Lessons from a Persian mama

"This is a blog about food, pretty food pictures, love of life and celebrating different cultures" Hora

Time for a look at another food blog. It's a project that I sometimes find to be stimulating, sometimes depressing (well they are mostly so much better at it than I), sometimes educational, sometimes reassuring (I'm not as bad as them - or at least I'm probably just as goodish) and even sometimes educational and/or inspiring.

I'm not quite sure where this one falls in my spectrum of foodie blogs. In many ways the writer, Hora - she doesn't give a surname - and nor do I when I come to think of it - is similar to myself. At least in her motivation. In her About Us section she says that when her children began to leave home she wrote down the recipes they loved so that they would know how to reproduce them. As did I. Then she decided to share them on a blog because others might be interested too. And I sort of did the same. I guess the motivations were a little different. I was a retired empty nester and just a tiny bit bored, so it was a way of still using my brain in some way. And food and writing were two of the things I liked to do. She adds photography to her list of passions and I suppose I like that too and there are occasional photographs from me. But they are snapshots. I point and click. I do not spend ages setting it up.

Anyway the other thing to note is that the last post on this website is dated 2018. She also has a Facebook and Instagram site and a Pinterest one too, but the last date on Facebook is 2022 and I cannot access the dates on the other two as I do not subscribe to them. In a reply to a commmenter asking for more posts she merely said she was working on a large project. Anyway I guess it has died. Nothing more to say or just other interests taking over? I guess one gets bored unless it's a real passion and/or your career.

What more did I learn? Well this is a very practical almost schoolmarmy kind of blog. Perhaps this quote which appears under the picture above on the front page, sort of sums that up:

"By following my precise instructions you will be able to recreate the meals that I prepare in my kitchen." Hora

'Precise' - sort of says it all. Although she talks about her family and her homeland of Iran - Tabriz to be exact - I assume her family moved to America - Utah - a long time ago. The tone is not the usual American gushy enthusiasm. It's quieter somehow. But I will say that there are indeed precise instructions, together with photographs of the process which would help the beginner cook enormously.

So just a few examples.

This one is perhaps the surprise one, as it is not Persian. However, she does say that she is also interested in learning about other cultures through their food. The recipe is for a German pancake or Dutch baby - an enormously trendy thing which I have on my 'to do' list I think. Anyway as well as it being a trendy thing I was also struck by the presentation, because the presentation that you see these days is of a flat, but thick, pancake, with a rim, and filled with something - usually something savoury.

Like this random example from Zen Belly of Savory Dutch baby with smoked salmon. These always appear to be much more like a Yorkshire pudding and, indeed, are often described as such.

The Persian Mama's version however, is based on some that she used to eat when at callege, shortly after arriving in America. She makes it sound like a traditional British pancake except that the batter also contains vanilla and nutmeg, which is really not that much of a variation. But it's still sprinkled with sugar - though icing sugar not ordinary sugar, and lemon juice. The way it's folded over is different too, but then again there may well be British people who fold it like that as well. Anyway I included it because it was - well - not Persian.

Her last recipe was for Persian rice spice - Advieh berenj. I guess the most significant ingredient here is rose petals - the others being cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, and nutmeg. This photograph is the introductory photograph but I suspect that this rice also has saffron - or turmeric - in it and maybe other things as well. 'Advieh' is the spice part of the meaning and 'berenj' the rice part.

I should perhaps add here that the most famous kind of Persian rice is the tahdig - the rice that you turn out from the pan like a kind of cake because it has that crunchy bottom on it - the tahdig. Yet another spice mix to add to your collection anyway. And no chilli included!

Khoresht fesenjan/Fesenjoon. I guess this is the classic Persian dish - a rich stew - originally of duck - in a sauce of pomegranate and walnut. You will find it in every Persian cookbook and in every Persian restaurant, in one form or another. These days it is often made with chicken, as Greg and Lucy Malouf note in their book Saraban.

Greg Malouf in true innovative Greg Malouf style, sticks to the duck but then combines the classic Moroccan B'stilla with the Persian Fesenjan to produce Duck pie with pomegranates and walnuts/Gourmet Traveller and even in his book on Iranian food - Saraban the duck is not cooked in the sauce but served with it - Duck breast with fesenjan sauce/ The Independent. Yasmin Khan in her book Saffron Tales, is rather more traditional although, like the Persian Mama she does use chicken rather than duck for her Fesenjoon/BBC Good Food.

Kabab koobideh - another absolute classic dish - the minced lamb kebabs. Long and thin so you need flat wide skewers or the meat will fall off. Greg Malouf had a recipe but it's not online and he didn't have a picture either, and Yasmin Khan does not include them in her book. So you are stuck with Persian Mama - well and all of the other Persian food websites out there, as well as the multicultural ones. Besides her recipe is a good one.

And these, as well as the rice as shown in Hora's picture above, are most often served with bread - Barbari - the daily Persian breakfast bread - long ovals with lengthways ridges. The ridges do not show very clearly in Hora's picture but they do in Greg Malouf's although his recipe is not online.

So there goes Hora the Persian Mama, who is doing who knows what these days. She is not tucked away in some tiny corner of the internet - her Facebook and Instagram sites have well over 20,000 followers, so I'm guessing the website had a few thousand too. I mildly wonder why she stopped. Maybe it was just a case of being fed up with it, and maybe she is now doing more interesting things. Given that her children were off to college when she started the blog well before when it ended in 2018, she may well have just retired. Enough is enough and all that.

I will say, however, that if you are at all interested in Persian food - and why wouldn't you be because it's absolutely delicious - then her website gives really good recipes for all of those traditional things. And a few other things as well.

YEARS GONE BY

March 12

2024 - Keeping clean whilst eating

2023 - I began with scaccia and almost ended with quiche

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Oddments for the end of the week

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Lucky dip - potted - by Elizabeth David

2017 - Le déjeuner sur l'herbe - in search of the perfect picnic