Posts made in February 12th, 2013

Feast at Our Iranian Friends’ Home

Posted on Feb 12, 2013 in Home Meals | 0 comments

It was my first time to meet them. They are my hubby’s friends from the U of A. We were invited to their place for dinner!

Jan 26th (Sat).

Wow, what a feast! It’s going to be a hard job to return the favour!

They are from Iran and have lived in Edmonton for almost 5 years. They are really a nice couple. There were beautiful religious motifs decorated at their place, but they are not religious, just like us. They are conscious of food and exercise, just like us!  And love talking, just like us! So of course, we enjoyed the evening chatting so much.

They are Iranians, so it’s easy to guess that they often eat meat. But we don’t… We were a bit afraid that she had a hard time preparing meal. We are sorry. But she did a great job! Thank you!!

Persian dishes are so good. We know that. We remember delicious dishes when we traveled Iran. But we weren’t expecting that we could have great home-made Persian food here in Edmonton!
The big whole fish dish is a special dish for Persian New Year, Norouz, we were told. And she cooked it for us even though it’s not new year. Some herbs and berries were stuffed inside the belly of the fish. It was so flavourful!

She also served rice cooked with saffron and herbs, baked salmon, some Persian egg plant dish, Persian salad, nice garlic pickles and egg plant pickles and so and so… I guess Persian dishes use a lot of egg plants. I love egg plants, so it’s great for me!

On top of it, her husband’s home-made wine was astonishing! It was so good!

In Iran, having alcohol, drinking alcohol and making alcohol are all prohibited by law. So you would get it at black markets or make some for yourself secretly at home. But to make it at home, you need to be quite knowledgeable about alcohol, I think, even more than a regular drinker in other countries. And yes, he is knowledgeable. Is it OK to write about it here?? Yes, sure, it’s Canada here, eh? He was saying it’s not too difficult as there are kits here in Canada, but it sounds like it’s important to keep the temperature right to make it perfect.
As I’m pregnant, I had to prevent myself from having more than a few sips, but it was really really good! Why am I pregnant today!? I thought.

A funny thing was that I thought they are from HOT Teheran, so they must feel sooo cold here, but actually he thought it was perfect (or at least it was comfortable) here! As you can see in the picture, we were wearing sweaters and he (she as well) is wearing T-shirt! I thought, aren’t you cold? But it was comfortable for him. So that’s good for him in Edmonton!

Another interesting thing was that they liked “Oshin“. Oshin is a TV drama that ran in 80’s in Japan. It was a big hit in Iran as well, they told us. Surprising! When I checked Oshin on Wiki, it was a hit in many countries and it’s one of the most famous Japanese TV dramas. I knew it was a hit in China and South East Asia, but I didn’t know it was also in Iran. They say that not only we learn how hard to live in Japan at that time and endure the hardship but also Japanese culture and the way of thinking. If you say so, I think it’s true. I feel like I want to watch it again (I think I watched it when I was in kindergarten). When I wrote that on FB, one of my Japanese friend told me that she started watching it on YouTube, being up until 3 in the monring! This Iranian friend also told me that she started watching it on YouTube, but some after some episodes, the English subtitles disappeared and couldn’t continue watching… that’s too bad…

We were talking like this, and then few days later, I heard news from Japan that Oshin is now turning into a movie! Oh! How timely! They just started making it, so we can not watch it for a while yet, but it’s so nice.

There are many interesting episodes about Oshin when I checked on Wiki (Japanese). The funniest ones were:

In Cairo, Egypt, When Oshin was on the air, a black out happened. The viewers got really angry and dveloped into a riot. They threw stones and fire against the electric company and the TV station. The government promised to run it again, and the riot calmed down.

and

In Afghanistan and Iran, the drama was dubbed into Persian, and got the highest-rate 90% on record. The word, Oshin, became a euphemism for  Japan. In Islamic countries, some scenes with some physical contact between men and women were cut, and that made them think that there were some obscene scenes in the drama, which is not true!

and

In Jamaica, when the Oshin boom has arrived, people started naming their children (didn’t matter girl or boy) Oshin.

Oh, we were just in Jamaica! If we knew that, we would look for the someone whose name is Oshin!

 

We were at their place from 6 to 11 !! We didn’t know the time has passed that much! We had a great time. Thank you so much. OMG, we were so stuffed!!