eat, drink and just be!

adas polo: rice and lentils

it's getting colder in austria and having a wintery dish in the evening is a great treat. the ingredients for adas polo are:

- 2 cups rice

- 1.5 cup lentils

- one onion

- 1/2 cup raisins

- 1/2 cup medjool dates

- 50 gr butter

- saffron

- cinnamon

- salt and pepper

 

boil the lentils with three cups of water for half hour, if they are not cooked add another cup of water and let them cook for another 15 minutes. depending on the type of lentils it can take from half an hour to one and a half hour to cook! bring 3 cups of water to the boil and add rice, salt, pepper, butter and dissolved saffron into it. leave it on medium heat till the water is gone, then lower the heat and add the lid for five minutes. in the meanwhile chop onions and saute them in some olive oil. add raisins, finely chopped dates,and  cinnamon and saute them all together briefly. they can burn very fast, so just saute them for a couple of minutes. add the lentils to the mix and turn the stove off. when rice is ready mix all the ingredients into the rice and if you like to have a crispy tahdeeg (rice cake on the buttom of the pot) let every thing cook on low heat another ten minutes. (it should be a none stick pot) then turn it upsaide down and you have the whole rice cake with all the yummy stuff in it. enjoy it with some yogourt. nousheh jahn!

 

 

gheymeh bademjan stew

as i explained in the previous post, i have been running more often lately and since i have also become vegetarian, i need to find super foods to get enough nutritions without meat. one of the best strategies i have started is making persian and other oriental food and replace the meat with other vegetarian sources that are rich in protein. one of my favorite persian meals is gheymeh bademjan stew, which is mainly yellow split peas, eggplant, and meat. i make different variations of this dish by replacing eggplant with other similar vegetables such as squash and okra, and i also use different types of beans to have more variety. you can try the same recipe using lentils, red lentils, black beans, ...

ingredients:

- one large eggplant or two thai eggplants

- five tomatoes

- two cups of split peas 

- two dried lime

- one small onion or green onions

- one or twp potatoes

- one carrot (another one of my additions to this dish)

- olive oil

- half a teaspoon cinnamon

- salt and pepper

first peel and cut the eggplants and saute them in olive oil till they get soft. in a dutch oven or a stew pan saute the chopped onions. add the split peas with four cups of water, salt and pepper, and dried lime and let them cook for half hour on medium heat. if you have already soaked the beans over night or a couple of hours, you need to add less water. when beans are cooked, add the tomatoes, and other vegetables, and cinnamon and sauteed eggplants. let every thing cook together another twenty minutes. enjoy the stew with some saffron basmati rice. nousheh jahn!

 

my birthday resolutions

i had my first birthday in graz last week; far from family and close friends but there also many beautiful things that made it special and memorable. i am also getting older and trying to take a better care of myself. specially getting back to living alone, it's really hard to have the courage and take the time to cook for yourself. so i decided to make some decisions that lead to a healthier life style. you might even see that i have been passionate about a healthier life style in paper from 2006. 

i have been eating less and less meat in the last year and i haven't missed it. so i decided to cut meat totally from my diet. this is the first resoltion on my birthday. i haven't become vegan though, and i also like to eat sea food every now and then. i started my resolution even a week before my birthday to get used to it and it really was not hard at all. i really enjoy it. another great motivation is that my coworker has been a vegeterian for more than 15 years which helps me to learn from an expert what and how to substitute meat in life. you can see how she surprized me with a bag of goodies; a package of ingredients for vegeterian for beginners.

then i got a great birthday celebration by my sister who visited me and brought me a magnificent chocolate cake. it looked so perfect that i felt ashamed to eat it. another resolution is to burn all the delicious stuff i love to eat so much to stay healthy. i am lucky that i live by the river "mur". i try to go running every day that the weather is not very cold or rainy. i also track my runs with a free app called RunKeeper. it has been a great help to me so far since it shows you your progress in distance and speed. it also allows you to use your own music while using the app during running. it also reports to you how much you have run every five minutes in your ears if you like. i have set the goal to run a half marathon by the end of the summer. i keep you updated how i make progress.

