A love letter to Persian food

You know how gray is the new black, Rachael is the new Emeril, and skinny jeans are the new boot-cut jeans? Now Persian food is the new Indian food.

Indian food -- samosas, naan, fragrant basmati rice, and rich, thick curries -- might be soon be replaced as my ethnic "go-to" with the foods of Persia.

I am no stranger to Persian cuisine. A long time ago, in a geeky galaxy far away, I was training for work in Chicago. Bored with TGI Friday's (we were in the suburbs of Chicago), my teammates and I ventured into the city and ended up at Reza's. Now some Persian food purists may turn their noses up to Rezas's, but at the time, I was wholly taken by the new-to-me cuisine: pomegranates and walnuts and strangely shaped meats on sticks. I was rapidly falling head over heels in love with spices and flavors that were familiar, yet different in the way they were combined with each other. When I came back to LA from Chicago, I became so caught up in my work, flying all over the country, that I forgot about my little fling with Persian food. It took me many many years to finally see what was right under my nose. The entire Westside of Los Angeles is so littered with Persian restaurants, bakeries, book/video stores and markets, that it is informally called Tehrangeles.

I am now learning more about the food, albeit very very slowly, by trying as many of the Persian restaurants on my side of town as I can. I am so far from being knowledgeable it's almost pathetic, but I will do my best to provide a beginner's guide to some of the foods that I come across most often on menus in Persian restaurants. (Please excuse any spelling errors - almost every restaurant spells differently.)

Let's start with things that are commonly listed as "Appetizers," though I don't think traditionally all of these things are eaten before a meal. Rather, they are small "side" type dishes that are eaten with the meal. Mast is a yogurt sauce, similar to Indian raita or Greek tzatziki, that is mixed with different things. Mast'o khiar is yogurt mixed with herbs and shredded cucumbers, and mast'o mousir is mixed with chopped shallots. I usually go with the mast'o khiar because the cucumbers are refreshing.

Torshi refers to pickled vegetables, which are usually carrots and cauliflower. There is also torshi that is garlic, but I haven't tried it yet.

One of my favorite things is the shirazi salad. Ingredients-wise, it is similar to what we call tabbouleh, though there is no bulgur, and the parsley, cucumbers, and tomatoes are not chopped finely. They are tossed with lemon juice and olive oil.

There are two kinds of rice dishes that I have tried. One is called polo - rice steamed together with any number of other ingredients. These ingredients range from fruits like barberries to cherries, from herbs like dill to spices like saffron. The other rice dish I've tasted is tah dig, which is actually the sticky crust that forms on the bottom of the pan when rice is steamed. Of course, every dish of grilled meat comes with steamed white rice, chelow.

Now we get to the meat of Persian cuisine. Literally. If ever you impaled meat and vegetables on skewers, threw them on a grill, and called them kebabs, this is the cuisine from which it came. Now this is where the terminology gets a little confusing. Kebab is a general term. When you get into things like barg and koobideh, you are still talking about meats that are grilled on skewers like kebabs. However, barg is a flat, single piece of meat, and koobideh is ground meat that is shaped onto the skewer. Both can be either chicken or beef, sometimes lamb, and they are all delicious in taste. Only the texture is different, and I happen to have admitted my insane crush on chicken koobideh. When you order one of these specialties, it usually comes with the steamed white rice, and the vegetables that were on the skewer with it. Who knows if this is blasphemy in Persian cuisine, but I always take that grilled tomato and crush it right into my rice.

I have also seen fish available on Persian menus. These are usually mild white fish that are either grilled or broiled, but for some reason, "grilled fish" doesn't sound all that exciting to me.

There are, of course, many more things the Persian cuisine offers, but I am still learning, When I get to the stews like ghormeh, I'll get back to you.