in recent weeks we have been having indian summer in san francisco, which means it's much warmer than the middle of summer. so we try to get out of the city as often as we can on the weekends and spend some time hiking, not only urban hiking as in the colder months of the year. a friend of mine, negin, has suggested a fun idea: let's go hiking every weekend and then bbq afterwards. which totally makes sense because we burn some calories when hiking and then we are allowed to have a feast and eat a lot of yummy food afterwards.:-)
in the last weeks, we the hike and bbq plan twice. once we went to the redwoods of portola state park. one sad news about state parks in california is that about 70 of them are closing due to the budget cuts this year. please share your ideas to help them not get closed on the page i have linked to.
after a gorgeous hike in the woods we headed to negar and houman's place and they made a fantastic bbq persian style. two of my favorite persian kabobs are joujeh kabob(grilled chicken) and koubideh(ground meat kabob). here i explain briefly how persians marinate the meat before grilling.
- chicken legs or chicken breast pieces
- lime juice(one lime for each two pieces of meat)
- yogourt(one spoon for each two pieces of meat)
- olive oil (enough)
- salt and pepper
- saffron (melted in a cup of boiled water)
you marinate the chicken in these and leave it over night or for at least a couple of hours. then put them on the skewer and grill them on a medium heat.
- ground beef or ground lamb
- one onion for each kilo of meat
- salt and pepper
peel and grind the onion and combine it with the meat in a bowl. kneat with your hands for five to ten minutes to form a paste that will adhere well to cooking skewers. cover the paste and let stand for 15 minutes in the room tempreture. using dampt hands roll small portions of the pasteinto a sausage shape and mold it firmly around a flat, sword-like skewer. (you can find these skewers in middle eastern stores. do not ever try to use other types of skewer, because i have tried and that causes a disasterous fall of the meat in the fire.) cover and keep the meat cool for a couple of hours. grill on a medium heat 3-4 minutes on eat side. you can also grill tomatoes, bell peppers, and onion on skewers. persians like the grilled tomatoes the most because it adds great juice when you eat the kabobs with rice. nousheh jahn!