 

 

balang: buddha's hand

if you have read my post on balang jam last year, you might be familiar with this amazing fruit. buddha's hand which is called balang in iran is a fragrant citron fruit which has a thick skin. i love the smell and the flavor of it. that's why as soon as i saw it in the market again this year, i immidiately bought several to make my favorite jam. you can check out the jam from my post. 

but i also try to incorporate it in other dishes. since it has such a citrus flavor it could be a great substitute for lemon zest and orange zest but more flavorful. i bought some fresh shrimps as well, so i wanted to try to use the beautiful conchigliono pasta with them and finish it with a wonderful zest of the buddha's hand.:-)

 

 

 

 

 

drink, dance, and detox!

happy thanksgiving every one. hope you have had a fantastic weekend with family and friends. i had a great one but as always after big festivities, i feel very stuffed with a lot of great food. i am a big fan of good food and traditions, love thanksgiving festivities, and i am not just a healthy eater. i love butter and cookies and pies and a big fat turkey but I have been eating a lot these days. it started with halloween parties, then thanksgiving and there are going to be many christmas parties in the next couple of weeks. i feel so stuffed that I feel it could be great to take a break from so much heavy food and give my stomach the chance to take a break and get excited about christmas. we bought a juicer recently and i thought what a better way than detoxing my body with some fresh juice. i am not going on a juice diet or any thing extreme; i just try to substitue my snacks between the meals with fresh pressed juices these days. this way i get a lot more vitamins and minerals from fresh pressed ingredients and i also get full between the meals and eat less. i'm also going to add a half hour dance in my schedule every day. i know it sounds too much but just going to the gym is getting boring and trying to make my own music and dance to it once a day gives another motivation to change up the habits.

so here i share a couple of my detoxing juices with you. one of my favorites is watermelon juice. slice the watermelon into small chunks, put them in the blender and enjoy it fresh. if you live in california watermelons are usually ripe and sweet but if they are not, you could add a little bit of honey in the blender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

another juice i share with you today is a mixed green detox juice. i juiced 4 stalks of celery, one cucumber, a handful of parsley, and a bunch of spinach. then added some lemon juice for taste. this juice tastes very fresh but a small cup of it is enough to get all those great vitamins and minerals. enjoy!

 

foodbuzz 24X24: hallowien kuerbisfest

since me and my husband lived in austria for over a decade and used to go to the pumpkin province of austria - styria - where "kuerbisfest" or "pumpkin festival" was celebrated every october, we wanted to bring a bit of the austrian autumn to san francisco. to introduce some cultural and culinary experiences to the city and combine them with halloween, we invited a couple of friends to our home for "hallowien," which, in german, means  "hello vienna." to make our event even more special, foodbuzz is featuring our "hallowien kuerbisfest" for their october 24x24 food event. the foodbuzz's 24x24 showcases food blog posts from 24 foodbuzz featured-publisher-bloggers of 24 unique meals occurring around the globe during a 24-hour period. i am thrilled to be featured this month.

for the event, i decided to have all courses somehow related to pumpkin. for that, i found several great recipes from an austrian recipe database: ichkoche.at. if you know german, this is a great collection of recipes. since i don't live there any more and have access to more variety of produce in california, i tried to make variations on the recipes and create some of my own ideas.

we started off with a kuerbissalat (pumpkin salad), steirische kuerbiscremesuppe (styrian cream of pumpkin soup), and kuerbisauflauf (pumpkin casserole.) 

ingredients for pumpkin salad:

- mixed greens

- cocktail tomatoes

- pumpkin chunks

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

brush the pumpkin chunks and seeds in separate baking dishes with some olive oil and lime juice and leave them in the oven. preheat the oven to 350f.  leave the seeds for 10 - 15 minutes in the oven and the pumpkin pieces for 30 minutes. mix them with the greens and tomatoes and garnish it with the pumpkin seed oil. this oil is very common in styria. it has a very strong taste and aroma which makes it a perfect garnish for very simple salads. i prefer to have it even just with mixed greens. 

