Happy Memorial Day!

It’s Memorial Day here in the U.S.A.  The unofficial start of summer. I seriously can’t believe it’s here. Whoa!

Looking for a refreshing beverage to serve at festivities later? Try my cardamom and rose-laced iced tea (recipe below). There’s still time to throw the flavor-infused ice cubes in the freezer.

Looking for a thought-provoking read by an emerging Persian author? Check out Jasmin Darznik’s recent piece in the New York Times:

Home is Where They Let You Live

I read her book “The Good Daughter” last year, and we’re going to give away a copy of it here very soon. Look for that giveaway in an upcoming post. Just know this…I could barely put the book down.

On a lighter note, you might not be able to put this tea down, either. Yes, this is a re-publish of an old recipe (one Saveur magazine really liked).

Persian Iced Tea

Made with rose water ice cubes, cardamom-spiked simple syrup or agave nectar, and quick brew black tea, this Persian inspired iced tea has an exotic flare and refreshing taste:

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces rose water
• Black tea (I used 2 PG Tipps bags, a strong brew that’s brewed hot. You can use a cold brew tea as well)
• 6 cups of filtered water, plus more for ice cubes
• 2 Tablespoons agave nectar (or simple syrup, or use honey)
• 2 teaspoons powdered cardamom (or 4-6 pods of green cardamom)
• Fresh mint leaves for garnish (optional)

Directions:

1. Make the rose water ice cubes. Pour 6 ounces of rosewater into an ice tray and top off with more filtered water to make perfect cubes. Pop into freezer overnight, or until frozen solid.

2.  Brew the tea according to package instructions. For example, with my PG Tipps brand tea, all I needed was 2 teabags to 6 cups of boiling water. (PG Tipps is a strong brew!)  I immersed the teabags for no more than 30 seconds, and the tea was the perfect dark amber hue. Your mileage will vary, depending on the brand of tea you use, and if you use a cold or a hot brew tea. (With a cold brew tea, you don’t have to boil water. You just dump the bags into the cold water and allow them to infuse. Love that!)  So in short, carefully follow the package instructions that will yield 6 cups of tea total.

3.  Make the agave-cardamom syrup by warming agave over low heat. Or, if you don’t have agave, follow these directions for a classic simple syrup that we can then infuse with cardamom.

4. Add the cardamom powder or pods to the syrup, and stir well to allow its flavor to infuse. Remember, LOW heat here is your friend. It only takes a few seconds for the infusion to happen, so taste test the syrup, make sure you can taste the cardamom, and then remove it from the heat immediately.

5. Add the syrup, a little at a time,  to the brewed tea, and stir generously.  (Taste as you go here–everyone likes their tea sweetened a little differently, or not at all. For that matter, you could put the syrup on the side and let everyone use the amount they want in their individual tea glasses).

6. To serve, pour tea over rosewater ice cubes that you’ve placed into a tall glass. As the rose water cubes melt, their flavor will infuse into the tea. Garnish with fresh mint, if desired.

Citrus Chicken With Green Olives and Saffron

A totally easy chicken dish uses ingredients I had on hand...orange juice, green olives, saffron, lemon juice.

This is one of those throw together recipes that turned out surprisingly well. I had a few things on hand: orange juice, lemons, green olives, chicken legs, saffron. The resulting dish wasn’t sweet, despite the orangey base. It was more of a sweet and sour balance.  Served atop fluffy quinoa, and perhaps with a side salad or veg,  this meal satisfies without weighing you down.  In other words, a perfect dish to welcome spring.

This entire meal can make it to the table in about half an hour, not counting the time it takes to marinate. Which, in a pinch, you can skip.

Yield: About 4 servings. Recipe can easily be halved or doubled.

• 1 pound chicken legs or thighs, skin removed
• Neutral cooking fat of choice (butter, neutral oil, etc)
• 4 cups orange juice (2 for the marinade, 2 for the sauce)
• Juice of two lemons lemon (juice of one for the marinade, one for the sauce)
• 1/2 cup of pitted green olives, cut into chunks and rinsed to remove excess salt
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 generous pinches of saffron
• Salt and pepper
• Parsley or chives (for garnish, optional)
• 2 cups of quinoa, and 4 cups of water

1. Marinate chicken in 2 cups of orange juice, the lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and 2 of the garlic cloves. Cover, and refrigerate for at least half an hour, or even up to two days.

2. Remove chicken from marinade. Discard marinade. Heat neutral cooking fat of choice over medium in a large skillet or Dutch oven. Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides. Add to cooking fat (carefully), once cooking fat is hot.

3. Allow chicken to cook about three minutes on each side, enough to get a nice brown color.

4. Add 2 cups of orange juice, garlic, olives, juice of the second lemon, and saffron to the pan. Bring to a boil, then lower and cook over a low heat for 20 minutes. (Can cover pan if you wish; the recipe works with pan either covered or uncovered, so don’t stress about that detail).

5. As the chicken cooks, cook quinoa according the package directions. (Usually takes about 25 minutes total).

6. Taste chicken sauce for seasoning. Adjust if needed. If sauce seems too dry, add a bit more water or orange juice to liquify.  Remember, the olives are salty, so you MUST taste the sauce first before adding any salt. My guess is that you won’t need to add any salt.

7. Serve over quinoa, and garnish with green herbs or chives if desired.

Retreat-y Pie

Hey there, everyone.  I hope you’ve had a great week. Any big plans for the weekend? Planning my next Yoga weekend getaway has been taking up a lot of my time lately. This time we’re retreating to the Green Mountain State, a.k.a. Vermont, from May 4-6.  I’m so excited!

My friend Maria Nieves is catering my upcoming Vermont retreat. She made this raw vegan pie for us to taste test. We're still debating between flavoring it with mango, lime, or both. I say both, with a big side of coconut sorbet to compliment the pie's creamy texture.

This weekend away is happening in Plymouth, Vermont, at an amazing venue, Good Commons.

Good Commons, in Plymouth, Vermont, is hosting my next Yoga weekend getaway, May 4-6.

For more info on the weekend, have a look here. There will be Yoga classes daily, an outdoorsy outing, hot tub time, and farm-to-table cuisine prepared by my awesome chef, Maria Nieves. Also, my amiga Ilana will be leading a kirtan. Seriously can’t wait for all of this!

In New York for the weekend? So is the Yoga Journal conference. Check it out.

It’s really healthy to leave the day-to-day and take some time to refresh and re-set our lives.

As for this weekend, New Yorkers might want to check out the Yoga Journal conference. There are lots of free events and a (free) exhibit hall. Click here for deets.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Kitchen Scale Giveaway and an Awesome Article on Persian Cuisine

Photo by my student Meghan.

Hello, my dears, and happy Friday!

I hope you all had a great week. Mine was pretty productive: Nowruz, lots of teaching, signing people up for my next Yoga retreat, Spring cleaning, daily cooking, working out and Yoga-ing, plus tax filing. Whew! Let’s not even talk about the other stuff I’ve been procrastinating about (laundry piles, I have NO interest in your cries of neglect!) Uh, sounds like a good time to move on. . .

Shirin Polow. Photo by Todd Coleman via Saveur Magazine.

My friend Anthony forwarded me this article on Persian Cuisine. It really made my day:
Saveur Magazine article on Persian cuisine.

Here’s one of my favorite passages:

The Persian Empire, which spanned with some interruptions from 550 BC to AD 651, was the greatest of the early civilizations; there were well-built roads from one end of the empire to the other, and caravansaries, or roadside inns, at regular intervals to provide shelter and food to travelers. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote that he was seduced by Persian food, and King Croesus of Lydia, an ancient land that is now part of Turkey, advised Cyrus the Great to lure troublesome tribes with “the good things on which the Persians live.” Between the middle of the eighth century to the mid 13th century, the Abbasid Caliphate, an Arab-Muslim dynasty that encompassed swaths of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Spain and Portugal, hired Persian chefs to cook for the heads of state. As Islam tightened its hold on the region, Arabs adopted and adapted Persian cuisine.

