Cooking my first Persian meal

As I have written about in the past, I am lucky enough to have a roommate with a completely different culture than mine, so I get to learn many new things from him.  Language, religion, history, lifestyle, and of course... food.  Usually, I enjoy the opportunity to sit and relax on the days that he is cooking and later have a delicious meal served to me.  However, today I decided to take a more hands on approach and actually learn how to cook the meals myself.  I might not have easy access to be able to have the delicious Persian food cooked FOR ME and I want to be able to incorporate all the unique flavors and tastes I've been eating into my own cooking in the future.

Tonight I helped prepare "loobia polo" and "salad shiraz" and a Persian spaghetti.

"Loobia" in Farsi means "green beans" and "polo" means "rice" so as you could guess... the meal is a green bean and rice dish -- with beef.  The meal was pretty simple to put together although time consuming.  First I cut the green beans into bite sized pieces and stir fried them in a big wok.  In another pan I caramelized one large sweet onion and then added 1 lb of stew beef that I had cut into bite sized pieces.  My roommate instructed me to add a little bit of water to the stew beef and onion mixture, even though the meat had already released a bit of moisture itself.  We used tomato paste to then thicken the sauce and seasoned it a small amount of turmeric, salt and pepper, and mixed in the green beans.

Separately we made basmati rice, which is an art form all its own (that I have not yet mastered and handed the task off to my roommate.)  In Persian cooking, many rish dishes are finalized with what is called "tadigh."   Tadigh is made by putting oil at the bottom of the pan and thinly laying the rice or meal on top.  The bottom layer fries and forms a crust.  To serve the dish, you flip the pot upside down and the "tadigh" or crust is one of the most delicious parts of the dish (and my personal favorite!) Tonight, we actually made the tadigh with really, really thinly sliced potatoes, which is an alternative, but it can also be done with the regular rice in the dish.

The Persian spaghetti is similar to Italian spaghetti, however, made similarly to the beginning of the loobia polo.  Caramelized onions, ground beef, tomato paste, salt, pepper, tumeric, and also some tomato sauce to thicken it up a bit.  It is mixed with cooked thick spaghetti and made with a tadigh of spaghetti.

Finally, I made a Salad Shiraz by cutting up sweet onion, tomato, cucumber, tossing with lime juice and olive oil, and seasoning with salt and pepper.  Everything was really delicious and I am looking forward to trying this on my own sometime!