 

ingredients for the soup:

- four small pumpkins

- three shallots

- one whole garlic

- butter

- vegetable broth

- sour cream

- chives

- parsley

- marjoram

- cumin seeds

- salt and pepper

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

- ginger

i baked the pumpkins for 30 minutes, then carved the insides out; this way it was much easier to carve. chop shallots and garlic and saute them in a dutch oven with butter, crushed ginger and cumin seeds. add the squash meat and saute a couple of minutes. add vegetable broth slowly. stir and let it cook on low for twenty minutes. taste and add salt and pepper. mix the soup in a food processor with chives, marjoram, and sour cream. garnish it with pumpkin seeds, parsley, and pumpkin seed oil.  guten appetit (as the austrians say)!

ingredients for pumpkin casserole:

- two layers of puff pastry

- six eggs

- bacon

- two shallots

- pumpkin chunks

- celery root 

- mozzarella cheese

- butter

chop the bacon and shallots in small pieces and saute them together until there's no fat left on the bacon. saute the celery root chunks and pumpkin chunks about ten minutes. in a bowl mix eggs, salt, pepper and the sauteed ingredients. preheat the oven to 450f and smear butter on two baking dishes. lay the puff pastry on the baking dish. pour the mix in the baking dishes and bake it for twenty to thirty minutes. add mozzarella on top and bake for another ten minutes. enjoy.

after having so much as appetizers we needed a break before starting with the main dish. we also paired most of our meal with a great dry austrian gruener ventliner. it's a very refreshing dry wine which i really enjoy with vegetarian food or lighter meals.

we recently bought a small projector and we decided to make this year's halloween a bit more scary and fun by having a movie marathon during the food feast. the only problem is that when you eat so much, you get sleepy and can't watch too many movies.:-) we should have started our party earlier but then we couldn't use the projector because it was still daylight. we have so many leftovers that we should have scary movie nights the whole next week.;-)

finally although we were so full, i served the main dish. it also took a long time to cook it. i cook rice very often but mostly persian style. this time i wanted to make a risotto, so our main dish was pumpkin risotto with baked chicken.

i salted and peppered the whole chicken with potatoes, whole carrots, onions, and rosemary and put it all in a dutch oven, in the oven. after about half hour, i added two cups of broth and let it cook for another two hours. in the meanwhile, every twenty minutes, i basted the chicken.

ingredients for pumpkin risotto:

- four small pumpkins

- six cups arborio rice

- two bottles of dry white wine

- one litre of vegetable broth 

- saffron

- three shallots

- olive oil

- nutmeg

halve the pumpkins and bake them about 40 minutes in the oven. carve the meat out and keep the skins for filling the risotto in later. peel and chop shallots and saute them with olive oil in a big dutch oven. add the pumpkin in and add salt and pepper. add one cup of rice and a cup of wine and stir. keep on adding rice and wine and broth and stiring. never let the risotto get dry. taste every now and then and adjust the amount of salt and pepper. dissolve one teaspoon of saffron in hot water and add to the mix. add a little bit of nutmeg for taste. fill the pumpkin halves with the rissoto and enjoy it with or without the chicken.

for dessert, i made some scary cupcakes and pumpkin tiramisu. i won't explain the cupcake in this post because i used the same ingredients as the cake pops i made last week.

ingredients for pumpkin tiramisu:

- six egg yolks

- one cup mascarpone cheese

- two cups espresso (cooled)

- four spoons port wine

- fourty lady fingers

- one cup heavy whipped cream

- one cup pureed pumpkin

- three spoons sugar

- one teaspoon cinammon

- one teaspoon vanilla powder

- pumpkin seeds

in a large bowl beat egg yolks and sugar until thin and pale. add mascarpone and beat until smooth. add cinammon, vanilla, whipped cream and pumpkin and mix for another two minutes. in a bowl mix port wine and espresso. dip each ladyfinger into the espresso mix for a couple of seconds and place them in small dishes for a layer. spread a layer of mascarpone mix  over ladyfingers. arrange another layer of soaked ladyfingers and top with mascarpone mix again. leave tiramisu in the fridge for a couple of hours. sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and cinammon. guten appetit!

we had so much food and our guests also brought some wonderful cupcakes that we didn't manage to eat any of the tiramisu! we need another party to eat all the leftovers! 

thanks to foodbuzz for the opportunity and looking forward to next weekends foodbuzz blogger festival.

