What I Had for Lunch Today: Shirin Polo

Persian food is very labor-intensive, and though I used to cook almost nothing but, and was pretty good at it if I do say so myself, lately it's rare that I make a Persian dish. And when I do, I don't make it in the traditional way most times.

Shirin polo ("sweet rice") is a special-occasion dish, served at weddings and New Year's parties. The rice should be steamed, it should be made with chicken, there should be almonds and saffron and lots more butter. But anyway. This was still pretty good.

I microwaved some rice (horrors!) and set it aside. I sliced an onion fine and sautéed it in a mixture of butter and oil till golden, then added one shaved carrot (I used a vegetable peeler to make the slices). Then some sliced pistachio nuts and cashews (should really have been almonds, not cashews, which are more an Indian thing, but I used what I had), some shreds of orange peel, and a half a spoon of sugar, in that order. I stirred the mixture into the still-warm rice, et voilà, shirin polo.