خورش بادمجان
This weekend, I dedicated my Sunday morning to something far beyond my current capacities: Persian cooking.
As a moderately avid ~chef~ (for a college student at least), I was up to the challenge. My first hurdle was finding a vegetarian dish. While I found several, I also found that Persian ingredients are not college friendly! Thus, I opted to recreate a classic, which I’d tried months earlier at a Persian restaurant in Kirkland, Washington, khoresh bademjan (خورش بادمجان). This dish, eggplant stew, is an eggplant and split pea stew with a citrus broth served over rice. You can find several recipes online, varying in complexity and flavor, but I selected to follow a recipe provided by PersianMama.com. Her blog is linked below.
Now on to my second challenge: collecting the ingredients. Thanks to my ingenious work in recipe selection, I was able to use ingredients mostly found in my pantry or at the local grocery store. However, there were a few ingredients I still had to venture to an international grocery store for, namely the yellow split peas and pomegranate concentrate (not pictured). The recipe also called for optional saffron, and I’m sorry to all Iranians of the world, but my college budget just had to do without :(
With my ingredients assembled, I began cooking! Each step was pretty straightforward, but BEWARE, there are a lot of moving parts. All at once, my eggplants were baking, my split peas boiling, my onions sautéing, and my rice simmering. Luckily, everything came together in a kitchen fury and my stew was made!
The dish was very, very flavorful, with a savory citrus quality not commonly found in American kitchens. I definitely enjoyed my Sunday adventure in Persian cooking, and I’m on the lookout for a recipe to try next :)
Recipe: https://persianmama.com/vegetarian-khoresh-bademjan/
-BH