Thursdays with Elham

Eli introduced me to some Iranian sweets. They were great!

This is called Louz (pronounced as 'lo0-ooze') . It's made of coconut, rose essence and sugar.

It is a dessert and is eaten with tea. The city where louz originated from is the city of Yazd, in which people often buy louz as a souvenir.

This is the box used to keep the Louz, and it has the picture of the founders of the company.

Notice the designs on the box. The six cornered stars that form the design of the box are common designs of Iranian packaging, Eli told me. Everytime she sees something like that, she knows it's Iranian. Everytime she throws her garbage out and sees something with this design, she knows another fellow Iranian has thrown something away just before she did. Haha.

Next up, Sohan Koosha! Sohan is the name of the sweet, and Koosha is the name of the company. I tried a biscuit and it really tastes like nothing I've ever eaten. There's this strange savoury aftertaste and I had to check the ingredients to find out what was in it. It tastes great, by the way.

Here's the secret recipe for Sohan!! According to what the box says...Sohan is made of saffron, flour, sugar, wheat sprout, butterm yolk, almond, pistachio and cardamom. Could it be cardamom? My guess is either that or the saffron.

And...

Elham even has cardamom!! She puts it in tea to flavour it...

I think this is it!

This is another form of Sohan on the left. It's called Sohan Asali and made of pistachio and almond coated in honey...Super delicious..

On the right (the white cubes stuck together) is made of saffron, sugar and water. Eli puts it in tea. Apparently saffron is good for tummyaches!

Yummmmmmmm.

The last sweet I tried was some sort of nougat. It's called Gaz. It's a little like those sticky white nougats, with pistachios in them.

Did I mention that I'm on a diet?