Seeking recipes for Iranian dishes by home cook
I had an Iranian friend years ago that I long lost touch with. When his mother came to visit we had several meals she made. I never got recipes but I remember how wonderful three items she made were and I would love to recreate these dishes. I can only describe them hoping someone will recognize them since I believe they were standard Iranian home cooking dishes.
1. basmati rice with hot seared potato slices lining the bottom of the pot then the dish would be inverted to show a beautiful potato crusted cake with rice inside.
2. Roasted Eggplant dip, there was tahini in it, it was tangy and green and we ate it on bread as an appetizer. This was an easy recipe and we were shown how to make it but I didn't write anything down. It started with salting the eggplant slices allowing them to sweat and then roasting them.
3. Loose ground beef sauteed and we ate it over rice - I can't remember the spice tastes that it had but it was super tasty.
Thanks for any and help and recipes!
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1) the first recipe you're looking for is for potato (seebzamanee) tadig - tadig is a crust that Iranians make at the bottom of their rice - my American friends always just called it "burnt rice" but its really a specialty and not so easy as just burning a dish and in fact shouldn't really be burnt at all :) It can be made with just rice, with bread (noon tadig), or with potatoes (there are probably other variations as well but those are the 3 I grew up with). Here is a recipe: http://mypersiankitchen.com/tahdig-wi...
2) I'm not familiar with any that have tahini in them - are you sure you aren't thinking of baba ganoush which is an Arabic (I think) dish? There are several Iranian eggplant dips though - one is meerza ghasemi which is an egg based dip, then there's khashkeh bademjan which is egplant dip with whey, and then there is must-o bademjan which is with yogurt. Google any of those to find a recipe.
3) No idea what the third one is - were there any vegetables? Most of the traditional Iranian dishes are kind of like stews involving meat and vegetables and sauce served over rice. Browse the website I mentioned above for some ideas and the Food of Life is an excellent Persian cook book. Noosheh Jan!
