Persian Salad and Tea
in Monterey (California) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
In
search of a 60-cent package of round pita bread, I used about a dollar’s worth
of gas driving from Seaside (California) to the International Market in
Monterey across town, which was the only place that sold pita bread in the
early 2000s in Monterey County California.
The
International Market sells an array of ethnic foods from the Middle East,
India, Brazil, and other countries.
When
we arrived, I looked at pita bread and long, thin sheets of lavash bread,
yogurt drinks (laban), and trays of figs.
Florence sniffed boxes of tea from places like England, Morocco, and
Persia (Iran).
“This
tea smells the best,” Florence said holding a reddish brown, half-pound box of
Persian tea with wavy Arabic letters decorating the package.
The
ingredients list said the tea was made with black Darjeeling and Earl Gray
teas. Earl Gary contains Bergamot
orange-flavored leaves.
According
to Margaret Shaida’s cookbook The
Legendary Cuisine of Persia, this combination approximates the flavor of
Iranian tea grown by the Caspian Sea that Iranians enjoy so much that none is
available for export.
“If
we buy this tea, we will have to buy a flowery carpet and brass samovar to go
with it,” I teased my daughter Florence as I looked at the $8 price tag. So, I was going to spend $8.60 instead of 60
cents – parenting is like that I have discovered.
“What’s
a samovar?” Florence asked.
“Iranians
and Russians both use them, but they look different,” I said as I began to
explain.
“For
tea made with a samovar, you put a bit of the strong tea in a cup and add water
to it from a pot of really strong tea that sits above hot water,” I
answered. (I own a Turkish samovar now,
which I use when it is not displayed as anthropological artwork.)
Florence
kept smelling the box of highly perfumed loose tea and said, “This smells
divine” as we looked at cans of hard-to-find items like fava beans, packages of
vermicelli pasta, and unknown items in brightly colored cans with lettering I
failed to place.
Were
the alphabets Thai? Hindu? Burmese?
End
of Part 1
To
be continued
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
