June 21, 2003
I am not sure if Arak is under construction or de-construction. Everywhere we go there are piles of bricks and sand. I don’t know if those piles are meant for the partly constructed buildings or come from them.
A said that I might be the first American to visit Arak. Somehow I doubt that. One thing is for sure: there aren’t a whole lot of “harigis” here.
That said, Arak is somewhat beautiful. The weather is beautiful. The stone buildings are potentially beautiful. The park is great. The air, however, leaves something to be desired. The smells range from gasoline to diesel to burning garbage.
The Iranian homes I have been in are really well-designed. My mom would love the houses here: she could have a Passover Seder for 30 in a house made for two (or 4). The houses we have been in have had really functional, over-sized rooms. Presumably this is because Iranian families often host huge groups for dinner or tea.
The Koran Belt
To get to Arak from Tehran we pass through the buckle of the Koran belt: Qom. K told me that he went there to see Khomeini when he first arrived from exile. “There were so many cars that the traffic did not move at all. We had to get out of our cars and walk.”
Driving through Qom makes me realize that I have not once heard the call to prayer since we arrived in Iran. This is unlike Istanbul with its warring calls to prayer. Every mosque in Istanbul has gigantic speakers that blare out the call to prayer. It was not until the third day here when we arrived in Arak that I heard the call to prayer.
It was also on the third day that I saw my first gun.
Food
K has been making fun of me for my food obsession. “Some people think that food is the most important thing here,” he jokes.
Well food is awfully important to many of us. There is no doubt about that. I am a flavor junkie.
BTW, the secret ingredient in the stuffed eggplant dish was not cinnamon, it was turmeric. For those of you who thought that all turmeric did was turn food yellow, like I did, I have news for you: fresh, it is amazingly delicious and complex. Like I said earlier, there is a subtle flavor of cinnamon. That flavor is mixed with the flavor of cumin, but not the overt flavor of cumin. It tastes like cumin was planted nearby. It also tastes a little bit of clay.
Now that the turmeric discussion is over, it’s time to discuss dolmas. K always said that his family made the best dolmas and until eating them at his mother’s house, I did not believe him. I did have their dolmas before, but not from their own kitchen with their own ingredients. These dolmas were easily the best I have ever eaten. I do know that the grape leaves were fresh. There was rice and yellow beans inside and I think tarragon and some other herbs. One set of dolmas was salty and the other was sweet. Both were great.
Yesterday M made kebabs. “Iran’s most famous food,” he told me. I can’t argue with kebabs. These were made of ground beef, onions, salt pepper, and some other herb. We had them with barbecued tomatoes and rice. You can get these kebabs in any Iranian restaurant. They will be called koobideh or kubideh.
Tonight we are having joojeh (chicken) kebab. You’ll have to wait to hear about that.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Thursday, June 19, 2003
June 18, 2003
K just returned from Teheran’s prison. “It was horrifying. I sat with the judge. I can’t talk about it now,” he told me. “I can’t write about it. You have to,” he said.
His family does not know he went. Late last night, his nephew C said, “I can bring you to the prison to meet the students who are being held there.”
C is well-connected.
It turned out that Intelligence officers were “visiting” the students when K & C arrived so they could not meet them. Instead they observed some court proceedings. “I could not believe it,” K said. “All they did was argue about who was the most corrupt. One judge, who was a prisoner himself, said, “Judges are the most corrupt.” Another said, “We learn from our masters.” Another said, “Investigators are the really corrupt among us.” An investigator answered, “No, it’s the informants who are the most corrupt.”
While K was there listening to a debate about who the most corrupt official was, A and As and Ai and I were at the park. As and Ai were on the swings. A and I sat in the shade talking politics. “Revolution is bad,” A said. “It is always bad. The most violent win. We need to move slowly,” he said. “We don’t want a revolution.”
“Secular government is much better than religious government.”
“We are a religious people,” A responded.
“So are Americans. Religious people need secular governments.”
“That’s right. That’s what we need.”
Before coming to Iran, I read so much about how the women are becoming more fashionable and daring with their dress. That said, I have only seen one truly daring woman. She wore a transparent pink scarf that clearly showed her black hair. Almost everyone else wears black and many women still wear chadors. Many have a kind of habit that makes them look like nuns.
Food
Okay, this is the important part of the blog: food.
For lunch we had chicken with zeresh: a small, red sour berry that I think is called “barberry” in English (although barberry does not give me any more information than zeresh). We also had eggplant stuffed with ground lamb and raisins with the subtle taste of cinnamon. Yum.
