My mother is a great cook. She cooks great food everyday for lunch, and dinner. When I moved to Tehran, to work and live on my own, I had to cook for myself, and it was then when I noticed what a marvelous thing my mother did with lots of motivation and energy, twice every single day, for lunch and dinner, and I remember sometimes we complained when we didn’t like the food, which was totally cruel and unfair for all that motherly effort to satisfy each of the family members. It’s mainly the love that makes a good food.
I worked at this company where they tried to have a friendly atmosphere by eating all together and from each other! Yes! Everyone had to share their food. Some guys happened not to bring lunch at all, some ordered food to get delivered, some others had mothers who cooked for them, and few had to cook themselves, and everyone still had to share! It was then when I noticed that there’s a remarkable difference between Tehrani-Persian food and mothers and Tabrizi-(Persian?) food and mothers!
I cooked the meals that I liked, with lots of difficulties late in the evening after passing the crazy traffic jams and getting home tired, and the next day, people attacked to my plate, and then very generously, offered theirs, so my meal was almost gone, and I found nothing interesting to eat! There was even this one mom whose food was always burnt!
So, little by little I noticed that there’s a good difference between the meals Azeris cook in Tabriz and the ones that the Persians cook in Tehran (and probably other Persian areas of the country).
Tabrizi people are very careful about the appearance of the meal, as well as the taste for their well-trained palate, where in Tehran the appearance isn’t usually that impressive and the taste is not that good either, or probably it’s just because ‘they take it very easy’ not caring so much about it, but enjoying the Tabrizi food!
Still every time I want to cook one of those tasty meals that my mother cooked, I call her to ask for recipes, but even following all the instructions, I can’t make the same delicious meal at the first try, and sometimes I forget some of the instructions after a while. For some reason I find it a bit odd/silly to have a cook book to write down the recipes, and even if so, no one else other than the book owner will use them, so I’ve decided to write the recipes once and a while here, so that other people who might be interested in Iranian-Turkish food, can learn how to cook them. (: