Adas Polo -- Persian Peasant Food

Persian Adas Polo (sort of)

For my first attempt at both cooking peasant plant-based food, and also a first attempt at blogging, I'm going to try something I remember from a Persian restaurant called Adas Polo (it seems to go by other similar names and I'm not sure what the real name is).

FIRST CONFESSION:  I am not Persian.   I don't have any family or close friends who are Persian.  I have no great-grandmother to tell me how to do this correctly, but I do have a desire to try plant-based peasant food, so be warned if you are an Adas Polo purist, this may not meet your expectations.    If you are an Irish-American, this may add a dish to your "Forks-over-Knives" type of diet.

OK, let's get started.   Here's my kitchen setup (what you will need):
Couple of pots to boil water with rice and lentils, some way to grate some carrots, a colander to drain and rinse, and a huge something to mix stuff up in (a large bowl would be better than the huge pot shown, but I don't have a bowl big enough)



SECOND CONFESSION:  This will make a huge amount of food.   For one hungry guy, it will last a week, for a family it will definitely be more than one meal.    Good thing is, because there's no meat or dairy, it won't spoil.   There's nothing in it that can spoil, even after a week in the fridge.   So make a lot, and enjoy.

Start with a bag of Basmati Rice (Persian rice can be found in any grocery store).  I am using brown basmati rice, but you can use white if you prefer.
















Next comes Lentils.   You are going to want around 1/2 bag of lentils for a full bag of rice.   Adjust accordingly.

Pour rice into a large pot of boiling water.  You don't need to measure, just make sure you have a lot of water.   A large pot will work for a bag of rice, but if you insist on measuring, use at least 3 cups of water for every cup of rice.  You want extra water, and don't worry, this rice doesn't cook like japanese rice.  Even with lots of water it's not going to get pasty.


Same deal for the lentils, though of course you have less, so a smaller pot will also work.  If you want, you can cook these one after another (if you only have one pot), and indeed they can be cooked ahead of time, if that suits you.   Both rice and lentils keep well after cooking, so don't worry about them spoiling.

 

Now, while the rice and lentils are cooking (it will take around 20 minutes for the lentils, and 40 minutes for the rice), you should grate a couple of large carrots.   You can get fancy if you want with a mechanical grater, but hand works fine, and it's only a couple of carrots, after all.

Once the carrots are done, you can assemble all the other things you are going to want to add to your Adas Polo.   As shown, you will want dark and light raisins, dates, roasted pistachios, and sliced roasted almonds.   All are typical ingredients in Persian food, but you can also find variations of Adas Polo with any combination of one, two or more of these ingredients.   Orange peel zest, and other choices make it easy to create variations.



Set out a pile of each ingredient, something like this.    More is good, but too much will overwhelm the subtle flavors of the rice/lentil mixture, so don't go overboard your first time.  Slice the dates lengthwise, and cut once across, or as you wish.  Don't get pre-cut dates as they are disgusting and they also have lots of sugar added.

Now, for the hard part -- saffron (not really, it's just that saffron is expensive, so it's hard to make yourself use it).

Saffron is around $20 for only enough to hardly be seen in the bottle.   They put it in a little plastic envelope, as shown here.    Really, it's TWENTY BUCKS for that little bit.   But a little goes a long way.   

No matter how you figure it, the cost of the saffron is probably more than the cost of ALL THE OTHER INGREDIENTS COMBINED.   But without saffron, it's just not the same dish.   Saffron has a kind of bitter taste, but has a wonderful floral aroma that fills the kitchen and gives a beautiful golden orange tint to the dish.    I'm tempted to try it without, but I'm afraid of setting some sort of bad precedent where I will leave out any critical spice that I don't want to find or buy.   Not good.  So saffron it is.

The way to prepare saffron is to take a "pinch" (I used about half of what is in the bottle, or about $10 worth).   Put a LITTLE bit of hot water (boiling hot is good) over the saffron filaments and let it steep like a tea while you do the next steps.

This is how it looks with the water added:

Ok, so if your lentils are done (they get done before the rice, remember?), you can pour them out in a colander and rinse liberally with cold water.   You want to rinse them so they don't overcook or become mushy, as that will make your Adas Polo too sticky and mushy.

Lentils change color a bit when they are done, but you can always try a couple to make sure they are ready.

