Persian pizza? What?? Yep, the Beats are getting creative with some cross-cultural Italian-American-Iranian pizza ideas. Beata reflects on pizza culture in current day Iran, what makes a cut above (hint, hint, hot dogs, sausages, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions and more), Persian pizza conceptions in the US, and making pizza from scratch at home for a fun Friday night.
Listen to the end to hear Roya’s Ask The Beats question, “Bita, how did you make the work of art, double layer tahchin cake I spied on Instagram?!”
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Co-host Beata Nazem Kelley blog: BeatsEats – Persian Girl Desperately Addicted to Food!
Co-host Bita Arabian blog: Oven Hug – Healthy Persian Recipes | Modern Persian Recipes
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Transcript:
This is Modern Persian Food. Our culinary podcast for today’s food enthusiasts. We talk about classic Persian flavors, modern recipes and embracing culture and identity through food. I’m Bita. And I’m also Beata. Welcome to our show.
Bita: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 125. Today, we’re talking about Persian Pizza. Persian pizza. You may be asking yourself what? There’s pizza in Iran and Persian people eating pizza. And the answer is yes, absolutely. I’m joined by my lovely co-host Beata joone. Hey, Beata.
Beata: Hi Bita joon. How’s it going?
Bita: Pretty good. So, we have some different ideas of what Persian pizza actually is. And Beata joon, what would you say, how would you categorize Persian pizza?
Beata: Sure. So you know, if you talk about pizza in Iran, it’s really like culture. People will kind of have this like pizza culture. The young kids will go out, they’ll go to like the mountain side and hang out. And go door door. Go like drive around and a lot of times get these pizzas or bring the pizza with them to the mountain side or have the pizza delivered there. And a lot of times you know it was actually referenced in one of Anthony Bourdain’s, you know, the profile on Iran when he did that really special episode,
Bita: Oh, cool
Beata: At the very end, he talks about Persian pizza just a little bit too. And it’s a little bit different. It’s not your typical type of pizza. It’s loaded with toppings, sometimes unconventional toppings. Sometimes the sauce is actually served on the side, they’ll put it on the side in little packets. And you can kind of like pour it on and kind of customize it yourself, full of toppings. Sometimes some toppings that we’re not necessarily used to over here, a lot of the vegetables, maybe sometimes like kind of sausage type of like hot dogs or different like sliced meats that’ll be on top of the pizzas. A lot of times here in the US, our pizzas here don’t necessarily resemble an authentic pizza that you would get in Italy. And in Iran it has its own version and its own kind of culture of hanging out and eating this fun food together with friends out and really enjoying it. When I think about pizza, Persian pizza here in the states, what I have seen it’s kind of falls kind of twofold, like one side of it is using Persian bread like a batter body as the base of it. Some people call that a type of Persian pizza. Other times you may see different types of Persian pizza that actually has like Persian like horashe or Persian ingredients on top of it, they call it Persian pizza. That way, ultimately, it’s really whatever goes, whatever you really want. This will be just kind of fun, just kind of talking through some of those ingredients and some of those toppings. And also, maybe we could just touch about having pizza in our own homes, how we eat them these days. But yeah, I think the craziest pizza that I’ve seen, Persian pizza that I’ve seen is gormas adzy on the pizza. What do you think of that?
Bita: No, no, I don’t like that. I want to go back to your original Persian pizza. And thanks for painting the picture of, like the pizza experience in Iran, because for me, I just had that one trip back when I was eight or nine years old, beer evolution and you know at that age I wanted American food. I loved all the foods that I was eating, the Persian foods and the authentic delicious things on the street that were getting grilled. And in the Persian parties. But I actually wanted pizza and hot dogs and stuff like that, and I could find it because there’s a lot of Western assimilation, or blending of food over there. And so yeah, they have the Persian pizza. It’s a thick crust, you know we love our breads and our carbs in Persian cuisine. So, it’s not a surprise that Persian pizza is a thing, like the thick bread, the cheese. And the sauce is debatable. I’ve heard some say there’s sauce on Persian pizza that is very tomato pasty and almost like a ketchup. So different ideas of what Persian pizza is. I guess one idea is to put horesh on your pizza, but to me, it’s more like a thick bread, pizza cheese, which ultimately is probably mozzarella and then loaded with the toppings, like you said, meat sausages, sometimes hot dogs, sometimes cold cuts. Vegetables usually loaded with toppings, right? And the vegetables are often green bell peppers, onions, mushrooms almost like the kind that you would have on an omelet. A handmade dough, and nice thick, fluffy dough. So yeah. But we want to talk about Persian inspired pizzas as well. So, if I were to make a Persian inspired pizza, I’d probably put a little type of a Persian spice in some form or another. Like maybe I would sauté my onion in a little bit of saffron or turmeric to kind of bring out the unique flavors and make it different.
