Salad-e Khiar-o Anar (Cucumber Pomegranate Salad)

To answer Vicky’s query on a previous post, my Google search taught me that scallions are not shallots. In the photograph of scallions on Wikipedia, they look like green onions.

Speaking of Vicky (My Local Food), it’s squash season, so I’m eating a lot of local squashes this month. The apples in my crisper are from around here, as well. I am excited about this new website that Sylvain found: you can search by food item and see a list of local growers. If you click on the grower, you get a map and directions to their farm as well as links to the other things they sell.

As much as I try to keep to locally grown fruits and vegetables in season, sometimes I do buy items that are not locally grown. Pomegranates are in stores now, and I bought one the other day in order to make up one of my favourite Persian dishes: salad-e khiar-o anar or cucumber pomegranate salad. The recipe is from New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies by Najmieh Batmanglij, a cookbook I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who loves to cook and explore the cuisine of other cultures.

The unique combination of flavours in this salad bursts and combines in your mouth in an indescribable way: the tang of the pomegranate arils, the zip of the salt and lime, the freshness of the mint, the thirst quenching cucumber. It takes a long time to free all the arils from the pom rind, but I find it well worth the work.

Cucumber Pomegranate Salad

½ cup chopped scallions
½ cup chopped fresh mint
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
½ teaspoon angelica powder (gol-par)
1 long seedless cucumber, peeled and diced
Seeds of two pomegranates
1 fresh lime, peeled and sliced, with inner skin removed

1. In a serving bowl, combine ingredients and mix thoroughly
2. Season to taste with salt. Nush-e Jan!

Makes 4 servings
Preparation time: 25 minutes

Oh, and speaking of this big, glossy cook book full of poetry and lore, worthy of display on your coffee table…last weekend I got an up-close look at a traditional wedding sofreh-ye aqt, something I had only read about and seen photographed in my cookbook until Saturday. Sylvain’s friend G, whose parents are from Italy, was marrying her long-time best friend A, whose parents are from Iran. It was beautiful.