eat, drink and just be!

hike and bbq

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.

ingredients for joujeh kabob:

- 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.

ingredients for koubideh:

- 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!

family reunion

although this is my food blog, this post is not only about food. it's mostly about family, which is kind bf related to food as well.:-)  when i get together with family there's always a great amount of fantastic food, but since i get very distracted to catch up with the family i forget to take pictures of good food. my family is in different parts of the world. my sister and her family live in austria, my parents and brother and his family live in vancuver and after living in austria for many years me and my family moved to san francisco. so in order to get together we have to coordinate a lot. it's not very easy to have holidays at the same time and fly all over to get together. last time we all got together was at my wedding five years ago in vienna. other than that our reunion happens only through Skype which is also very complicated with time differences. at least in the recent years since my parents are not in tehran any more, we have only two time zones to match and not three which makes things easier.

this year we were lucky that my sister and brother in law flew to vancouver to see the rest of the family and celebrate my nephew's 17th birthday. since we are only a couple of hours flight away from vancouver, we joined them too and we had a great weekend all together. fortunately the weather was also fantastic and we could celebrate my nephew's birthday by a gigantic grill feast. unfortunately i forgot to take enough pictures of food because it was more important for me to spend time with family but as it was a collaboration you'd see my mom preparing the burgers and my brother grilling them. the only cooking comment i can add to this post is that persian make burger like koubideh kabob, which means we add ground onions to ground meat and some persian spices to the meat to make it more flavorful. if you want to learn how to make persian kabob, check out turmeric and saffron's post on how to make a home made kabob.

paella and camping

last weekend we went an hour east of the city to get more sunshine and less wind and just be in nature with a group of friends and enjoy hanging out at the fire and eat and drink together. we also ended up swimming in sacramento river. that area is not very touristy which makes it a perfect place for a spontaneous camping trip. we were about ten people and each time we go camping a couple of people take responsibility for food. this time were the spaniards turn and they took it to the full extend and created two rounds of wonderful paella on campfire.paella is a valencian dish and apparently more common on the east coast of spain. i have really good memories of having wonderful paellas in barcelona as well. but our friends are from madrid but still they made wonderful paellas. since i was not the chef i share chef henar and chef ernestos recipes that you may enjoy it next time you go camping. i always thought making paella is so complicated that you can't make it on a camping trip but these guys totally changed my mind.they first cooked pieces of chicken with some olive oil in the pan on the fire and stirred that it doesn't burn on one side. then added some onions, and rice. as soon as the rice is in you should add some liquid that it doesn't get burned and it gets the flavor. so they added some beer. to give the paella some delicious flavor they added saffron, paprika powder, salt and pepper. they they covered the pan with an aluminum foil that the rice cooks. then added seafood to the mix, some shrimps, clams, and calamari pieces. already looked so yummy. then decorated it with some colorful bell pepper and served it camping style. it was so delicious and enjoyable to have such a great meal at the campsite. also to make it more enjoyable they made a fresh sangria to go with it. ¡Que aproveche!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

persian eggplant dip

finally it's summery and warm to sit out side and grill. i finally planted flowers in the balcony and planted herbs and vegetables. let's see what happens to them in the next three months. some fine herbs such as cilantro don't like the windy san francisco, so this year i planted peppermint that can stand the wind. i also tried tomatoes in the last two years, once they turned out great, once they dies because it got cold too soon. let's see what happens to them this year.

one day my friend came over and we made one of my favorite dips which is common in north of iran at the caspian sea. the process of making this dip needs a little patience. first you grill the vegetables and then you make the dip by cooking the grilled veggies which makes the dish two times more time consuming. so i don't suggest it for a mid week quick dinner.

ingredients:

- four small eggplants ( they are more tender than the large ones)

- one garlic

- one onion

- two to four tomatoes

- one egg

- fresh peppermint 

grill the vegetables on medium heat until the skin is dark. peel them after grilling, especially it's necessary for the eggplants that they get that smoky flavor. i also love the flavor of grilled garlic. after peeling, chop them in tiny pieces and saute eggplants, garlic and onions with some olive oil for a good twenty minutes. then add the tomatoes and stir constantly. when the dip is smooth, add an egg sunny side up and let it cook inside the dip for five minutes. saute the fresh peppermints in some butter for a minute. this needs constant stirring too since it can burn very easily. garnish the dip with peppermint and enjoy it with a piece of bread. nousheh jahn!

 

lamb chops with chanterelle and jeweled rice

lamb chops + chanterelle + jeweled rice

very often i improvise making dishes from what i have in the fridge without following a receipt. this week was a combination of both following the receipt of some traditional persian food but adding some extra improvisation to it. since i enjoyed mushroom hunting a couple of times(which i may describe in another post) and from all mushrooms i like the unique taste of chanterelles , i wanted to try adding them to a meat dish i like. since it's summer and we enjoy grilling, we grilled lamb chops, garlic, tomatoes, paprika and zucchini. i only marinated the lamb chops with salt, pepper and rosemary in addition i made some jeweled rice which is a common way to make rice in iran when you have guests. i cook basmati rice with salt, butter and a little saffron. then cook barberries and blanched pistachios briefly with some olive oil and covered the rice with it. you can also add almonds, orange peels, raisins, dried rosebuds, cardamon, ... to jeweled rice.

cooking chanterelle with butter and white wine

preparing the chanterelles: i cooked chanterelles with some salt and butter briefly and added some very dry white wine to it. then covered the lamb chops with it. if you prefer it to be saucy you could also puree the cooked chanterelles and add some sour cream to it. i rather like the chunks of chanterelle and not the creamy version. 

some grilling hints:

- garlic: grilling garlic is very easy. you leave them on the grill for ten minutes with skin. then it's ready to eat and is very delicious and melts in your mouth.

- tomatoes: you should be more careful about tomatoes. they can fall apart very fast. they only need five minutes on each side on very low heat.

- paprika: they need a long time to grill. i usually put them on the grill first since they need about 20-30 minutes. i let their skin burn till it gets black and then i can take the skin off very easily.