After a lifetime of friendship with my fetus friend, I’m an honorary Iranian. I love Nowruz, Persian New Year. The years that I’ve been able to party with her family have been some of the most fun days of my life! This year I decided that my parents needed to experience my mini Nowruz party, so I spent the day cooking my favorite Persian dishes and setting up my first-ever Haft-Sin table.

The primary items on a Haft-Sin table are Sabzeh – wheat, barley, mung bean, or lentil sprouts grown in a dish, Samanu – wheat germ sweet pudding, Senjed – oleaster, Serkeh – vinegar, Seeb – apple, Seer – garlic, Somagh – sumac.

On my Haft-Sin table:

• Fresh tulips that I picked from a tulip farm, hyacinth from the front yard, some greenery from Trader Joe’s, lego flowers, and a green ball to represent sprouts (sabzeh).

• Vinegar (serkeh)

• Apple (seeb)

• Garlic (seer)

• Ground sumac (somagh)

• Candles

• Coins

• Goldfish (I didn’t get a real one obviously, and I used the most American stand-in, Goldfish crackers.

• Chocolates

• A Bible

It was really nice setting up the table and thinking about all the promises of Spring.

Now for the delicious part, food!

I made hummus including homemade tahini because I had plenty of sesame seeds and why not?!

Then I made mast o khiar, a Persian cucumber yogurt dip. I forgot to take pictures of it specifically, it’s the white dip in the middle of the big food picture.

Next, I made my first attempt at Tahdig. Tahdig is a delicious layer of crispy rice at the bottom of the pot. It’s so good, that people legit fight over it. It didn’t set into a full crispy layer, but I did get some crispy pieces so I’ll take it. This rice was incredible and I will 10000% keep trying until I get a proper tahdig.

The first meat I made was Persian Saffron Chicken (Zereshk Polo Ba Morgh). I dream of this chicken, and it’s the first time I’ve made it myself. It’s so freaking good.

The star of any Persian meal, in my opinion, is kebob koobideh. I could eat this kebob every.single.day. My Iranian “dad” (fetus friend’s dad) makes such amazing kebob that I have been scared to try making it even though it’s a really easy recipe because I was afraid of messing it up. But let me tell you, it is easy, tasty as fuck, and you can do it.

Last, I made pita. This was so easy and so delicious. There is a lot of downtime for the pita to rise/rest, but it’s worth it. I will probably not buy very much pita in the future, because this was so good.

This was a huge undertaking, it took me about four and a half hours of straight cooking, so it’s obviously not an everyday spread, but it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed sharing my favorite Persian holiday and foods with my parents. Happy New Year.