An Iranian Feast

A wonderful Iranian dinner, a simple celebration of Eid and friendship. 
The photo doesn't even come close to capturing the beautiful red material table cover and the tealights, which made the meal complete. 

 'Zereshk Polo'

Zereshk are the red berries (like cranberries), which are sour but have a slightly sweet taste after being soaked in a little sugar. 
Polo is rice. The yellow rice topping has been cooked with saffron to produce a deep yellow colour, which goes so beautifully with the red berries.

'morgh'

Morgh is chicken. This tasty chicken dish has been cooked with onions and flavoured with a little tomato ketchup. The sauce has a wonderfully deep flavour and is perfect for eating with the rice. 

The complete dish is 'zereshk polo ba morgh', meaning 'BERRY rice with chicken' It was definately VERY nice indeed!

A salad always goes down well with any meal; this salad was made complete by drizzling a light creamy dressing over the top and gently tossing to coat the vegetables. Simple, yet deliciously refreshing. 

There is always a spicy pickle or a refreshing yoghurt sauce that accompanies the main dish. The yoghurt sauce contains a ground herb that tastes a little like mint, but isn't quite the same:

'pooneh'

Tea is pretty traditional as a post-dinner drink and tonight was no different.

The beautiful tea-set contained pictures of King Abbas, an old Iranian king from the past. A rather interesting decoration to be had on a teacup, but it is a firm reminder of home. Interestingly, they didn't use it back home, only when they came to the UK.

On first glance it seems that the name of this sweet is 'hajabdollah'. In fact it isn't. The name of the guy who made this is called Abdollah, who has haj before his name because he's been on Hajj! In fact it is chocolate flavoured halwa. Rather interesting as it doesn't actually taste of chocolate but goes well with tea!