Culinary Communion: Persian Cuisine

For our first anniversary, my gift to Aaron was to take him to a class on cooking Persian food last night. The class was offered by Culinary Communion, and took place in the home of Chef Gabriel Claycamp. There were 7 students and the chef so it was a very nice intimate group. The class was fun, and we both learned alot, not just about Persian food, but cooking in general.

What did we learn?
– Saffron is water soluble, not oil soluble. Thats why you really need to dissolve it in hot water before you add it to the dish. If you just toss it in with what ever you are sauteing, it will give it a beautiful color but it just wont give up the love. Also, if you think you don’t like saffron because it tastes metalic, try Persion saffron rather than Spanish, its a whole lot cheaper and the flavor is much less tinny.
– Eggplant is like a sponge and soaks up a lot of oil. If you brush the eggplant with eggwhite before adding it to the pan the eggplant will soak up a significantly smaller amount of oil.

– Juicing citrus – roll or knead the lime to break it down inside and then zap it in the microwave for 20 seconds to increase viscosity before slicing and juicing the fruit – you’ll get out a whole lot more juice with a whole lot less effort.

– When cooking basmati rice – the old saying about washing the rice 5 times is there for a reason. I was the one that washed the rice, and it was amazing by the time I got the the third or fouth washing the aroma was really starting to come out. The five washings really help to release the aroma and flavor of the rice.

On the menu we had:

  • pistachio soup
  • feta and walnut spread with lavash bread
  • stuffed peppers
  • Eggplant Koresh
  • Dill and Fava Polow
  • Lamb Kababs
  • Saffron Brownie (halveh)

The food was great, but maybe not to the level of Alborz or Caspian Sea. I loved the pistachio soup, the cheese/nut spread was good be we found we needed to add a whole extra lime and a lot of extra plack pepper and mint to hit the right note. Bell peppers are never my thing, so as a whole the dish meant nothing to me, but the filling was quite succulent before in went into the pepper (after of course it was completely infused with the pepper flavor which I just don’t like). I may have to think of something else to stuff – because the filling was really quite tasty. The dill and fava palow was good, and we even made it with the tadiq which was especially cool as most restaurants don’t even serve that. The lamb kebabs were amazing and I seriously recommend you try the recipe when I get it posted. The saffron brownies were a variation on halveh which is common throughout the middle east, I dodn’t think much of this particular recipe but I’ll post it anyways.

Romance on Rails

Romance on Rails

For our first wedding anniversary celebration, Aaron took me out on the Spirit of Washington dinner train.

train

He thought of everything. Before we boarded the train, he helped me complete my look with a Holly Yashi necklace and earring set. Then there were roses waiting for me when we got to our table on the train.

The food was excellent. I had prime rib, and he had the salmon. The wines were exquisite – I particularly enjoyed the whidbey port.

our first anniversary

Aaron, my dear husband, I don’t have enough words to tell you how much I love you. You made me very, very happy tonight.

Judy Schwartz Haley
I love you more every day, and I’m so thankful that I get to spend my life with you.

A Three Hour Tour


For Mr. H’s 30th Birthday, I took him out whale watching… well that was the idea anyways, but apparently the whales didn’t get that memo.

The tour went out of Friday Harbor, so we had an adventure just getting there. We drove to Anacortes, two hours north of home, and then took a ferry across to San Juan Island where Friday Harbor is located.

We tried to have dinner at Front Street Ale House, but the service was so slow – not so much the kitchen, but getting the attention of the waiter (the one with the flat brim baseball hat cocked askew) – so we asked for the food to go and ate in on the boat as it was pulling out of port. The food was a bit greasy, but not bad.

The tour company we used was San Juan Safaris, and I would definitely use this service again. Our Captian was an old sea dog that looked like he’d spent more of his life on water than land, and the naturalist was a young college student who had been born and raised on the islands. They were both very skilled at keeping their guest happy and engaged (there were 20 of us on board) especially after it became apparent that the whales were not going to make an appearance.

We saw lots of eagles and eagles’ nests, rhinocerous oclets (horned diving birds), harbor porpoise, seals, sea otters, and beautiful scenery. The most fascinating sighting was also the most grotesque, we came across a tiny island, maybe 20 feet in diameter, with two young bald eagles on it. In the water below were a seal and her newborn pup. By newborn, I mean minutes old. We came up right after ther birth. The eagles on the rock were displaying their pecking order, the older eagle was eating the placenta, while the younger eagle stood by patiently waiting his turn.
We got back to Friday Harbor in time to catch the last ferry back to the mainland. The 9:55 is the milk run stopping at every island on the way, so we got back to Anacortes by midnight. That 2 hour drive back to Auburn was exhausting.