On Persian food

Until recently I'd barely eaten any Iranian food - or Persian, if you are of a more historical bent. It's definitely a cuisine on the up in London. There are increasing numbers of Iranian restaurants in West London to new street food purveyors and supper clubs.

I learned a lot at an event run by Iran Heritage Foundation last week, which put the latest trends in a historical perspective.

Saffron rice cakes   Photo: Adedotun Adesanya, Gitane

For example, rice was brought to Persia by the Mongol invasions in the 13th to 15th centuries, but it didn't become a staple food until much later than that.

Dr Sussan Babaie, who teaches history of Persian arts at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, explained that during the Safavid period in the 16th and 17th centuries, rice was an extraordinary food, not a food of the everyday. European travellers of this period record lavish feasts which began with desserts, as they saw it - cool sherbets and fruits both candied and fresh. Rice dishes were a course in their own right, the rice often studded with fruit and nuts.

At the Iran Heritage Foundation event I ate rice cakes fragrant with saffron and studded with barberries (zereshk), which are a little like tart currants, the colour of rubies. Barberries used to grow in large swathes of the northern hemisphere and were made into jam by Victorian cooks, but were largely eradicated in Europe because they can harbour the wheat rust fungus. These days barberries are particularly evocative of Persian food - they cropped up again in kuku, a herb-filled omelette decorated with walnuts and barberries (made by Hackney street food outfit Noosh). The rice cakes were supplied (I think) by Gitane in Fitzrovia. I loved the saffron flavour and the crispy crust. There were other dishes too, of which perhaps more later.

Kuku    Photo: Noosh

Dr Babaie produced a picture of a bowl in the Sultanabad style with a Persian inscription, dating from 1377. It said: "As long as the soup is good do not worry if the bowl is pretty." The slight irony of course, was that the bowl was rather pretty - but I think the words still hold true today.