A Disastrous Dinner and New lessons Learned!

A couple of evenings ago my husband and I went to this Persian market nearby. The trip was supposed to be a double winner, good quality fruits and vegetables at a much lower price and an interesting dinner. The first part went really well, we bought some delectable grapes, pears and iceberg lettuce.

We have bought food from their restaurant on two earlier occasions, but we had safely ordered some sandwiches and soup. Their sandwiches were delicious, more like vegetables and tzatziki all rolled in a piece of naan-like bread. Their food usually takes at least 20 minutes to be ready so we decided to place an order first and then go shopping.

We looked through the menu and decided to get a little bit more adventurous. Here’s what we ordered,

Tahchin – Basmati rice mixed with yogurt, egg, chicken, saffron; served with shirazi salad. Tell me honestly, what would you think of after reading this description? We could very clearly visualize some form of biryani. And what did we get?? A block of baked rice, layered with chicken, garnished with barberries (extremely tart, small, red berries). 
Panir Sabzi – A colorful plate of imported feta cheese, walnuts and fresh herbs (mint, basil, watercress, tarragon and radish). Even though the description is pretty clear, the Indian in us expected some kind of a paneer sabzi. But this platter was a flop too. Not the feta and walnuts, but the greens. I do love salads but not raw mint and basil. What did I do with that...you know the saying, when life hands you lemons etc etc..so I made pesto.

Barbari Bread – Assuming that the panir sabzi would be a sabzi of some kind; we decided to buy some bread from their bakery. One of their breads looked exactly like naan, so we did not want that. We wanted to be adventurous, remember? I saw this name ‘Barbari’ on their menu and asked a very friendly lady at the counter to show me the bread. She did, and I liked the look of it. What we did not know is that you could only buy it as one whole piece…which is big enough to make an XXL rectangular pizza. Luckily it wasn’t too expensive. She suggested that the bread could be cut up and stored in the refrigerator and toasted whenever required. That was a solace… we did not have to eat up that much of bread in one or two days. As of now, I have used it for breakfast, with butter and jam…it was yummy.

So, what did we finally have for dinner that night? We managed to have the rice dish with the cucumber, onion and tomato salad that came with it and some yogurt.