Yeah, so basically Persian cuisine invented and influenced, like, the entire GLOBE, culturally and culinarily speaking. This doesn’t surprise me one bit, but it still makes me wanna say “Hollah!”

So a lot of Persian recipes I run across online use Metric measurements (duh, that’s what most of the globe uses.) A gram scale sure would come in handy for the many Metric recipes we encounter…no converting or re-calculating measurements needed. What a cool coincidence, because today SlimKicker is sponsoring a giveaway of a gram scale:

Enter to win a kitchen scale. Why would you want one? Precise measurements for all of your recipes (especially baking projects). Also a great way to measure out portions of food.

Okay, so I’ve actually never done a giveaway here on West of Persia, but that changes as of today. One lucky winner will get a gram scale, courtesy of SlimKicker.com

What is Slim Kicker?

From their site:

• SlimKicker is a level-up game that turns your diet + weight loss goals into a winnable game.

The site helps participants:

• Stay motivated and excited.

• Rack up points for tracking healthy calories, logging your workouts, and completing challenges.

• Stay accountable.

• Enter 7 to 30 day diet and fitness challenges with others, and “check-in” daily to tell us how you’re doing.

• Win prizes.

• As you level up, you get to participate in giveaway challenges where we give away special prizes.

• Personalized, Actionable Advice.

• Get personalized reminders from our virtual coach based on your activity.

TO ENTER (U.S. and Canada residents are eligible):

1. Leave a comment and tell me how you keep yourself motivated to stay fit. (Required entry)

2. For an additional entry, follow me on Twitter: @BriasWorld and leave a comment here telling me that you did.

3. For additional entry, follow take a look at the SlimKicker site and tell me what “Challenge” looks fun/interesting to you.

Winner announced next Thursday, April 5.

Good luck entering the giveaway. Have a great weekend everybody!

Nowruz Mubarak! Happy Persian New Year

How perfect, really, to have a new year fall on the first day of spring, as does Norouz, a.k.a. Persian New Year. Everyone have a fabulous day, and if you’re celebrating Nowruz, please enjoy. May the new year and new season bring you and yours prosperity, good health, and happiness.

Nowruz mubarak (Happy Persian New Year) ! Image source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/

A Tale of 2 Shows: Bruce Springsteen and Coffee and Tea Shows

In my free time, I like to do a lot of this, to the point that I often wonder if I was one of these in a past life:

My cat is quite aware of how cute he is.

Lately, I’ve been dragging myself out of my comfort zone (or, in some cases, being prodded out by friends). Winter is winding down, after all, and we can’t hibernate and re-watch Downton Abbey forever.

An iconic Bruce Springsteen moment.

In the past few weeks, I took in The Coffee and Tea Show and a Bruce Springsteen concert (just this past Friday, in fact).

Cool tea display at the New York Coffee and Tea Show.

In both cases, I was with dear friends. Khat and I browsed the coffee and tea event, and Ilana invited me to the Springsteen show. No joke, we had the best seats in the house. Hollah! (Don’t hate!)

Truth be told, going in, I liked Springsteen well enough. He and the E. Street band put on one helluva show that exceeded my expectations bigtime. It was one of those shows where they didn’t even play that many of the big hits, yet the band still rocked out and really connected with the audience. I was impressed. It was a blast, and I’d jump at the chance to see another of his shows.

Did you know that Bruce Springsteen had never played Harlem's Apollo Theater until just a few days ago?

Just goes to show that sometimes it’s good to break the routine, both in big ways and small ways.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Question time:

What have you done lately to break your routine (big or small adjustments)?

Speaking of breaking the routine, I have a couple of cool giveaways that are coming up on here, so stay tuned.

I Couldn’t Make This Up if I Tried. . . .

Spotted this rather interesting display on a recent Sunday morning in Harlem. Looks like quite a party happened, doesn’t it?

In front of a building, safely tucked behind an iron fence, we have quite the post-party collection of liquor bottles. Impressive. But what really gets me is the toy SUV propped atop the bottles. Must've been SOME night.