Travelling Iran as a woman #1 - Iranian Food

Hi there,

this is my first post and I would like to dedicate it to my last travels through the Islamic Republic of Iran - a country full of controversy and beauty. With beauty I not only refer to the woman, covered in colourful scarfs, but also to the vast landscape, the delicious food and the warm-hearted people.

At first sight it seems strange to travel an Islamic, conservative country such as Iran as a foreign woman. You question yourself if it is worth covering yourself in long hijabs and scarfs and if you are going to be safe in a country ruled by men. Ironically I even asked myself if I would be safe on the streets of Iran, if there would be proper roads or modern cars or busses. Looking back I laugh at my naive way of thinking - but then again what should you imagine a country to be like without any media proving you different.

That is why I decided to show you a few pictures of my trip with places to visit and stories about people we, three German girls, met during our travels through Iran.

In this first episode I will show you the mouth-watering Iranian food.
Before travelling Iran I have only had few contact with Persian food and the only thing I thought was, that it probably was similar to Turkish food or Indian food or even a mixture of both. I imagined it to be spicy and with a lot of meat and rice. In Germany we normally don't eat a lot of rice and if we do, we prepare it with vegetables and only with a few spices like salt and pepper. Travelling through Iran made me open my eyes especially regarding the huge amount of different spices and vegetables - a lot of which I have never seen before. I was surprised about the amount of green vegetables they eat accompanying their main dishes such as parsley and cilantro. They even eat feta cheese and fresh onions with their main dish - how freaking healthy can one person be that he doesn't even care about his bad onion-breath? But don't worry in Iran they also have crewing gums, in fact even really yummy ones with cinnamon flavor which you get as a present if you buy something in a store and they don't have enough extra change or so.

But I must say that there are dishes that take getting used to - such as a soup full of entrails which a lot of people love and eat at special occasions as its preparation is complicated and can take about 24 hours. It is called "kale potsche" which translated means "head and feet". Check out that dish in the following picture.

These are a few traditional Iranian dishes that are normally served with bread or rice.

The following picture is a soup with different kind of greens, with beans, lentils and special noodles called "ashe reshteh".

In the next two pictures we were invited to a rustic Persian barbecue in a private garden not far away from the capital city Teheran. We were served safran-preserved chicken with fresh bread and grilled tomatoes. On top of that we could help ourselves with Persian walnuts freshly picked from a tree (see picture no. 9). It was so inspiring to see the hard work and passion these Iranian people put into preparing our barbecue -everything had to be perfect - and it was perfect!

Here you can see pickled dry fruits, which were sold as street food. They were freaking sour - and as the guy selling these fruits said, I only tasted the "sweet" ones and the other pickled fruits were even more sour. Even after three weeks of travelling I still cannot get used to the amount of sour fruits, dishes or side dishes the Iranian people seem to eat with a simplicity. But one thing I have learned from the Iranian people and that is to put a bit of lemon in some dishes - it gives them a special note and makes a lot of "boring-tasting" dishes taste much more creative.

The last two pictures show the Persian culture of hot drinks, such as black tea and tee out of dried flowers, and freshly pressed juices, such as pomegranate or carrot juice.

In conclusion I can say that during this whole trip I had the feeling of having very healthy food and drinks with a huge amount of variety, vegetables, meat, greens and flavours.

Thank you for reading my first episode about the Iranian food!

If you enjoyed it let me know with a comment what you think about it.
Have you also experienced the Iranian food yet?
Did you like it and what did you or did you not like about the Persian food?
Would you like to try it after seeing these pictures - I definitely recommend it to you :)