlic bread, salmon, roasted almonds and parsley was one of my cooking trial and error dishes which ended up very delicious. Similarly, Salmon went well with mushrooms and tomato, after all salmon goes well with many tastes. In the saffron chelow & meat plate, I added brewed saffron to the rice while steaming it under a thick-cloth cover in its last stage of cooking. I should mention saffron needs to be brewed before being added to foods. If you simply add saffron to food similar to what is done with other spices it won’t give you the aroma and flavour it should, I say it as many of my international friends didn’t know about it when they were told.
Dairies
Once we bought 5 kilograms of milk and I made these products from it simply with my cooking pots. From left to right they are Ghare Ghoroot, Dry Kashk, Strained Yoghurt and the bowl with mints on top contains Persian old-style yoghurt. I know it might be a bit confusing but I explain the procedure as when I first learned it, I was really amused. By heating milk to a certain temperature and letting it settle in a warm place for a few hours you get old-style Persian yogurt. Mixing yoghurt, water and salt you get Ayran (Doogh) and pressing it in a cloth bag gives strained yoghurt. Adding lemon juice to yoghurt breaks it and straining this broken yoghurt gives old-style Persian cheese, which I haven’t put its photo here. If you dry this cheese in small pieces you get Kashk. Boiling cheese water gives you Ghare Ghoroot.
7-Seen
Nowruz word means new day and refers to our new year which is calculated based on the solar calendar. Photos here show my 7-seen tables in different years. It is customary to have a table with 7 elements of apple, vinegar, sumac, green-grown sprouts, Oleaster, Samanu, and garlic and each of them is a symbol for a quality like health, growth and wealth. Persian name of these words start with “S” and s alphabet in Persian is called “seen”. It is believed that each of these elements brings its own type of good vibe for the rest of the year.
Each family designs this table in a different style, so you can imagine a country with millions of types of 7-seen tables, from luxurious ones to very simple ones. Dates in photo captions are solar dates, the system officially used in the Iranian calendar.
I took these photos at the same place they were located in the house to convey the feeling of normal house decoration, and you can find loads of 7-seen photos available online.