Persian Breakfast

It just occurred to me that Cary has never had a Persian style breakfast. I tried to tell him what a Persian style breakfast consists of. As with most food, words and pictures don't quite get the full description across.

The base of a Persian breakfast mainly consists of noon, paneer, o gerdoo : bread, cheese, and walnuts. In addition you can have little sides of Persian cucumbers, grapes, tomatoes, various jams, honey, sabzee jahd (green hand eaten veggies). We had some medium boiled eggs, tokhmeh morg assali, which means the center is the consistency of honey and still dark orange. There were a few breads: lavash, which is a flat bread; noon barbari, which is a flatish bread that rises about an inch, crispy on the outside, so fluffy on the inside, and is baked into short wave patterns, sprinkled with poppy seeds, the smell of which reminds of the few years I lived in Iran, its one of my favorite smells; and some raisin walnut bagel to round off our bread selection.

So the way you eat it is, you take a piece of lavash (for example) the size of the palm of your hand, put some feta, a couple of walnuts, wrap it into a loghmeh (like a hand roll in sushi terms) and eat, and eat, and eat. Your next loghmeh could include some jam, or maybe on a piece of noon barbari instead of lavash, add a slice of Persian cucumber or tomato, shove some grapes into your mouth. The jam in the picture about is home made quince (beh). Wash it down with some chaee (tea). Before you know it your stuffed. Its a perfect family, interactive, sitting around the table chatting, kind of breakfast. Nothing needs to be kept warm or cooked, except the tea and maybe the bread, so everyone can hang out and enjoy. I love Persian breakfasts.