Persian Cooking Class

Last week I took a Persian cooking class offered through CHIC. The Persian cooking classes are always quite popular because the person who teaches the class does a great job and because Persian food isn't something you run into in everyday cooking.

The class is hosted in the teachers house. Since many of the spices used in Persian cooking are not common, Nazie, the teacher, takes a few minutes to explain each of the spices and how they are used. The dishes we made that day used dried limes, saffron (a common spice used in Persian cooking), turmeric, and advieh (a mixture of 7 different spices).


The menu consisted of Salad-e Shirazi (a cold tomato and cucumber salad), Koresht-e-Ghaymeh Bademjan (a "stew" dish), yogurt dip, and crunchy basmati rice. It takes over 4 hours of cooking time for the stew when done properly. Needless to say, I won't be making this dish everyday!

After all the food was done we moved into the living room to enjoy all the awesome food.

And no meal is complete without a little something to wash all that fantastic food down.

The Salad-e Shirazi is super easy to make and something I eat for lunch quite often.

4 medium tomatoes
2 small cucumbers
1 medium onion ( I like red onion)
3-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons virgin olive oil
200 grams fresh mint (or 1 teaspoon dry mint)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/6 teaspoon black pepper

Wash cucumbers, tomatoes and mint. Peel onion. Chop cucumbers, tomatoes, and onion very finely, and mix. Chop mint very finely and add to the vegetables. Add fresh lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and black pepper.

Mix well and serve cool. If you want jazz it up a bit you can add feta cheese and black olives and eat with pita bread. YUM!