Los Angeles Persian Restaurants

* Typical meal schedule for breakfast is usually 6-9 AM although different hotels may have different schedule (check with your hotel). A typical breakfast for Iranian is hot tea, bread, and feta cheese. Almost every household has this simple breakfast. Milk, butter, jam, honey, eggs (hard, soft, or scrambled), fruits, and walnut may also be available. 

* A typical Iranian breakfast for us may include pita bread or other kinds of Iranian bread, feta cheese, fresh basil, mint, tomatoes and cucumber from our garden, walnut, and fresh fruit. All of these items can be purchased from a regular grocery store. If you are in the mood, you can purchase special Iranian bread (i.e… lavash, barbari, sangak) from Iranian grocery stores.

* Mid morning snack may include a piece of fruit. For example, in winter, mid morning snack may consist of pomegranate or orange and in summer, summer fruit.

* Lunch is typically served 12-2 PM (may vary at hotels). Lunch is usually bigger meal (may resemble western size dinner in quantity). Lunch is usually consisted of rice and khoresht (a curry made of meat or chicken in a thick sauce plus vegetables or fruits, or nuts or legumes with Iranian spices and herbs).

* In place of Khoresht, fish, chicken kebab, lamb kebab or kobideh (ground meat kebab) may be served.

* Soups, salad, appetizer, yogurt, seasonal fruit may also be a part of lunch meal.

* Some people may eat leftovers from lunch for dinner but usually in most households a dinner meal is a lighter meal and is served later at night (typically 9-10 PM or even 12 midnight). Restaurant and hotels schedule may be different.

* Leftovers, salad, soup or stew, yogurt and seasonal fruit may include dinner meal.

* In mid-afternoon (4-5 PM), tea is usually served. In some households and in hotels, tea is available throughout the day. Tea is traditionally served in small glasses and drunk with cubed sugar. Cubed sugar is held between teeth so it dissolves slowly. In the summer on a hot day in an Iranian home, most definitely you will be served a cold, sweet, fruit flavored beverage called sharbat (or sherbet, a drink made of fruit and sugar served with ice and water) or sekanjebin (a drink made of mint, vinegar and sugar served with ice and water). Sharbat-e sekanjebin or sharbat-e albaloo (sour cherry syrup) are the two cold beverages that are available in most homes, at least we offered it to our guests in our household.

Ash, is part of Iranian cuisine, similar to soup but thicker, which is usually served hot. Depending on the type of the ash, it could contain different types of grain, legumes (chick peas, black-eye beans, lentils), vegetables, herbs (parsley, spinach, dill, spring onion ends, coriander, dried mint), onions, oil, meat, garlic, reshteh (in Ash Reshteh) and spices, such as salt, pepper, turmeric, saffron, etc. Depending on the ingredients it can be considered a full meal.

Ash Reshteh is one of the most famous types of ash, made so commonly in Iran. The ingredients used in cooking Ash Reshteh are reshteh, kashk, herbs such as parsley, spinach, dill, spring onion ends and sometimes coriander, chick peas, black eye beans, lentils, onions, flour, dried mint, garlic, oil, salt and pepper.

Pomegranate soup is an Iranian and Iraqi ash made from pomegranate juice and seeds, yellow split peas, ground beef, mint leaves, spices, and other ingredients. It is called Ash-e anār in Iran and Shorbat Rumman in Iraq.

The Iranian American novelist Marsha Mehran wrote a 2006 novel entitled Pomegranate Soup. The book contains a recipe for ash-e anar.

Gaz is the traditional name of Persian nougat originating from the city of Esfahan, located in the central plateau of Iran.

The name gaz is associated with gaz-angebin which translates to “sap of angebin”; a desert plant member of the Tamarisk family and native to the Zagros mountain range located to the west of the city.

The sweet, milky sap of the angebin plant is associated with manna, a food mentioned in the religious texts of the Abrahamic religions. This sap is collected annually and is combined with other ingredients including pistachio or almond kernels, rosewater and egg white. This combination of ingredients give gaz its distinctive flavor, rendering it unique when compared to European nougats.

Once collected from the mountains, the juice and sap of gaz-angebin are brought into town and placed into very large copper vessels which contain the remaining ingredients of egg white, pistachio or almond kernels, and rose water. The raw mixture is then beaten over heat until it reaches the desired consistency.

Traditionally (and still today) gaz-nougat is hand made and fashioned into individual round piece of about 2-3 inches in diameter and half an inch in thickness- packed into a box and covered with plain flour to keep the pieces from sticking to one another. They may be cut into bite-sized pieces, but are more often sold in larger sizes. Gaz in flour is called “gaz-e-ardi”

In modern times and with the advent of automated machines capable of mixing, cutting and wrapping individual bite-sized pieces of gaz, production has increased to a commercial level and gaz is made in much the same way as any bite sized candy.

Ashrafi Gaz Company was a pioneer in the introduction and utilization of European machinery for the production of modern Persian nougat