The rice was also very lightly spiced with the cinnamon. Cinnamon here has a different flavor than what we are used to in America or Europe: it is deeper and more earthy tasting. It isn’t as light or sweet. I guess you could say that it tastes as though it was grown with cumin (not like it is mixed with cumin).
For dinner we had “calepacheh.” It is a soup of sheep’s head and feet. For the unitiated (me) it is a very unattractive dish. I mean, snouts, toes, brains, tongues: all arrayed on the plate: how could that possibly be attractive? It is a good thing I am a daring eater because it was delicious. We ate it with a flat bread that we bought straight from a fire in the wall of a bakery. That bread was mighty delicious. It was especially fantastic the second it left the fire.
Driving
Like many things in this country, driving is a game of chicken: who will give in first. Although, now that I have written this, I think it is actually more like a game of Tetris. Drivers are constantly aware of all available spaces and drive to fill them. Lanes and lights don’t matter. What matters is whether or not there is a space available that fits your car. This means, of course, that you are free to gently nudge the car beside you to take up any empty space available to it.
We drove all over M’s neighborhood. We bought the calepache, the bread, and a bottle of clear “medecine.”
We also drove to the subway, and took the metro into the center of Tehran to see K’s brother wrestle. For the most part, men and women ride in separate cars. I had to ride in the men’s car because I am a “harigi” (foreigner) and cannot take care of myself.
Not surprisingly, I was not allowed to enter the arena. All that skin might be too much for me, I guess. The referees, however, wanted to let me in. They were so excited that I came from America to see K’s brother wrestle.
He won. But we did not see the match.
June 17, 2003
At Schipol, we bought our tickets to travel to Iran. There we met our friends and their children who were also traveling on that afternoon’s flight. Together, we were 9 people.
Slowly we moved through the airport until we arrived at gate 7d. We were almost the last people to get on the Iran Air Flight. K and his friend went to have a beer right before we got on the plane. I had a rubbery ham and cheese croissant. The boys played on the moving sidewalks.
I walked on to a full plane and looked at the sea of semetic faces. A plane full of men who could get asked off of a flight in America just for having one eyebrow.
BTW, we got real silverware with our food.
The flight was easy and comfortable. I heard a lot of American voices (obviously 2nd gens flying to Iran), some Dutch, and mostly Iranian.
The real fun began when we landed. First there was a beautifully painted sheet that read: “If you are coughing and have a fever we are waiting you at the airport.” All painted in red, yellow, and blue.
It took us awhile to get all of the bags for the 9 of us who were accidentally traveling together. When we did we zipped through customs, then had to get our bags xrayed to leave.
There were so many people waiting for friends and relatives that it was almost impossible to leave the airport. Two police officers were sitting on chairs looking at the crowd. The man in front of me said, “Can’t you help? Get up and ask the crowd to let us through.” We still had to push our way through the crowd, a big part of which was K’s family. I was bombarded by so many greetings, flowers, happy children – I felt really and truly excited and happy to arrive.
There were 14 people waiting for us. The children were so happy and fresh and thrilled to see me and “Amoo” K.
When I saw the crowd waiting outside the airport, I thought “Wow! This is what a crowd of people waiting for relatives looks like! I wonder what the crowds look like by the university?” There were women dressed head to toe in black chadors, and women with fashionable long jackets and matching headscarves. The black chadors were depressing. I cannot say that they were not. The women wearing them weren’t smiling, that’s for sure.
Now we are sitting in a nice stone house. I ate a tomato that tasted like a tomato, unbelievably sweet apricots, a green plum with salt, white cherries, and a crisp cucumber. Life is good. Two children are sitting with me as I type, and we are listening to an Iranian pop band from LA.
I am going to sleep. I can smell the exhaust-filled air of Tehran.
K just returned from Teheran’s prison. “It was horrifying. I sat with the judge. I can’t talk about it now,” he told me. “I can’t write about it. You have to,” he said.
His family does not know he went. Late last night, his nephew C said, “I can bring you to the prison to meet the students who are being held there.”
C is well-connected.
It turned out that Intelligence officers were “visiting” the students when K & C arrived so they could not meet them. Instead they observed some court proceedings. “I could not believe it,” K said. “All they did was argue about who was the most corrupt. One judge, who was a prisoner himself, said, “Judges are the most corrupt.” Another said, “We learn from our masters.” Another said, “Investigators are the really corrupt among us.” An investigator answered, “No, it’s the informants who are the most corrupt.”
While K was there listening to a debate about who the most corrupt official was, A and As and Ai and I were at the park. As and Ai were on the swings. A and I sat in the shade talking politics. “Revolution is bad,” A said. “It is always bad. The most violent win. We need to move slowly,” he said. “We don’t want a revolution.”
