#persian stuff

One of the most compelling reasons to get really into PErsian cooking is the notion that herbs are used not as an occasional accent or flavor-building bit of business, but as an actual anchor into the dish itself.

This is fantastic, and should be the way everyone does everything. So anyway, one of the best applications of this mindset is int he form of kuku, which is a sort of inverted-frittata*. I’ve made it a handful of times since I started making it, and can’t seem to figure out how to stop myself.

The first time I cut up a big bag of kale. I minced the stems and got them started in some olive oil in an iron pan. I added an onion that finely minced and let them soften. I then added the kale itself, and cooked it briefly until it was soft and cooked through, at which point I pulled it out of the pan and let it cool.

While all that was going, I chopped up a bunch of parsley, and another bunch of scallions. I finished it with some basil and a little mint. By the time the kale cooled, I added it to the herb mixture and then cracked eggs into it until it held together as a pancake**, and then dumped the whole bowl of stuff into the pan. I cooked it quickly at first to let it set, and then moved it to a cooler burner to let it set up a little further.

The recipes (or methods or techniques or whatever) call for flipping the thing. I am not good at flipping things. It’s a major deficiency in the way I do things. So I removed it and stuck it in the oven to finish, and it did. It managed to set up the eggs and I didn’t burn the bottom or, of course, dump a bunch of eggs and herbs all over my stove-top.

This doesn’t need to be a litany of times I dumped greens in a pan, certainly, but it should probably inclued the best variation so far, which subbed out chard fro the kale (I was out of kale), andused as the herbs dill, carrot greens, basil and pea shoots. This is because the damn farmers’ market has started again, so I have access to better and more interesting produce. Finally. Stupid Ohio.

* i.e. the herbs are held together by eggs, rather than the eggs being filled by the herbs.