...Iran (Part 3 - Home Cooked Food to the Rescue)

Iranian food has been disappointing. There. I've said it. I know what you're thinking, that we were spoilt in Turkey. Yes we were but there are other travelling souls who share in our disappointment and who have not had the pleasure of experiencing Turkish cuisine. 

The food issue here has been bothering us. REALLY bothering us (we have the time for such matters to niggle after all). Endless conversations have ensued between backpackers (never with Iranians - they would be mortified to know we felt like this, one guy was deeply offended when Finn mentioned it was difficult to find a restaurant so you can see what we're dealing with here) to try to get to the bottom of it. And here it is...

Everything in this country is so tightly controlled and amazingly this has an effect on what and where you eat! Iranians do not relax in public because quite frankly, they can't. There are always 'people' watching. This explains the absence of outdoor cafes, lack of street food and poor variety (and often quality) of food in restaurants (when you are lucky enough to find one that is). The good stuff, the 'real' eating experience we have come to realise is where Iranians can really relax and be themselves. At home. The few travellers we've met here have all had one goal: to be invited to an Iranian home for dinner. We had the opportunity to eat great home cooked food when we recently spent a week in the desert.
 

Garmeh - an oasis village

In an oasis village, we stayed in a guesthouse with a baby camel outside (a digression: watching it eat is one of the funniest things I've seen - its mouth would start to move before it ate as if it were imagining eating, when not doing this it would form its lips into an 'o' shape making it look constantly excited as it hopped about, waiting for its dinner. End of digression. Thank you).

A baby camel! I will never eat another camel burger

Although it was a guesthouse, Payam, our shy chef cooked some lovely food that we would be hard pressed to find in a restaurant. Highlights were tahdig meaning 'bottom of the pan'. This is basically the crunchy bits of rice from the 'bottom of the pan', sometimes with vegetables added. We had potato tahdig which was damn good! The other unbelievably lovely foodstuff was pickled aubergines. Pickled. Aubergines. If ever there were two words made for each other it is these. Boiled, skinned, stuffed with mint and garlic and then left to soak up all that lovely vinegar for three months, these are one of the nicest things I've eaten. Three months before we return, I will remind you of this so you can get busy and make me happy on my return!

A plate of tahdig

After being fed, we watched our chef play beautiful tunes on ceramic pots

At another village called Toudeshk, we stayed at the home of Mohammad. One of the few home stays in Iran, Mohammad gives people the opportunity to experience Iranian home life, desert living and home cooked food. We overindulged on his sister-in-law's amazing cooking. On our last night we were treated to a 'traditional' dish of dates and egg. If ever there were two words that shouldn't go together it is surely these two. Or so I thought. The dates were boiled in a little water to soften them up and then cooked with whisked eggs resulting in a caramel mush. It was served as a main dish but all I could think about as I worked through seconds and thirds was how amazing it would be with a blob of vanilla ice cream.
 

Eating with the family

That same evening, we 'let' the kids beat us at snap while Mohammad and his sister-in-law hacked away at what can only be described as a phallus (sorry) of sugar. Why? They were making sugar lumps so they could dip them in tea, Iranian style. Why didn't they just buy sugar lumps? I have no idea. But what else are you going to do on a Saturday night when alcohol is banned? Although, as we have had the pleasure to experience, home brewing is alive and well in this country. And there's a rumour you can buy bacon on the black market...
 

...Iran (Part 2 - Iranian Pizza and Hejabs)

Imam Mosque in Esfehan, the most beautiful mosque in the world

One thing that has surprised us here (other than people's readiness to slag off their government whenever they see a foreigner) is the Iranians' love of fast food.

Iranian fast food is a welcome change to the massive meals you receive in normal restaurants which consist largely of meat and rice. You can actually get a good burger here. Here is Finn devouring a surprisingly good camel burger:

Look at the love in those eyes for that burger

 However, Iranian 'pizza', and I use the word 'pizza' very loosely here, is something else. What, I can't say, but it's very far from my idea of pizza. If you are Italian, you might want to stop reading.

