Khoresht-e Bademjan: eggplant and tomato stew

Do not grieve, anything you love comes around in another form.
~Rumi

Baba’s birthday is coming up and I find myself rummaging through items trying to find bits and pieces of him. Maybe his old Ray ban Aviators bough in Texas over 35 years ago during his flying days and loved so much, or another one of his random spur-of-the-moment sketches; something memory soaked to sooth this longing in my heart. Something that still carries impressions of his fingerprints.

Newly married and living in the Netherlands, I remember flying out to visit him after finding out he had cancer. When I arrived, he held me so tight that I thought to myself, how could anyone be sick when there is such strength imbedded within their being? But he was. A year later during another visit, he could no longer wrap his arms around me, but simply grabbed my hand with his now-thin, translucent skin encased hands and kissed it, and me goodbye.
The day he passed away, we were so busy running around in order to fulfill his wish of being buried in Iran that nothing else seemed to matter, even though, policies, politics, and time, were not on our side. The specifics are fleeting. We were all in a haze of heartache and helplessness. Nothing had really set in, what we did know was that there was much to be done. 

Thankfully, we were successful. We arrived in Tehran, and our overwhelmingly loving and supportive family had taken care of everything.  From cleaning and prepping our home, to arranging the necessary prayer sessions. Guest lists for the wakes on the 3rd,
7th, and 40th nights, were written and restaurants were rented out so that everyone who joined us when we gave our father’s body to the earth, on a sweltering hot July day, underneath the Tehran sun, could sit down, cool off and break bread together hand in hand. How they did it all so quickly, I still do not know. But in all my life I had never been so thankful for the love and strength of my family.

I will leave the stories about this trip for another time for there are many, however, you can now see that I do not have a place to “visit” baba here in the States. In my heart of hearts, I know that he is with me each and every day. I know that he is the voice of my sixth sense and that he too has seen Armaan’s hair swirl in the exact same spot that his grandfather's was.

 

...and that at night when I dream of him and I standing underneath an orange sky, while the winds danced among the trees, I am seeing a place where we both can exist simultaneously. 

I still felt as if I needed something to touch and hold.I remembered a backgammon, or takhteh set, that my father had given my husband some years ago. A beautifully hand crafted, wooden piece of art, really, brought for my father from Isfahan, a city that is half the world. Backgammon is a game that was introduced by the ancient Persians, thousands of years ago, but is still much loved. All around Iran, you find numerous men playing it passionately together whilst drinking a thin waist cup of Iranian tea to pass their afternoons.

I pulled it out from its resting place-deep within a dress drawer, and sat on the bed to take a closer look. It was still shiny, similar to the day baba tried to teach me the game that he was so fond of, with one exception; if you looked closely, you noticed fine scratches all over, evidence of its much-utilized history.  I ran my fingers across the beautifully intricate carvings that made up the outer portion while tears of remembrance were freed from the wells of my eyes.

 

 

This outer portion was where you could play chess. Carved scalloped edges, housed two birds on each side facing each other, perched among what looked like laurel branches. Birds are quite prevalent among numerous myths and poems as they are thought to be a representation of the human soul. The most famous being the Simorgh –a phoenix like bird with a prominent role in Ferdowsi’s epic tale, Shahnameh.

A scene from Shahnameh showing King Solomon & Simorgh

Opening up the board game, I found the circular shaped play pieces lying there, ready to be picked up. Their smooth, lacquered skins felt cool against my own. Beneath the pieces lay the backgammon outline. A much less shiny and battered portion of the board game set, with its coating rubbed off in several areas. Tap-tap-tap,the sound of my father jubilantly banging down each piece with a smile as the game got heated-rung in my ears. I asked him once why he did that, and with animated eyes, he answered, “without the sound, there’d be no excitement, my dear.”

On his birthday, I will be making a dish that he loved, Khoresht-e Bademjan. An eggplant stew dish served over saffron steamed rice. It is a favorite at our home too. The following recipe is my mother’s, who is very famous for her khoresht-e bademjan and is asked to make it anywhere she goes. Baba could never get enough.

Tavalodet mobarak, pedareh azizam.

Khoresht-e Bademjan: fresh out the oven

Ingredients:
2 large eggplants, peeled, sliced
2 lbs chicken thighs, skins removed
3 tomatoes
2 large onions,
4 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup of oil + 4 Tblsps
1 (15 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
Juice of 2 limes
1 tsp advieh (a special blend of spices-if you do not have it on hand, replace with ½ tsp cinnamon)
1 tsp turmeric
½ tsp ground saffron, dissolved in 4 Tblsp hot water (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Garnish (optional)
1 onion, thinly sliced
½ (about 8 oz) can of chopped tomatoes

Preparation:
In a heavy bottom pot-sauté the onions, garlic, and chicken with 4 tablespoons of oil over medium high heat.
Add salt, pepper, turmeric, and saffron. Stir
Add can of crushed tomatoes and lime juice. Cover and cook on low heat for about an hour.
Fry the eggplants on medium high heat in batches using the 1/2 cup of hot oil. Make sure to brown on both sides. Remove and place on paper towels.
Add advieh or cinnamon to the meat and check its salt and pepper.
Pre-heat oven to 375 F.Pour contents into a Pyrex-like casserole dish and arrange the eggplants on top.
For garnishing-sauté the onions for about 5 minutes over medium high heat, then add the half can of chopped tomatoes and let them cook for 10 minutes.
Add garnish on top of the casserole.
Cut the 3 tomatoes in half and place cut side face down onto the contents of the dish and cover with foil.
Bake for 45-50 minutes.

Serve over saffron steamed basmati rice.

*Image from Shahnameh from Wikipedia