Pomegranate Porno: Taste of Persia

 Taste of Persia:  A Cook's Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Kurdistan by Naomi Duguid. 

 

Such an unusual cookbook covering the author's travels and recipes from the Persian regions.  Saffron water, mint oil, rhubarb syrup, tons of flat breads and meals using "greens" (herbs.) A real work of love in this book. I had to share the section where the author teaches you to eat a pomegranate "nomad style." The author was taught this technique by a Khamseh nomad man in the mountains east of Shiraz, Iran.  

 Here is his method:  Pomegranates are full of juicy seeds held in place by bitter pith.  When the fruits are ripe and fresh, sucking the juice is the easiest and best way to eat them.  Start by holding the pomegranate in your hands and squeezing it all over, pressing on it with your fingertips all over until it goes from being a tight-skinned fruit to feeling very soft.  Feel for any firm places and press on them.   

Poke a small hole in the fruit and immediately put your mouth over the hole and start swallowing the juice (it will spurt out if you're not careful.)  Suck and swallow some more.  Keep pressing on the fruit as you suck and keep rotating it around.  The pressing breaks up the seeds, releasing the juice.  As you continue to suck, the fruit will get more and more like a basketball that has host its air, with dents and hollows and softness.  Eventually, when it is very saggy, you can break the pomegranate open.  Inside, the seeds will be a pale pink, having had their juice pressed and sucked out of them.  There may be the odd renegade still red seed or two, those you can eat one by one.  At the end of the process, your pucker muscles will be a little tired, but you'll have had a delicious drink of fresh pomegranate juice without having had to deal with the messiness of the seeds and pits and membranes. 

HA!  I wonder, after writing this out, if I can market it as porn!