Dolmeh-ye sibzamini — or, something I will never make for my mom

Note: The National Council of Inadvertently Hilarious Food has asked me to warn you, the reader of this blog, that the following entry contains at least one picture whose viewing may trigger the violent ejection of liquids from your nose. Please proceed with appropriate caution.

I mentioned, in my second entry here, the "meat problem." As I review recipes and plan my journey through New Food of Life, I have been struck by the carnivorous tone of the book. Outside of the dessert chapter, it's rare to find a dish that isn't centered on meat; everything incorporates some form of beef, or lamb, or chicken, or is cooked with broth. The first ingredient in nearly every recipe in the "Vegetables" chapter, it seems, is "ground meat." The vegetables aren't prepared and eaten simply as vegetables; the meat is blended right in.

This, obviously, is not how we're used to eating in America. We're accustomed to meals composed of discrete elements, of easily identifiable and entirely separate players. Here's the protein centerpiece (pick one: steak, fried chicken, slab of meat loaf), here's the vegetable side (corn, broccoli with cheese, green salad), and here's the starch (mashed potato, garlic bread, dinner roll). With the exception of soups and stews, our plates are carefully demarcated into taxonomic zones, each occupied by a representative of its type. (Idle speculation: perhaps the inevitable result of our obsession with the food groups?)

Many international cuisines don't bother with this slightly fussy partitioning, and are happy to throw everything together. There's the Chinese stir-fry, of course, or some biryanis, or Thai curry stews, to name just the more obvious examples. Heck, how about pizza? And Persian recipes are no different. When you think about it, why not break down the borders between the food types, and make a single dish containing everything? It's just a different way of thinking about eating.