“But it’s Tuesday.”
“So?”
“Can we do exotics on a weeknight?”
The chef was over to cook for me. “This will take half an hour, tops. It’s easy.”
On the menu: Kuku sabzi and yogurt soup. “For you, maybe,” I said. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
Me? I’m used to pasta and red sauce out of a can on a weeknight.
But what do you know? A festive egg dish and a yogurt soup aren’t very difficult after all…
…but there’s a lot of chopping involved…
Here’s how you do it:
Kuku Sabzi:
1/4 cup chopped cilantro (keep some extra for garnish)
1/4 chopped dill
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 tsp. turmeric
6 eggs, lightly beaten
1 small russet potato, grated and blanched
1 leek, quartered and thin sliced
Salt and pepper to season
oil
1/8 cup pomegranate seeds for garnish (sorta important, because this is Persian, and what’s Persian without the pretty red seeds?)
Combine the herbs, spices, eggs, potato, leek and seasonings. Grate your potato first, then blanche in boiling water for a minute or two, and then “shock” with cold water in a sieve. (listen to me! Shocking!) Squeeze out the excess water with a paper towel, then add to the bowl.
Bowl o’ herbs (plus potato)
(I’m thinking you could probably add a handful of walnuts and barberries and up your Persian cred. The sour barberries would give the mixture a nice little bite. Of course I didn’t have either ingredient (walnuts are $8 a bag at Trader Joe’s these days!), and barberries requires a schlep to the Persian market 20 miles away. But in the end it didn’t matter.)
Once you’ve combined the ingredients, add some oil to a skillet or omelet pan and cook it like you would a regular frittata (or a spanish tortilla), covered with a plate until set, about 12-15 minutes.
Take the pan, hold the cover plate tight, and FLIP it onto the plate. Cook the other side until brown and crisp (another five minutes or so). Garnish with cilantro and pomegranate seeds.
Trust me. (and remind me to learn Photoshop…)
Get it on a plate and it’s gorgeous and green and incredibly awesome. If you had a better picture of it, you’d see how lovely it is, and you’d know why it’s a favorite for Nowruz, which is the Persian new year.
As if this wasn’t fancy enough. Kick your own ass and serve it with this:
Yogurt soup:
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped fine.
We used pistachios instead….OMG!
2 Ts rose petals, crushed and reconstituted. (I thought I had these, but what I really had was a bag of dried hibiscus flowers — which wouldn’t work but still scored me big points. What I did have was rose water. We used that instead to no ill effects.)
1 cup plain Greek yogurt (2%)
3/4 cup ice water
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup Persian cucumber, small dice
2 Ts mint, finely chopped
2 Ts chives, finely chopped
Salt and pepper seasoning
Ground sumac for garnish
Whisk yogurt and water together. Stir in raisins, cuckes, nuts and herbs. Season and refrigerate for one hour to chill. Serve with sumac. And you know I have sumac now.
Soup of the Gods
If you know what you’re doing with a knife, and you have all your ingredients in place, prep indeed does take about 15 minutes. Another 15 or so to cook (and do the yogurt ahead so you can be chillin’ while making the kuku), you’ve got your exotic Tuesday night dinner in record time. Amazing.
Now the question is: Can I recreate this on my own? Chop all of this without taking off a digit or two?
We’ll see. As always, stay tuned….
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I am sooooo going to try the Kuku Sabzi. That looks delicious!