Beata: Yeah, that sounds delicious.
Bita: And then they’re just, like, so many different breads that you can use when you’re making pizza at home, depending on your audience. My girls and I would sort of prefer a thinner crust pizza in general. And we might use like a flat bread or some sort of whole wheat form of the crust. These days there’s all these like cauliflower crusts out there and whatnot, but you know, you’ve got a younger family, you probably do. Do you guys make pizza very often at home?
Beata: Yeah, we actually do. Usually like Friday night Pizza Night is kind of what we do at home and that can take different forms. If we’re not buying it out, we will make it at home. So, we sometimes buy pre-made dough. A lot of the grocery stores have fresh dough ready to go.
Bita: Yes.
Beata: That’s an easy one. Sometimes when I’m just in the grocery store earlier in the week, I’ll just get one or two doughs just to keep in the fridge just because it’s like a really easy way to pull together a pizza or a meal. But if we have the time. We actually make the dough from scratch the night before. My husband makes it, and we let it like proof, and it gets all big. And then we kind of just make like a big pizza. We can either make like a sheet pan pizza, which is a little bit easier or we’ll divide it out and everyone kind of makes their own. We roll out the doughs. And then we put our pizza sauce on it and the pizza sauce we actually make the pizza sauce at home too, using San Marzano tomatoes. Those are the best tomatoes to use if you’re going to be making your own pizza sauce with some fresh basil, yeah.
Bita: Oh wow, super from scratch. No ketchup sauce in your house.
Beata: No, no, no, Sir. This is delicious. San Marzano Italian tomatoes. We actually make it in the instant pot and then freeze it. We actually freeze it in little containers or actually in an ice cube tray.
Bita: You’re freezing your sauce?
Beata: Yeah. We freeze our sauce. And it’s great because then, you know, Friday night comes out. You just defrost some of the ice cubes of the pizza sauce and you get to the shredded cheese, mozzarella, and slew of different toppings. Olives are always a big hit in our house. I love mushrooms on my pizza. That’s pretty much my favorite. My husband usually has some sort of meat that he likes to have on there with some onions.
Bita: So, gourmet. I’m actually a fan of pineapple on my pizza. I know that’s a little controversial.
Beata: Oh, I love it.
Bita: Yeah, you like pineapple?
Beata: I do. I like fruit, and I know it’s not for everyone as well to bring in, you know, sweet and savory or what have you. But I do. I love like a, an artisanal pizza with fig and honey sauce and or like spicy sausage with a honey or something to make it sweet.
Bita: Yeah.
Beata: Even like balsamic with the fig. I love those and I also love to put like a salad on top, essentially to put a bunch of arugulas and get your greens in that way.
Bita: Yeah, that’s great. And then that’s always like at the ends, like after we bake the pizza. Then we’ll put the fresh greens on top of. It and just kind of makes it a little bit lighter. And it makes me feel a little healthier that I’m actually having some greens with all the carb heavy pizza. But yeah, it’s a fun tradition that we have in our house. We love doing it. It’s a good thing to look forward to all week. That Friday night, we’re going to kind of do a little movie and pizza. Yeah, family time together.
Beata: And it’s one of those things that’s great because you can incorporate your family and your kids and have them choose their own toppings or make their own little personal pan. Several years ago, I went ahead and got a pizza stone because at that stage I think I was into making my own dough as well. I have a stand mixer and I’m sure that your husband’s dough is probably really delicious, but I experimented with some healthy whole wheat options of dough and I like my stone and it’s interesting. So, I think you put it in.
Beata: Yeah.
Bita: It’s been a minute since I’ve done this, but I think you put it in and let it get hot and then
Beata: Yup.
Bita: You don’t actually wash it or that you don’t really wash it in between. It’s supposed to get like.
Beata: A little stain on it. The oils and the you know, oven fakeness, onto the stone.
Bita: Yeah. We have a piece of stone too. You put that in the oven before we even actually start cooking. We crank the oven hot
Beata: Yeah.
Bita: Pretty much as like as hot as it will go. So, it is a little bit tricky with the pizza stone because it’s helpful if you have a peel and for people who don’t want to peel is it’s like they have it kind of at the pizzeria. It’s the big wooden handled. It looks kind of like a cutting board, but with the big handle and they can kind of slide the pizza off of it. And that’s how they take the pizza in and out of the oven. It’s a little bit of an art to try to, like slide it on there without it sticking. So, it takes a little bit of practice, but it helps if you have a little bit of flour on the board first. And it’s super hot. So, because it is super hot and when you get it in the oven, it doesn’t take us long to cook. It makes me think of like those big either coal ovens or wood fire ovens that get super super hot. And so, the pizzas and those types of ovens are just so crisp, and it takes like in those ovens it takes like 60 seconds for like a pizza take to get cooked all the way through, but at home it probably takes like up to like 10 minutes depending on how loaded it is with toppings. And
Beata: Yeah. A pizza stone is a great way to get like that nice, crisp crust and a little like a little bit of char action. I don’t think we’ve ever watched ours either. It has a little bit of stains on it, but it just becomes non-stick like once the pizza actually cooks a little bit. It like, detaches from the pizza stone and then you can kind of move it. Around and pull it out.
Bita: Yeah, yeah, super fun. So be really careful. I mean, that pizza stone is going to be like, well over 500 degrees, so. Careful with your fingers. I really like salty cheese too. I kind of like I could sometimes, depending on my mood, just have a cheese pizza. I know that we met you in San Francisco at a happy hour recently.
Beata: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Bita: Yeah, we just basically scarfed down a couple of pizzas before we even had dinner.
Beata: Yeah, Beretta off of Divisadero. Fun little spot. We had a good time.
Bita: Yeah. So fun, so unique toppings and you know, we love our shortcuts, so again, back to the type of bread you use. You can pretty much use almost anything. You could use a pita if you want to keep it super healthy. You could use like a whole wheat pita. It’s round anyway, right? And add whatever sauce if you want to make it really easy. You could get already pre-made pizza sauce.
Beata: Yep.
Bita: Get your shredded cheese and you know dude Persian style use some cold cuts, chop up some ham, put some pineapple on there and put it in your toaster oven and there’s lunch.
Beata: Yeah, so totally. It can just be as simple as you want it to be. Kind of using the ingredients you have on hand. Or you can kind of seek it out and make it a little bit more special. Maybe use some special cheeses, maybe use a little burrata creamy burrata to elevate it a little bit with those figs that you were talking about on top of it, with some prosciutto maybe, and have a little specialty pizza.
Bita: Yeah. And we want to encourage you. I didn’t mean to poo poo on the Gorbea sabzi pizza. But if you wanted to try to incorporate some Persian cuisine on top of your pizza, there’s a lot of things to try. You could grill some eggplants and put some sautéed onions and, and you know, the sky’s the limit, so ultimately it’s just a base to then use as your playing field and we’re going to love hearing about what you end up coming up with as your version of your Persian pizza.
Beata: Yeah. So, this is just a start and see episode we just wanted to reference Persian pizza and call out that there’s a real Persian pizza culture in Iran and how we eat pizza in our own homes. So, we hope that you’ve enjoyed that. And we have Ask the Beats, if we’re ready for that, Beata joon.
Bita: I’m ready.
Beata: This Ask the Beats comes from Roya from Northern California. And is in reference to a dish that you posted recently. You had a beautiful tiered tahchin, and if someone doesn’t know what a tahcin is, it’s as an inverted rice casserole that I’ll let you explain a little bit more. But the question is, how did you flip your work of art double tahchin cake.
Bita: Oh my gosh.
Beata: So, tell us about it.
Bita: Ohh, I was so proud of this tahchin and it actually was a total surprise. And like a last-minute decision I have. We had an extended family coming over for dinner on my mom’s side and they were visiting all the way from Australia and so you know, it’s a rare treat for me to have my uncle and my aunt, my cousins from Australia come to my house. There’s only been one other occasion that they did so, so I wanted to pull out all the stops. So first of all I made a double batch of my tahchin, which is a lot of rice and yogurt and eggs and saffron and chicken. And I tried to make it in more of a traditional way. I wanted it to really have the flavors so I didn’t take any shortcuts or cut down on butter and eggs. I wanted it to be really a real tahchin. So, so I did use all the eggs and butter and I also took my time. I literally took all day to do this. It was a Saturday.
Beata: Yeah, it takes a while.
Bita: And I think in my recipes I use leftovers and pre-made this and that. But I did it all from scratch. I mean, I made the rice just for this purpose. I cooked the chicken just for this purpose, with the spices. So, I kind of did all of the steps. And then I ended up with two Pyrex dishes layered with the tahchin and it so happened, I’m telling you, I did not plan this at all. But it so happened that one of the pyrexic that I have is a full size normal rectangular shape, and the second one I have is, is slightly smaller. That’s all I had and so I used it. And I baked it for a good two hours, maybe longer, and I covered it with tinfoil and I cooked it until, I would check on it every so often, maybe half hour or so, until all of the edges got a really nice golden brown. And wanted everyone to get some tatty egg and crispy rice out of this. And then you know, everyone was visiting and chatting and I noticed that my tahchin was ready to go. I pulled out a huge silver platter. Again, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve used this thing. I got it as a wedding gift, but I’m like, I’m going to use this huge silver platter. And I pulled it out, dusted it off. Yeah, I actually didn’t know how the heck I was going to flip this thing out because I’m like, OK, I’m going to probably burn myself and end up with my rice cake on the floor. My husband came over. It was a two-man operation. I had my oven mitts. I’ve got these Michigan oven mitts on. We flipped the first one and this is because the platter is way bigger than the pie rack, so there was nothing really to grab on to, so we had to kind of do it with two people.
Beata: Oh gosh.
Bita: I got that on there and then I had my second one and I’m like, well, what do I do? They’re delicious when they’re warm, and I don’t want it to burn, and I don’t want it to get cold, so I just made this game time decision. And I just kind of said it and did it at the same time. I’m like, I’m going to flip this out on top of. This other one. And I just did it and I just went for it.
Beata: So, you did it like flip it on into like another surface.
Bita: Nope.
Beata: You just flipped it over on it.
Bita: I don’t even know how I did it. I think I, I think I.
Beata: Oh my God.
Bita: Just kind of tilted up the platter. I don’t even know. I have literally just did it at that moment.
Beata: Yeah.
Bita: And it landed. And the thing about tahchina is it really is like a solid cake. So, it’s not like your rice steady that might, you know, make a huge mess. It’s, it’s pretty much solid.
Beata: Yeah, it solidifies.
Bita: Like a huge brick.
Beata: Yeah. It’s baked together.
Bita: It wasn’t really hard to flip it out on top, but it didn’t land perfectly in the center. So, then I did use my hands and scooch the thing over to the center. So that is how I made my 2 tier tahchin rice cake. So fun. Totally by accident and spur of the moment, yeah.
Beata: It really elevates it, you know, a tahchin is like a really special dish first of all, and you describing it makes me actually want to make. It this weekend. I think I’m going to have to add that to my menu plan. It’s a like pretty stunning of a presentation, you know. And then when you have it layered like that, it really elevates it and makes it like a special occasion. I mean, you can serve that for like a really special event or like a wedding, or you know, like a really special, you know, gathering or something like that, when it’s like tiered like that. So not only are you getting tahchin, you getting double tiered cake like tahchin.
Bita: And then for the garnish, I use some beautiful rose petal that I had saved that is really vibrant in color that someone had brought back to me, several I don’t know, a few handful of years ago from Iran, and that would make it look really pretty too to put the rose petals on top and not very many, it doesn’t affect the taste and it’s just as enhancer and then you know it’s a complete meal because it’s got chicken and yogurt and rice, and then all I had to do was have side dishes. So, I made Mustafar and a couple of side dishes, and let me tell you, it turned out okay. I had a lot of pressure on myself from, you know, I’m supposed to be this foodie.
Beata: Yeah.
Bita: My family was really happy and enjoyed it.
Beata: Thank you for your awesome question, Roya joon.
Bita: Yeah.
Beata: I hope you go for it too.
Bita: Yey. Awesome. Thank you, Roya, thank you, Beata. Please keep the questions coming. We love the Ask The Beats segment of our show. If you like this episode, please give us a thumbs up. And give us a rating or review on whatever podcast player app that you’re listening to on. And be sure to subscribe so you get the new episode every single week.
Beata: Great bye, guys. Have a good day everyone.
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