Iran

Persian cuisine is elegant and aromatic, balancing sweet and sour with saffron, dried limes, pomegranate, and herbs. Slow-cooked stews (khoresh), jeweled rice, and delicate kebabs reflect millennia of refined court and home cooking.

The best part of the rice is the bit stuck to the pan. Tahdig is the crust formed at the bottom of the pot, sometimes plain rice, sometimes lined first with potato slices or flatbread or yoghurt-loosened rice, and it is turned out and fought over. Ghormeh sabzi and fesenjan are the two khoresh to know, one green with herbs and dried lime, the other dark with walnut and pomegranate.

Sourness in Persian cooking usually comes dried. Limoo amani, limes boiled in brine and left to dry until they are hollow and black, are pierced and dropped whole into stews, and the same dried lime runs through Gulf cooking further south. The year turns on Nowruz, when the spring table calls for sabzi polo mahi, herb rice with fish.

A warming Persian lentil breakfast stew spiced with turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon.