Get ready to elevate your summer picnics with a Persian twist! In this episode, we discuss everything you need to know about bringing culture and identity to your outdoor gatherings, from setting up a beautiful and functional space to packing the essentials and indulging in delicious Persian dishes. No matter the size of your gathering, our tips will ensure your picnic is unforgettable.
We’ll dive into mouth-watering Persian-inspired dishes, such as herbed koo koo (kuku) wraps, kotlet, salad ooloovieh sandwiches, and fruit kebabs. We share our favorite refreshing drinks like tea and sekanjabeen. Learn how picnics can be enjoyed at different stages of life, and how getting outside for some fresh air and good food can create lasting memories. Don’t miss this episode, packed with inspiration to make your summer picnics truly special and uniquely Persian! And don’t forget the backgammon set!
This episode is sponsored by Exeer Botanical Sparkling Beverages. Pick up some of these fun non-alcoholic drinks for your next picnic!
All Modern Persian Food podcast episodes can be found at: Episodes
Sign up for the email newsletter here!
Subscribe+ to the Modern Persian Food podcast on your favorite podcast player, and share this episode with a friend.
Podcast production by Alvarez Audio
Transcript:
Intro
This is Modern Persian Food, a culinary podcast for today’s food enthusiast.
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.
Beata
Welcome to episode 138 of the Modern Persian Food podcast. I’m super excited about today’s episode. We are talking about picnics, specifically Persian style picnics that you can upgrade your picnic game with this summer. I’m joined with the lovely Bita joon. Hey, Bita joon, how’s it going? Hi, there, great, Beata joon. Let’s start off talking about Persian picnics. What do you think of Persian picnics? I think they’re great.
Bita
I think culturally, in the Persian culture we like to get outside, we like to eat outside. We have some events. For example, right after the Persian New Year there’s Sizdah Bedar. That’s a big day for picnics. There’s different stages of life. Clearly you, listener, may be at one of these stages. Beata joon and I are at different stages of life, but it’s always nice to get outside for some fresh air. We’re kind of going through this never-ending winter (at the risk of complaining) I do feel grateful for living in California, but it’s kind of the spring that never came where we literally had rain in Southern California this morning. I’m ready for a good picnic, the stage of life that I’m in, and also in light of how our lives have been over the last few years, coming out of the pandemic.
Beata
Thankfully, one of the main ways that I entertain these days is through picnics. It’s like we’re outside, kids are around, adults are around, different stages of life are around, which is cool. I feel like getting out and gathering everyone together outside is a really fun way that takes a little bit of the pressure off versus entertaining at home. I love doing it, it’s just nice. It’s always fun to have a park or a playground nearby and to bring some games and things that we’ll get into in here in a few minutes, just enjoying being outside, having some fun things to eat. With that, let’s talk about the different steps. Let’s talk about how to set up your Persian style picnic, what to pack and, I think, most importantly, what to eat.
Bita
Yes, we’re going to help you guys elevate your picnic game and make it super special and unique with some Persian twists and turns and easy ways that you can pack your little picnic basket or your baby carriage if you’re in that stage of life. I love your perspective that it takes the pressure off. You don’t have to have a perfect house or be the perfect hostess when you’re doing it outside. That’s a great way to think about it. Yeah, let’s talk about set up.
Beata
If I think back to classic style picnics growing up and when you think of a classic Persian style picnic, this might be funny to you, but I think about a big, fat Persian rug. People would bring a rug out to the picnic and have it as the base of the picnic. I’m not talking about your very delicate silk Persian rug. I’m talking about a little bit more of the hardier wool knotted Persian rugs, the big ones that you have in the living room. You bring one of those out and you put that down and it’s perfect because it doesn’t start rolling up on the sides. The wind doesn’t take it. It has a nice firm base. I love having a big flat rug on the ground.
Bita
Oh, that’s cool. Does that memory come from Iran?
Beata
No, that comes from here.
I remember going to the park in Corte Madera with my family and that they would bring a rug and it was just kind of like an easy way for everyone to sit at and play some games on and have a picnic on. So that’s one thing that when I think about for setup. That’s kind of nice and if you don’t want to bring a rug out, some sort of blanket or picnic setup, that’s something that you can put on the ground. Sometimes we will have like a little bit of like a tarp underneath our blankets to keep it from getting wet, but just something that people can kind of lounge around and relax on.
Bita
Yeah, totally. I think this comes from back when we had young kids is that, I would usually just find an old comforter or an old blanket that I didn’t care about it you know getting dirty, and that would be what we would lay down. And also, sometimes I’d have these cool ones that had vinyl on one side and blanket on the other side, and then you could, with Velcro or snaps or something, take off the blanket part and wash it if needed, and the sort of finally waterproof side would be on the grass or on the part that could potentially be wet. Those were really neat and they’d fold up really nice.
These days maybe, different stage that I’m in I have teenage and young adult kids. We have these really cool (I think they’re like tapestries) and they’re really beautifully designed. It’s not that thick, it’s more or less like a sheet. I have a purple one that you know the girls are no longer using in their bedroom decor, the ones that upon a time they had put it up on their wall. I put that down. It’s really big as my first layer. Our picnics these days are a lot of times like either on the grass overlooking the ocean, or actually like on the beach. So put the purple sheet thing down first as the base, and that I’ll put these orange like big beach towels down and it’s really aesthetically beautiful, and then we just kind of go from there.
Yeah, I mean, with a setup like that and those bright colors, like how could you go wrong? And I love that. Actually, that tarp, that tapestry that you’re talking about for the sand, because the sand kind of just shakes right off of it, so that’s like a great idea. I love that. Of course, towels are easily washable too. Yeah, exactly, that’s a great foundation and base and let’s start building up from there.
Beata
So what I love doing is bringing a table. Yeah, and I gifted myself a small picnic table for one of my early Mother’s Day on behalf of my little toddler child at that point. But it’s a small table. It’s like a foot and a half tall and it’s like two feet by two feet and the legs screw on and off and it comes in like like a carrying bag and I love it. It’s perfect height. You can sit on the ground and then the table is like at a perfect height for you to have all the picnic foods on it. If you want to have kind of like a bigger gathering, you can bring one of like a folding table and bring that out and pop it up and then you kind of have like a designated area for your food and drinks…that’s not kind of like topple over if someone walks around or anything like that.
Bita
Yeah, I mean you can go as simple or as ornate as you want. I love that idea about bringing your own table. Living here in Orange County on the gorgeous coastline, we are lucky that we sometimes get to witness some wedding proposals, and we recently got to see one and it was a teepee set up with some flowers on the top and then one of the a short table and a fresh flowers. I mean it was a proposal. There was a sign that said well, you marry me. But yeah, like you can go as big or as small as you want and I love it that you bring your own table.
Beata
Totally. And that actually reminds me like a lot of times in you know, Golden Gate Park here that we frequent often, I’ve seen kind of setups. I’ve seen actually like a team, like a company, like you know, a few people coming and setting up a beautiful picnic and then in that example, like yes, they have like a big rug, they had kind of like a mini version of a picnic table and on there this company had brought out like real candelabras and real like serving dishes and like a little mini like a tiered cake stand. So I think if you’re going to look to elevate your picnic game, that there’s a lot of kind of opportunity to add these really special touches to make it super unique and just like you know, it’s own event, not just like, oh, we’re just going to go, it’s like let’s go and have like a really great time.
Bita
Yeah, I love the colors and that’s how I make it inviting and fun is to try to bring in bright colors. Pillows I’ve seen people bring like pillows and again, we’re living in a time of social media, so a lot of these ones I see I’m like okay, like they’re just setting this up to take the pictures and the videos. So obviously we want to encourage you just to do it. So yeah, for me, sometimes I don’t have a baby stroller, but sometimes I’m just throwing stuff and I have a dog stroller. I have tiny dogs and I have a dog stroller and I’m putting things in the basket underneath the dog stroller and whatever I can fit in there is what I’m taking to my picnic. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Beata
Getting all of your material there is kind of like a big issue. So yeah, can be a big issue, depending on how elaborate you want to go.
Bita
Right.
Beata
I have a wagon. We have a folding wagon that we use and that’s, like my favorite thing for a picnic is because you just pile up everything in the wagon and then pull it to wherever you want to make camp. Then we have like another actually it’s kind of like a camping rolling table that we screw the legs in and you just like throw that over your shoulder or throw some, like you know, folding chair type of picnic camping chairs over your shoulder and you got the wagon and that’s great. If you don’t have a wagon, another thing you could do is like some sort of like box or something like that that you can kind of have everything in all at once and just kind of bring it all out to the picnic site that you want to do.
Bita
On my list is one of those wagons and I know that they’re a bunch of places that have them and they’ve gotten really nice. Now You know wagons you can take to the farmer’s market or flea market or whatever market you go to, and to the picnics, and they fold up and you can put them in your car. You drive to the place, if you’re driving to your picnic location, and then pop them open and load it with the stuff. I, to be totally frank, just use huge bags, so it works. And then the coolers. So if we transition on to coolers, we have a bunch of coolers of all different sizes and the cooler technology has gotten really good. They can get quite pricey, but I have found knockoffs of the fancy coolers that really still, you know, do the trick. That’s great, yeah, yeah. What do you do for coolers?
Beata
We have like a couple of different sizes, we’ll break out the big cooler if we’re having like a big party, like if we’re having like an event.
Bita
Yeah.
Beata
And then we’ll bring the cooler and have that full of ice and drinks and things like that and we have a smaller one that we, when we have an event, we kind of like to differentiate which cooler has more alcoholic beverages versus more family friendly beverages. So we like to have kind of the two different coolers. If I’m just doing something small, we have like kind of like these insulated like lunch bag type of things that we kind of load up, yeah Same, but yeah, it’s nice to be able to have like a nice cold drink, exactly.
Bita
There is setup and packing and stuff and effort And that’s why we took the time to make it happen. So hopefully that was helpful.
Beata
Absolutely, because you know some of those things do get a little bit intimidating. So if we can just really streamline and prepare some things in advance, it’s kind of easier to just grab them all when you’re ready and go. Yeah, hi, friends, we have a small ask for you.
Bita
We’d love it if you could pass this episode along to a friend, a cousin or anyone you think would benefit from hearing from us.
Beata
Thank you. Let’s get into the juicy, delicious foods that we’re going to talk about. So you know, your picnic can take a lot of different forms. You can do a kind of like big grill style picnics, or you can do more intimate things, or you can do like everyone brings their own. But to me, one thing about a picnic is that the foods are more individualized, so you can get whatever it is that you’re eating. You can hold it in your hand and you can chow down on it, and it’s not like you don’t have to worry so much about all the different utensils. It’s easier, i think, for serving and also for consuming, “sandwich/sondeviche”.
Bita
“Sondeviche” is my silly way of saying it with a Persian accent sandwich, and to me, yeah, that’s the simplest way. That’s what I did with my daughter. We picked up sandwiches, we each got our own sandwich. Okay, we called it a picnic, we got fun drinks, we got some kombucha and we set up our pretty setting and we had a Sondeviche picnic. So it could be as simple as that. But let’s get into the Persian stuff.
Beata
So Persian style. So one thing that I love are little kookoo wraps. Cook a big kookoo and I cut it up in advance, And what I love to do is to toast up some tortilla or lavash bread and I wrap each piece of the kookoo with a little bit of the toasted bread and then I’ll put a few slices of radish or cucumber or something like that into the little wrap and I have these little individual wraps that I present on a big platter.
Bita
Yeah, and for listeners that might be new to us, kookoo is a Persian dish made primarily of herbs. So many herbs, delicious Persian spices, eggs It’s almost like a Persian herb frittata.
Beata
So yeah, cool way to do that, yeah, the vegetarian way to do that. That’s a favorite thing to do. You can also do like individual, like cutlets – those are like the little fried potato patties and I would say like using the same type of bread with like a bunch of fresh herbs in there, really like making it like a delicious little wrap.
Bita
I think that’s a fun way, yeah even a meat cutlet or a meat substitute cutlet would be wonderful. That came to mind for me, as you could make it into a sandwich, or you could also just eat them, because I consider that to be like a finger food cutlet.
Beata
Speaking about meats, if you’re looking for a classic style Persian sandwich, there’s a mortadella sandwich which I love. Definitely need to have some Persian style pickles with the mortadella and that could be like on a nice roll or some sort of like really delicious bread that you could have. So that’s a favorite and I think that my favorite thing to have as a Persian picnic is to have little salad or levy sandwiches or rolls. I love making them with like the split top buns that you see that like lobster rolls are made out of. Just top it all off with salad ooliveh and if you want to, get it like extra credit.
You can bring a whole bowl of salad or levy to the picnic and I’m sure that your guests will all be really excited about that.
Bita
Yeah, and salad oolivieh is kind of like a potato salad, but better. It has a sour flavor with the pickles and chicken. It has chicken in it and usually it has potato carrot green peas. That’s what mine has, and whatever you use for the sauce mayo mustard delicious in a sandwich.
Beata
It’s like a chicken slash, potato slash egg salad, served cold or room temperature. It’s definitely a crowd pleaser. Every time I make that, people are loving it.
Bita
Let’s not forget the sides. So I think fruit is a really easy side and I like to make little fruit kebabs and this is fun if you have any kids or toddlers. To put chunks of fruit melon grapes, strawberries, almost any fruit will work on a little wooden skewer and then make them in advance And they’re again finger food that’s really easy to pass out.
Beata
I love that because I think that when you bring fruit, I think it’s super handy to have it all prepped and ready to go. So you could do that, like as a kebab form or what I love doing is like having cut watermelon or like other types of melons, cantaloupes, and having it all cut and ready to go so people can just grab it and just start eating it. Also, things like tangerines or bananas that are, like you know, kind of self-contained, and then people can just open their individual ones as they want.
Bita
Yeah, and on the topic of melon, melon is a big Persian fruit, a very well-loved Persian fruit. I have a melon baller. I’m not sure if you have this tool, but it’s just a way to make a ball as you’re opening your melon, and then what I’ll do is I’ll just have a big bowl of the melon balls and some toothpicks. That’s a fun way too, yeah, so what do you like to do?
Beata
For drinks, drinks, you know. I think that a lot of time a Persian style picnic will have tea. Bring like a big thermos of hot tea if you want to have it. Don’t forget the “gand” – the sugar cubes or what I love to do too, depending on kind of the crowd that’s going to be there, is to actually make iced tea, and I will just get you as a few tea bags, to be honest with you, and get a few big mason jars and make iced tea. I typically make it the night before and I chill it so that the next day it’s cold and I don’t have to worry about like cooling it down and then it’s ready to go. I just kind of grab that and throw that into my, either my cooler or with the rest of the stuff, and I really enjoy some sort of tea with my picnic.
Bita
I love that. Our family really likes Arnold Palmer’s. You could do that, your version of the Persian tea, and then just put in a couple splashes of lemonade. I love it.
Beata
Exactly, and if you want to kind of, like you know, go a little bit more fancy, you can always grab a bottle of two of your favorite adult sparkling beverage and you can spike your tea or your Arnold Palmer or just have, you know, cans of whatever it is that you like to drink.
Bita
I think it’s fun to you know, have a variety of drinks, and it doesn’t have to be Persian, of course. They have so many kombucha’s now, they have spiked kombucha’s and. But let’s talk about a Persian thing Sekanjabin. Can you tell our listeners what that is?
Beata
Yeah, sekanjabin. So Sekanjabin is basically like a dressing of sorts that you serve and you eat with the traditional ways with romaine lettuce. You can also make the Sekanjabin into different types of drinks or use it even as like a salad dressing. If you want to be very innovative. What you do is you get these romaine lettuce and you can kind of get smaller, like gem lettuce and kind of have an individual style. Or you get the big romaine and kind of cut them into halves or quarters. It’s kind of like a deconstructed salad. You take the lettuce, you kind of wrap up the lettuce and you dip it into the Sekanjabin, usually served in like a shallow bowl, and you dip it and then you put it in your mouth.
Bita
Last summer I made some and I did it the way that you described, with the iced tea. I saved it in big mason jars. It’s so delicious If you grew up eating Sekanjabin the way Beata joon described with the lettuce, the drink is so, so delicious and you can spike it to it. It’s sort of like a mojito. so you basically I think you make a simple syrup and the differentiator is it has vinegar and it definitely has mint. We served it up with some ice. Some people make with sugar, some people make it with honey, and yeah, that’s a fun thing to take too.
Beata
That’s like very different. If you’re not Persian and you haven’t had Sekanjabin, you’d be like, oh, what is this? and what is this kind of like ritual associated with it? It’s nice to have the individual little bowls so that people can kind of use their own little dipping bowls, but which is a delicious little treat, it’s very refreshing on a hot day and hopefully we’ll get some of those soon sooner than later.
So if we talk about dessert, you know you can do a variety of things. You can bring your favorite dessert from your favorite bakery. You can bring little Yazdi cupcakes. Bita makes like a really great one. It’s basically like kind of a vanilla type of cupcake that has cardamom and rose water flavorings in it.
Bita
You got it! All the Persian flavors – cardamom, rose water, saffron, mm-hmm, so good.
Beata
But I have an idea. Ok, for your next little picnic pack up a small cooler, fill it up with ice and put Persian-style ice cream sandwiches in there. I love it. They have some different varieties at your Persian market. I think you can even order some online. Get those and wow all your friends with a delicious Persian dessert.
Bita
I’m a big cookie girl so I’d probably bring cookies any kind of cookies to my picnic for dessert. But this has been fun. We hope we gave you some inspiration. Start to finish, from setup to what foods to bring drinks and desserts.
Beata
And just a final note if you want to really go Persian up your Persian game, you will take a game of backgammon with you and set up backgammon or some cards. Enjoy the whole afternoon sitting outside playing games and maybe munching on some torshi, which is some pumpkin seeds. Yes, enjoy your time. Enjoy the summer everybody. Hopefully everyone will have a great summer with lots of outside time, happy and healthy, and we look forward to actually sharing some really great content coming up this summer with you guys. We’re excited for some series that we’re working on, so stay tuned and more to come.
Bita
Yes, more sunshine. All right, take care, thank you, bye!
Beata
You’ve been listening to the Modern Persian Food podcast with Beata and Bita.. Thanks for spending time with us. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider telling your friend or giving us a good rating. You can subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcasting app or find us online at modernpersionfoodcom or on Instagram for the recipes and information we talked about today. We’d love to hear your thoughts and see you next time.
Leave a Reply