Zarin at Jaipur’s Fairmont brings authentic Iranian flavours to the table and professes to be the first of its kind in the country. Rinku Ghosh takes up the invite for a new experiential and busts a few food myths
Meat, meat and only meat. Rustic, earthy, some heart-warming broth perhaps. Scarce in variety. This is the answer you are most likely to elicit when you mention Irani cuisine to anybody. The majority would perhaps wonder why you are not talking of Mumbai’s famed Irani cafes or the bun maska. Yet it is the new exotic what with Western sanctions being lifted off Iran and a new cultural engagement defining the contours of soft diplomacy. And so it is Irani cuisine that is capturing the global imagination at the moment. Turns out it can be simple yet layered, comforting yet subtle, wholesome yet refined. More than enough to bust our pre-conceptions.
And courtesy a food tasting at Jaipur’s elegant Fairmont hotel, we learn that ancient Persians were health conscious enough to balance their food and round off each meal with ayurvedic accuracy. Traditionally, they have been including superfoods like pistachios, almonds, walnuts, saffron, mint, oranges, pomegranates and grapes in their diets. They have a range of garden-fresh salads in an easy toss, they make the most delicious eggplants in the world, they have some hearty lentil soups and they only cook their food in extra virgin olive oil. Further, given the legacy of the Achaemenid dynasty and their vast irrigation network, fruits and vegetables were always available and popular even in home-style cooking. Did you know that the Persians had developed a system of underground aquifers that drew melted snow water into the desertIJ Also, sharing borders with the old Silk Route countries, they readily absorbed their food influences and assimilated them to develop their own grammar. Darius the Great and Xerxes through such lavish feasts that the Greeks, who believed themselves to top every civilisational benchmark, were left stupefied.
As was Deepak Gurung, Sous Chef of Jaipur’s Fairmont, when he did a six-month recce, including visiting Iran for gathering first-hand experiences and then honing his consistency with Iranian-origin chefs in Dubai. Perhaps it was with the objective of seizing a new culinary frontier that the global luxury hotel launched Zarin, India’s first and only Iranian restaurant, in the heart of Pink City. Though the five-year-old property comes with its own set of worldwide recommendations, it has had to battle established loyalties for the classics and the emotional colonisation of a well-worn heritage like the Rambagh Palace. So it has chosen to beat cliches with its fine diner, skirted by oriental pavilions and overlooking the virgin Aravallis. Reasons Srijan Vadhera, the general manager, “We needed to draw in people to something that seemed familiar yet unknown. That’s when we zeroed in on an exclusive Indo-Persian menu, the Indian element borrowing heavily from the immigrant Parsi cuisine at home. Rajputana as a concept has Mughal influences. This is reflected in our fort-style sprawl. Mughal emperor Babar himself nurtured a Persianate ethos in his courts. The template was there, we just reinvented it.”
And if it is any consolation, the ancient Persians themselves took note of Indian cuisine, particularly our reliance on rice and cow milk. This was the commonality that made Chef Deepak add milk to dal as a tempering, just a bit before serving, for home-made sweetness and comfort. Dairy dal, if you can call it that, is a staple in Irani homes. “Zarin means gold. It also means connected to the earth. And our menu spans these extremities,” says the chef as he takes a look at the gold-embossed crockery, plated cutlery and the low-hung chandeliers before the dinner hour. With the breeze wafting in from the terraces and the flutter of pigeons becoming almost a whisper in the turrets, he settles down in one of the low-seat sofas around a square table. Breaking bread, he begins, “This restaurant is laid out like those in Tehran, where people gather around the table and share their food. They do not have courses. They bring whatever they have cooked to the table and have it in random order. Here we follow dining etiquette but the decor gives the feeling of being at one with friends.”
The warmth surely bounces off Zarin’s plush teak interiors as the chef sums up the essence of Iranian cuisine. “Rustic in method but refined in terms of sauces and gravy,” he tells us as we dip our hands in rose-scented water in a copper vat as part of a pre-meal ritual. Chef Deepak gets animated about rediscovering the humble pumpkin. “Qasr-e-pukhtan has the most luscious and creamy gravy of red pumpkin I’ve ever had. This is so native to them that it hasn’t percolated to Afghani or Punjabi cuisine. Yet it is so subtle and balanced with its richness that you begin to respect the pumpkin,” he tells us.
Any richness comes from the use of nuts though the basic spice mix of any Persian cuisine would include garlic, black pepper, a bit of cinnamon, rose and the lemony tart sumak powder. “The distinct flavours come from the fruits and flowers,” confirms chef Deepak. “And, of course, there’s saffron.”
Though he encountered koftas and kebabs aplenty, the chef cannot forget Mirza Ghasemi, an eggplant dish. “Indians hate eggplant with a passion. But when I sampled it, I just fell in love with it. It is served as a side dish in Iran but I have made it part of the main course here. All you have to do is roast the eggplant along with tomatoes over the seekh or in a tandoor. Then you chop it up rough and temper it with olive oil, garlic, a bit of deghi mirch and turmeric. Add a dash of translucent onions. Meanwhile, make a lentil curry with extra tomatoes (chef uses chana dal), flavour it with garlic and sumak powder. Pour it over the eggplant and tomato mix and top it with sour cream. For garnish, there’s parsley and mint.”
Mirza Ghasemi was the legacy of Mohammad Ghasem Khan, former ruler of Rasht, capital of the northern Gilan province, considered fertile for vegetables. And though the Persian variant has eggs, the chef has kept it vegetarian here for a gooey mash that has a fullness of flavours, tangy heft of the tomato and the roundedness of lentils without being overpowered by spices. What’s more, the eggplant seals it all in without being runny.
But lest we get carried away by his passion, the chef calls for service. After all, he had collected around 50 recipes during his travels, narrowed down to perfecting 30 of them and finally selected only 10 or 12 that would work in the Indian context.
So it is that we begin with Harira, a hearty lamb soup with generous amounts of vegetables and lentils, a meal-in-a-bowl that has been derived from the cold mountains of neighbouring Uzbekistan. You can get bite-sized pieces of each ingredient used though the flavours have a pureed blend uniformity. But it is the komuz accompanying it that has our attention. This is a soft baked roll made out of a dough of refined flour, milk, saffron, topped with khus khus and stuffed with dates. A fruity-crunchy bite, it goes well with any kind of gravy.
Then it is time for the heavy duty line-up beginning with Khoresht Fesenjan or chicken morsels cooked in pomegranate molasses. “Nobody in India or Asian cuisine might have used this but pomegranate molasses and walnuts bring sweet, sour and bitter notes to this stew,” says chef Deepak. A northern Iran speciality, where ducks abound, it is now a staple at all feasts. Ground walnuts, pomegranate paste and onions are slowly simmered to make a thick sauce. Then all it takes is a pinch of saffron and cinnamon and a dash of sugar to balance the acids. It takes about three hours to prepare but its tartness lends a new kick to chicken, which often lacks the porosity and absorbency of other meats. In this dish, it acquires a fulsomeness that’s rare in the familiar.
Another bird reinterpretation comes courtesy the Tabriz Kofta, which uses beef mince in the original. Zarin’s version is a stuffed chicken dumpling filled with nuts and spices, wrapped around an egg and bathed in a mild onion broth. “Our koftas or meat balls rely on picking accents from an onion-tomato gravy or a minced mutton curry. But the meatball from the town of Tabriz uses only mince and its stock for rich flavours, making it granular and chunky. The only binding agent is a bit of flour. We steam the chicken, then poach it in its own juices that are released. For binding consistency, we use a slurry of refined flour. Once the balls are ready, we stuff them with prunes, walnuts and eggs. No tomatoes, spices or condiments. In Tabriz, ours came as big as a tennis ball, a complete meal in itself. Here we have manageable morsels.” The yellow cooked yolk surrounded by a ring of white and layered over with nutty mince enhances the natural flavours of the chicken without making it taste game-like given the simple poaching technique.
In fact, the chef stayed longer at Tabriz than Tehran to perfect the meatball in its native simplicity and honesty. “We toured the villages and found that the taste was enhanced there because they cooked on wood,” he tells us. The rustic straightforwardness is also the hallmark of Iranian haleem, a thick, pasty wheat porridge that combines the heartiness of grains with meat proteins or vegetables. Traditionalists still believe in cooking and stirring the wheat mix all night long so that it could be ladled out in its most nourishing avatar as a breakfast food. A complex variant uses more barley and five lentils along with the meat.
We just wipe it clean with the Babri naan, the dough rising turgid, having been fermented with milk, sugar, salt and topped with the crunch of black onion and sesame seeds. Emperor Babar loved his breads and pomegranates. And gazing through the arches at the silhouetted ramparts under a starry sky, it’s a moment of magic realism indeed. With the glow of faux flaming torches and the night crawling up the ramparts, this is as desert-wild as it can get.
Chef Deepak is against any form of tweaking and keeps to the grammar in his kebabs. These apparently involve a few basic ingredients — olive oil, garlic, black pepper, salt, and a relish of saffron. “Only their Jujeh kebab has a dollop of onion paste, which is used as a natural tenderiser. The use of yogurt is minimal,” the chef has us know. In his menu, the Jujeh comes basted in tomato to cater to the Indian palate.
Chef Deepak picked up many memories on the road. And the simplicity of Iranian food led him to probe deeper. He remembers a hearty lamb stew. “They used a lamb rack but it is actually done with beef. The ingredients were oil, garlic, saffron and sumak powder. They poured about half a kg of water for a kg of meat. Then they sealed the lid, keeping a heavy vessel on top. They left it for half an hour, checked it for seasoning and then served it with sliced onions. It was super nutritious because of the lamb rack, the bones and the minimal flavouring and spices. The meat prised off easily and was juicy, the aroma wafting your senses into submission.”
And just when you think you have deconstructed the food somewhat, Zarin busts another myth. Iranians love their fish too and the southern part of the country uses tamarind and different species of fish for kebabs and grills. The chef presents us a grilled variety, marinated and wrapped in aromatic spices. While 60 per cent of Zarin is authentic Iranian, the remaining 40 per cent comprises familiar Parsi favourites. So if you are not so experimental, you can sample some great Parsi favourites, they being the bridge between ancient Persia and India. Just go for the indigenised vegetable dhanshak and the Kasare Pukhtan, softened paneer dumplings simmered in a smooth aromatic yellow pumpkin and onion gravy, working itself up to a gooey relish and an explosion of flavours that lingers on your palate.
But the chef decides to spoil us till the end with a decadent platter of sweet water melon, tangy feta cheese, pomegranate, walnuts, baklava and malido. Seductively christened as Sham-e-Yelda platter, this is peppered and fringed with fruits and herbs, the kind you find dribbling off a Mughal painting. The baklavas are similar to our burfis while the malido approximates our halwa, except theirs has a more complex mix of flour, semolina and eggs cooked together with sugar in condensed milk and topped with saffron. With a silken finish, it is soul-satisfying indeed. Sham-e-Yelda is a clever take on Shab-e-Yelda, a community platter which is had on the longest and darkest night of the year when friends and family gather together to eat, drink and read poetry until well after midnight. Fruits and nuts are eaten and pomegranates and watermelons are particularly significant because their crimson hues symbolise dawn and glow of life. Zarin is glowing too, unfurling a new spread on the forgotten Silk Route.