I’ve had two enlightening cuisine experiences this week!

The first experience was having lunch with Anne at a restaurant downtown called Kaze Shabu-Shabu. A shabu-shabu is a type of Japanese hot pot. The term is actually an onomatopoeia for the swish-swish noise of food being stirred around in broth.  The tables at the restaurant all had hot-pots build into the tabletop. We ordered our soup in stages; first we chose a type of broth, then vegetables, then meat, then noodles (Anne and I both got miso broth, the standard veggie plate, a fancy cut of meat whose name I’ve forgotten, and udon noodles). They then bring you a great big bowl of steaming hot broth (with a barrier down the middle so the portions are split for you and a friend, or so that you can try two different types of broth) and turn on the shabu-shabu so it stays boiling. Then come the veggies, noodles, and meat. The best of the veggies was the big pile of fresh spinach leaves. Everything comes raw so that you can dunk it into the boiling broth and cook it as long as you want. Even the meat is raw; they slice it so thinly and delicately that it cooks to perfection almost instantly. Also on the table are small dishes containing various sauces for dipping and extra flavor; I dunked most things into the soy sauce after it had been in the broth, and to the soy sauce I added scallions and pressed garlic which were in their own little dishes. The whole shabu-shabu experience was so delicious and warming and fun; I really loved it!

I had my second enlightening food experience today, when my roommate’s parents took the two of us out for Iranian cuisine. Her father’s side of the family is Iranian, so he knows all of the best places to go for the best, most authentic food. We went to a little place in Watertown called Jasmine Taste of Persia. I’m not usually really into middle-eastern food, but today my mind was changed. For appetizers we got a scallion yogurt dip called mast e mussier, a minty eggplant dip called kashk bademjan, and a really refreshing little salad of chopped veggies called shirazi. Then for the main course, we all shared a series of kabobs which were each huge and served on big platters with lots of saffron rice and grilled veggies. I always felt pretty neutral about kabobs but these were GREAT; we got beef koubideh, joojeh kabob (cornish hen), a lamb kabob, and a chicken koubideh. All was delicious. I also really liked the Iranian cardamom tea. After lunch we went to a couple of little Persian markets which all smelled wonderfully of various spices, and Sarah got a big bag of satsumi which may be my new favorite citrus fruit.