“Secular government is much better than religious government.”
“We are a religious people,” A responded.
“So are Americans. Religious people need secular governments.”
“That’s right. That’s what we need.”
Before coming to Iran, I read so much about how the women are becoming more fashionable and daring with their dress. That said, I have only seen one truly daring woman. She wore a transparent pink scarf that clearly showed her black hair. Almost everyone else wears black and many women still wear chadors. Many have a kind of habit that makes them look like nuns.
Food
Okay, this is the important part of the blog: food.
For lunch we had chicken with zeresh: a small, red sour berry that I think is called “barberry” in English (although barberry does not give me any more information than zeresh). We also had eggplant stuffed with ground lamb and raisins with the subtle taste of cinnamon. Yum.
The rice was also very lightly spiced with the cinnamon. Cinnamon here has a different flavor than what we are used to in America or Europe: it is deeper and more earthy tasting. It isn’t as light or sweet. I guess you could say that it tastes as though it was grown with cumin (not like it is mixed with cumin).
For dinner we had “calepacheh.” It is a soup of sheep’s head and feet. For the unitiated (me) it is a very unattractive dish. I mean, snouts, toes, brains, tongues: all arrayed on the plate: how could that possibly be attractive? It is a good thing I am a daring eater because it was delicious. We ate it with a flat bread that we bought straight from a fire in the wall of a bakery. That bread was mighty delicious. It was especially fantastic the second it left the fire.
Driving
Like many things in this country, driving is a game of chicken: who will give in first. Although, now that I have written this, I think it is actually more like a game of Tetris. Drivers are constantly aware of all available spaces and drive to fill them. Lanes and lights don’t matter. What matters is whether or not there is a space available that fits your car. This means, of course, that you are free to gently nudge the car beside you to take up any empty space available to it.
We drove all over M’s neighborhood. We bought the calepache, the bread, and a bottle of clear “medecine.”
We also drove to the subway, and took the metro into the center of Tehran to see K’s brother wrestle. For the most part, men and women ride in separate cars. I had to ride in the men’s car because I am a “harigi” (foreigner) and cannot take care of myself.
Not surprisingly, I was not allowed to enter the arena. All that skin might be too much for me, I guess. The referees, however, wanted to let me in. They were so excited that I came from America to see K’s brother wrestle.
He won. But we did not see the match.
June 17, 2003
At Schipol, we bought our tickets to travel to Iran. There we met our friends and their children who were also traveling on that afternoon’s flight. Together, we were 9 people.
Slowly we moved through the airport until we arrived at gate 7d. We were almost the last people to get on the Iran Air Flight. K and his friend went to have a beer right before we got on the plane. I had a rubbery ham and cheese croissant. The boys played on the moving sidewalks.
I walked on to a full plane and looked at the sea of semetic faces. A plane full of men who could get asked off of a flight in America just for having one eyebrow.
BTW, we got real silverware with our food.
The flight was easy and comfortable. I heard a lot of American voices (obviously 2nd gens flying to Iran), some Dutch, and mostly Iranian.
The real fun began when we landed. First there was a beautifully painted sheet that read: “If you are coughing and have a fever we are waiting you at the airport.” All painted in red, yellow, and blue.
It took us awhile to get all of the bags for the 9 of us who were accidentally traveling together. When we did we zipped through customs, then had to get our bags xrayed to leave.
There were so many people waiting for friends and relatives that it was almost impossible to leave the airport. Two police officers were sitting on chairs looking at the crowd. The man in front of me said, “Can’t you help? Get up and ask the crowd to let us through.” We still had to push our way through the crowd, a big part of which was K’s family. I was bombarded by so many greetings, flowers, happy children – I felt really and truly excited and happy to arrive.
There were 14 people waiting for us. The children were so happy and fresh and thrilled to see me and “Amoo” K.
When I saw the crowd waiting outside the airport, I thought “Wow! This is what a crowd of people waiting for relatives looks like! I wonder what the crowds look like by the university?” There were women dressed head to toe in black chadors, and women with fashionable long jackets and matching headscarves. The black chadors were depressing. I cannot say that they were not. The women wearing them weren’t smiling, that’s for sure.
Now we are sitting in a nice stone house. I ate a tomato that tasted like a tomato, unbelievably sweet apricots, a green plum with salt, white cherries, and a crisp cucumber. Life is good. Two children are sitting with me as I type, and we are listening to an Iranian pop band from LA.
I am going to sleep. I can smell the exhaust-filled air of Tehran.
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