 

 

 

 

 

halfway to septuagenarianism

it was my husband's 35th bithday and i tried to make it special for him. so we invited about 25 of our friends to party together. when i wanted to plan the party i thought of small dishes that are easy to eat and can mostly be served cold as well without loosing their taste. after looking in cooking magazines and different food blogs, and using my creativity a little bit, i came up with these dishes to prepare:

- lemon orzo with chicken

- bacon quiche

- black-bean chili

- proscuitto-wrapped pears and apples

- mango schrimp ceviche

- caprese salad

- fennel potatoes

- grilled pepper poppers

- edamame succotash

- endive salad bites

- chevre and walnut filled dates

in addition, i made a chocolate-strawberry-hazelnut cake as well. i made so much frosting that i still need to make another cake to make use of that.:-)

some of the dishes were more time consuming than i expected, especially when you want to prepare for a huge number of people and some were just as easy as they sound. i'll post the recipes for each on seperate posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

loubia polow (rice with green beans)

polow in persian means cooked rice with meat, fruit, and vegetables arranged in layers steamed together. to make polo you first wash the rice, parboil it, drain it through a large and fine-mesh colander, then steam the rice together with other ingredients. we got a ton of fresh green beans(loubia) from farm fresh. no better way to use them than in loubia polo. ingredients:

- one cup of rice for two portions

- one onion

- two cloves of garlic

- two pound of stewing meat or ground meat

- six large fresh tomatoes

- three carrots

- two pounds fresh greens

- ground cinnamon

- persian spices

- two spoons yougort

- one teaspoon saffron dissolved in hot water

 - butter

- salt and pepper

boil the rice with 1.5 times more water, salt, and butter. after it boils ten minutes, drain it. in a pan saute the onion, garlic, and the meat in some olive oil. add cinnamon, persian spices, salt and pepper. let them cook ten minutes on medium heat. then add the tomatoes and let them cook together another ten minutes. add the beans,carrots and a cup of water or more tomatoes and let them cook together. 

combine yogourt, rice and saffron. place a layer of rice in the pot, add a layer of green beans and meet mix, add another layer of rice. repeat, alternating layers in the shape of a pyramid. sprinkle some cinnamon, persian spices, salt, pepper and butter on the top. cover and cook for twenty minutes over low heat. nosheh jahn!

 

sauteed kale and red beets

this is another small dish i improvised for our after workout light dinners. it was easy and fast to prepare and has lots of nutritious value. very often i get a lot of kale from farmfresh that i don't know what to do with. even if you are not a kale fan try this recipe and you'll enjoy it. i used boby flay's recipe as a base and how to saute kale and then added many other ingredients that i like to make it a richer dish to be filling as our main dish. ingredients:

- a bunch of kale

- two cloves of garlic

- one cup of vegetable broth

- one cup of white wine (i prefer white wine with kale rather than red, hope you don't get mad at me)

- three red beets

- five walnuts

- slices of manchego cheese

- olive oil

- salt and pepper

i started with steaming red beets which takes about twenty minutes. in the meanwhile i washed and chopped kale leaves. since red beets leaves cook very similar to kale leaves, i also chopped and cooked them with kale leaves to have more leaves.  heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. add the garlic and cook until soft. add the stock and kale and beet leaves and raise the heat. cover and cook for five minutes. add the white wine and stirr until all the liquid has evaporated. season with salt and pepper. serve the greens into the dishes. chop the steamed red beets into cubes and add into in. also add the cheese and some pieces of walnut for the taste and crunchiness. nousheh jahn!

 

pasagna

pizza + lasagna -> pasagna. it's actually neither but i like to name it so. this is our comfort food since we have tons of vegetables in the fridge that we don't know what to do with. this is the easiest way to make some thing tasty and fast with them. layers of vegetables with cheese on top. i usually like to put a layer of potatoes with some olive oil on the button and garnish them with some salt, pepper, oregano, and lavender. let the potatoes bake about 15 - 20 minutes. then add the other layers of vegetables and a layer of fresh tomatoes or tomato sauce with a layer of cheese. garnish them with salt and pepper and some fresh parsley. let them all bake together on 350F for another half hour. deepening on the layers of vegetables you may need to bake it shorter or longer, have more or less layers of cheese. nosheh jahn!