So after an amazing morning gaping at the ruins of Persepolis, we needed to un-culture ourselves and headed to a fast food joint. To be precise, 'The First World Pizza and Hamber' which (obviously) sold 'onli pizza and hamber 110'. We ordered 'pizza' and joined the confusing queuing system. After 5 minutes, we received this:

Just look at it!

A pizza in nothing but name and base and the weight of 5 bags of sugar. In total, we counted 10 different toppings. Brace yourselves: Tasteless cheese, mince, vegetables (mushroom, pepper and chopped tomato), 'sausage', mayonnaise, gherkin, crisps (yes) and last but by no means least, something yellow. I know what you are thinking (other than 'I wish I'd waited to eat until after reading this blog), what about the tomato sauce  that  makes a pizza a pizza?! Well fear not! We were given the option of ketchup which was squirted all over the medley of ingredients. In fact, surprisingly it was the only thing you could really taste. I suppose when you have that many flavours, one has to dominate.

 I have no idea how they came up with this idea of pizza but I like Finn's suggestion that someone saw a picture of a pizza and just guessed.

On a completely different note, a word on wearing a hejab (headscarf) and eating. Wearing a hejab is obligatory here and something I'm getting used to. I find that often after meals I have a small mountain of rice hidden in the side of it. Finn has likened it to a horse's nose bag, while I prefer to look upon it as the hamster cheeks I have always longed for. However, I notice that Iranian ladies do not have the same issue and so should probably stop indulging myself. Incidentally, getting the hejab on in the first place is quite a chore. The rebellious nature of my hair refuses to be tamed by a piece of material. For visual learners among you, try to picture a fluffy cat being forced into a vet-bound pet carrier. It is a constant battle. On the plus side, its ability to defy gravity means I unintentionally copy the fashion here of having a bouffant fringe and a hejab several centimetres off my head. Swings and roundabouts.

Trying to eat Iranian dessert (noodles in rose water) without creating a small mountain inside my hejab

...Iran (Part 1 - In a Spin)

Celebrating getting our Iranian visas in Turkey. We finally allowed ourselves to read the Iranian guidebook we'd been carrying for weeks in the vague hope we might get there

Would you believe, we've made it to Iran (hence the silence for the last few weeks!). Int
ernational headlines didn't deter us, battling governments couldn't stop us and a hefty increase in visa costs for Brits wouldn't change our stubborn minds. Yes you may think us insane for coming here but really, all the above disappears in the face of Iranian hospitality. Now food.

I'm writing this blog after a big lunch so apologies if I have lapses in concentration. However, the timing of the big lunch and immediate bloggage is no coincidence as it is the finest Iranian meal so far and warrants the glory that comes with being first post (I have written two other draft posts, both boring).

After a morning wandering the bazaars, haggling badly, being mistaken for a Muslim (me) and being smuggled into a mosque by an old lady (me again) and then getting chucked out of the mosque when it becomes apparent the subject isn't Muslim (yep, me again), some (us) might've suggested we needed a good lunch. Hurray! And a good lunch came in the form of 'Dizi'.

Dizi is considered a poor person's meal here, probably because the ingredients are very simple and, in a country like Iran, readily available. Also it could be because really it's two meals in one. To get two meals out of it though requires certain procedures and thankfully we'd read up on it to be prepared (but probably still did it a bit wrong). So this is how it's done (kind of)...

On ordering Dizi, we received two earthenware pots with a stew inside. The stew contained chunks of mutton, plump tomatoes, chickpeas, beans, spices and lumps of fat.
 

We poured the 'juice' from the stew into bowls over pieces of bread we'd ripped up. And munched and slurped it all down.

Once the juice had been drained and the soggy bread devoured, we turned our attention to the 'solid matter' left in the pot. Taking the provided 'masher', we proceeded to pummel said matter into mush and devoured with the vinegary pickles, taking bites of mint and adding lemon juice. 

Mashing the Dizi

After mashing the Dizi

All in all a damn fine meal which should've set us up for an afternoon of more high frolics. Instead, it's made me want to sleep. Probably for the best, god knows what we would've got up to.

Happy!