Now, do the same thing for the rice, waiting of course for it to be done.   Make extra sure you rinse the rice really well with cold water, to stop cooking, and to remove any surface starch that will keep your rice from fluffing properly.

At this point, you should have a boatload of rice, and an appropriate smaller amount of cooked lentils, each rinsed, drained, and set aside.

I used a giant soup pot to mix in, but you can use a huge salad bowl or something similar if you have it.   Either way, it's a relatively simple thing to dump all the raisins, dates, carrots, and nuts onto the rice and lentils, and fluff until mixed.   DON'T STIR IT, FLUFF IT.    With a big spoon dig down and fluff the mixture upward until everything is mixed.   Stirring, in the traditional sense, will mash your rice and lentils, and the resultant concoction will not have the wonderful fluffy lightness you want from Adas Polo.

When properly fluffed, it should look something like this:

Now, GENTLY drizzle the saffron water mix over the mixture.   If you used only a little water on your saffron, it will flavor everything without sinking to the bottom.

You want to allow the saffron filaments into the mix.   If you can separate them gently, that is best, but either way you want all of it (all $10 worth) in your mix.   The filaments may not have much flavor left at this point, but they add color and visual interest to the dish.   In a restaurant, seeing the saffron filaments is proof they used real saffron (I guess you could call this the "money shot").

Your Adas Polo should smell like heaven, and should look like this.  In my esteemed not-official-Persian opinion, it's best to make this dish cold, then microwave it just as it is served.  That way the fruits, nuts, carrots, rice, and lentils all retain their individual flavors and textures.  This is not like a soup or stew where you want everything to intermingle.

Leaving it in the fridge for a while even doesn't make everything blend, as long as you don't mix it heavily (fluff only, remember?).   Even days later, the carrots are still sweet, the nuts crunchy, and the fruits chewy.

Because we made a huge batch, you will have enough for an immediate meal, and still a lot leftover for tomorrow and beyond.    I like to make up some small plastic containers, that I can take for lunch at work.   They are just right for a light lunch, and you won't need to fight for refrigerator space at work because they won't need refrigeration, at least not for a day.

I get these little lunch-size plastic buckets at our local dollar store, four for a dollar.   At 25 cents each, it's way cheaper than going out to lunch (even with saffron), way better for you, and cleanup is a breeze (I just throw them away -- no environmental haters please, it just is was it is).

Hope you enjoy this sometime soon.    It's easy to prepare, cheap to make, nutritious, tasty, and has no meat, dairy, fat, sugar, or salt.

Bon Apetit

Rules of the Game: Peasant Food (not imitation food)

Please NO FAKE FOOD

I've not been impressed with so-called "vegan" food in grocery stores, or "vegan" restaurant choices.

Too often it is some bizarre attempt to imitate or substitute for a hamburger, or a pizza, or an egg substitute that "looks and tastes like real eggs".   Not there's anything wrong with that, just that it seems sorta stupid to have a "fake" hamburger, when you can have a "real" something else that is actually good tasting.

I mean, people have been eating grains, beans, vegetables, and fruit since the dawn of time.   If they never had an urge to make a burger out of it, why should I want to eat one now? 

Clearly, there have been hundreds if not thousands of years, in which the people of each local culture and region of the Earth has tinkered with and perfected the recipes for endless tasty things, many of which are plant-based foods.

A hamburger is a work or art.  It is the best hamburger that has evolved over time, and thousands of variations have been tried and each has it's contribution.   But none of them every were made with barley and black beans.    So if I'm going to have bacon for breakfast, I figure it should be bacon, not this:

Peasant Food is the Answer

What I have decided is that "peasant food" from anywhere in the world is a good bet.   Poor people, historically and today,  eat more tasty, inexpensive, and nutritious food than their wealthier friends, who tend to eat a more western type of diet.  

 
Poor people don't have fancy kitchens, so their food is easy to prepare.   They don't have ready access to sugar, oils, salt, or other processed foods.   In every region of the world, and in every ethnic culture, there are traditional dishes eaten by the poor, that have been honed and perfected over the course of hundreds of generations, using ingredients and spices native to the area.   In short, peasants eat the best, the most nutritious, least expensive, and most healthful diets anywhere.


So, I'm going to focus on finding, preparing, and posting recipes, tips, and techniques for creating the world's best peasant food.     Curries from india, flavored vegetables from asia, spanish rice and cuban beans.   Lentils from the middle east, hummus, goulash, and whatever I can find.

It has to be plant-based.  Cannot have added oil, sugar, or salt.  Must be really, really good.   Not fake whatever.   Real food.   Real good food.    I'll seek out traditional dishes eaten by locals for centuries, from anywhere in the world.    As an added bonus, they will almost always be inexpensive and easy to fix.   

As Peter Pan might have said....   "C'mon everybody..... Let's Goooooooo!"

I Hate Vegans (even though I guess I am one)

So, I only eat plants.   Wanna make something of it?

I don't eat meat of any kind, nor dairy of any kind.    I don't add oil, sugar, or salt to the food that mother nature grows.    I eat it raw, or cooked, either way, but only plants, and not anything squeezed, crystalized, or extracted from plants.   Just plants.

I don't associate myself with vegans, or fruitarians, or vegetarians, or any other dietary-group-label you think of when I tell you I only eat plants.

I lied just a little bit, because I really don't hate the people I know who characterize themselves as "vegans", it's just that I hate being associated with veganism because of the baggage that comes with the label.

You know the joke "how can you tell if someone is a vegan?"  "Don't worry, they'll tell you!"

I don't preach, I don't announce to the world my preferences, and I don't make a scene at restaurants and barbeques.   I just eat what I want, and don't eat the rest.   Quite simple, really.

I'm not a bleeding heart, or a tree hugger.   I like football, women (one in particular for the last 32 years), and enjoy violent movies, computers, loud stereos, and shooting guns (the big loud ones are best).  I am, relatively speaking, a normal guy.

I wasn't always like this.  Although my diet was a bit restricted for economic reasons as a child, once I got out of school and became more affluent, I was able to buy all the fast food, fried chicken, bacon, eggs, ice cream, See's candy, Hershey and Snickers bars, donuts, cake, pie, soda, cookies, and pretty much anything else I ever wanted.   Before long, like most, I had a diet that was 99% meat, dairy, fat, sugar, and salt.   The only vegetables I ate were french fries, or the lettuce and pickle that came on a Big Mac.

What happened to turn me toward a plant-based diet?  Well, a friend of mine @Howard Farran, posted a facebook link to a movie trailer called "Forks over Knives" (movie trailer below).  For some reason, I was receptive enough to watch it (mostly because Howard is not much of a health nut, and overall he looked more like the "before" pictures in most health ads, so I wondered what he was up to).





I thought, hmmmm.   That's interesting that Howard is into that.  And then, in the true spirit of denial, I didn't do anything about it.

But then another friend, and then another, and then another, all told me the same thing..... "Forks over Knives".    So I invested a couple of dollars and bought the video........   to say I was overwhelmed is an understatement.

Of course, once I started looking around, it seemed like I was the last person on Earth to get the news......

This had been all over CNN, Dr. Oz, Oprah, and the like.   Even former president Bill Clinton had joined the parade years ago.   Where was I when this memo came out?

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/podcasts/gupta/site/2011/08/29/sgmd.last.heart.attack.cnn

So I started looking into it, and found some books to read, and learned that eating meat, dairy, fat, sugar, and salt is, collectively, the cause of virtually every disease that plagues "modern" man.  I say "modern" because it seems that "primitive" cultures (those too backwards to adopt our typical American diet), seem to have virtually NO heart disease, diabetes, or cancer.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see where that can take you.

So, now you know that I don't avoid eating meat because of concern for the welfare of animals, either in their slaughter or the conditions in which they are raised.   Sure, like most people, I do care about animals, but there is nothing offensive to me about raising a pig to make bacon, or turning the lights on to make a chicken lay more eggs.  Sorry, but there you go.

I also don't avoid eating meat, dairy, fat, sugar, or salt because of religious restrictions, or allergies, or concern for any thing or anybody but myself.

I avoid eating these things because they kill people, and I don't want to be one of those people.  Plain and simple.

But I do enjoy food, and enjoy eating.  I want to collect a bunch of recipes and ideas to make this stuff taste good.

This blog is not intended to convince anybody, but rather to share some food ideas for others who want to adopt a whole-food, plant-based diet, and also serves as a repository for my own recipes, etc.
I'd love to hear from you, if you enjoy anything posted here, and would also love to get links to similar sites with personal and not institutional  recipes.

Heart disease, diabetes, cancer...... all turn out to be food borne illnesses.   Who'd have guessed?