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062: Saghar Setareh: Iranian Cuisine with a Touch of Italian

July 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast
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Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Iranian cuisine and Italian food.

Lab Noon

Originally from Iran, Saghar has been living in Rome, Italy for the past eight years. Her blog is her laboratory where she creates and experiments with seasonal and natural food, and shares her photography and small DIYs. Lab Noon is a finalist in the 2015 SAVEUR Blog Awards for Best Special Interest Blog.

I’m so excited to have Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon here on the show today.

(*All images below are Saghar’s.)

On the Role of Food in Her Family:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the role of food in her family.

I have grown up in a family where my parents have always cooked. My mom, especially being a housewife, she always cooked at home and she was very reluctant to let me get processed food and snacks at school. She was so strict about it that she often didn’t let me take my pocket money to school because she always baked cakes at home and she always gave me a lot of fruit because she was always quite obsessed with this.

While with my father, he’s a huge food lover but he doesn’t have that healthy sort of approach to food. He just loves really eating a lot so he also loves a lot of different types of fast foods. He experiments with cooking, and he just makes things up, which most of the times were great but sometimes just had some culinary disasters too.

That’s how I grew up. I have grown up mostly with homemade meals and then, from a certain point, also with a lot of junk food and fast food.

On the Food Culture in Iran:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the food culture in Iran.

I would say that it’s quite strong but since I came to Italy, I’m not so sure about it because I don’t think that the food culture is anywhere as strong as Italy.

People take a lot of take outs, even for big parties they order homemade food because there are, they call them “Kitchens.” There are people who make what they call homemade food and they bring everything to your house and so you don’t have to cook. Our food culture in Iran is all about abundance.

We are also famous for being very hospitable. That hospitality often translates to an overabundance of food, which a lot of time leads to also a lot of food waste which is not quite okay. But when we want to show that we care, there is always a lot of food and I mean literally a lot of food. We serve everything together. It’s not like I serve the starters first and then there comes different dishes. We serve everything together and people choose what to eat first and what to eat after that.

I would say we’re a very meat eater nation. So also the amount of meat in each type of dish is directly connected to the same thing. The more abundant the dish is with meat, it means that we usually care more and we’re more hospitable. Food is directly related to what kind of face we make, especially with our guests, something that people, neighbors, family would talk about in years to come if it’s a wedding or something like that.

On Iranian Cuisine:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Iranian cuisine.

The thing is that Iran is a huge country and it shares borders with Turkey that shares that Mediterranean type of cuisine. Then, on the other hand, with Afghanistan and the countries of Central Asia which are connected to India and in the south to the Arab Middle Eastern countries. So it has taken a little bit from all of them.

But, in general, I would say the Iranian cuisine is very delicate. It’s not the image that some people might have of very spicy and strong flavors. The flavors in Iranian cooking are actually very delicate. The food is not very spicy, everything is very balanced. But I would say that, yes, without any doubt the most famous and the most appreciated Iranian dish is definitely the Persian Kebab, which is very different with the Turkish one, the döner one. It’s like a huge barbecue and, ironically, it’s something that usually always men do. And we have different sorts of kebab. One of the most famous ones is with minced meat. We have chicken kebabs. We have chopped rib kebabs that are very great.

We have very good restaurants. We have the rustic, old family restaurants who do them. We have luxurious restaurants who do them. And then we have all sorts of these different stews that we have with our rice because our rice is very famous, it’s similar to basmati rice. We’re very, very fussy about how we cook the rice and how the rice should be. I think even if not as fussy as Italians about their pasta, definitely not less.

We have these very beautiful mixed rices. Like now is the season for sour cherries, which people don’t even eat or I don’t see them selling that. We have this very beautiful mixed rice with sour cherries, a little bit of saffron and pistachios. Some people serve it with small meatballs, some people with saffron chicken or, actually, saffron chicken kebab or it depends. You can serve it with whatever you want. So we have these very, very particular rices that are interesting.

And there some rustic dishes and some elegant dishes. In the last, I would say, 30, 40 years or maybe more, we have adopted a lot of dishes that are actually not from Iran but in the course of the years, they have become so. Like we have this salad which is called salad Olivier or something like that which is actually a Russian dish. It’s the famous Russian potato salad. And if you ask Iranians, most of them wouldn’t even know that the dish is Russian. Everybody thinks that this is Iranian for the amount of years that people have been preparing and eating it.

On a Dish that Reminds Her of Tehran:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about a dish that reminds her of Tehran.

There are so many. If we want to talk about something that I have on my blog, it’s something that I’d like to cook quite often because it’s very healthy, and it’s probably one of those Iranian dishes that I cook most often here because I don’t normally cook Iranian. It’s rice and lentils, which is called Adas Polo in Persian, in Farsi. And I just did it even in an Italian cooking show I was participating in because it’s so simple, so full of layers of flavors because you would think, rice and lentils what could that be? But there’s chopped fried onions with turmeric, and there is a little bit of saffron in the rice. There’s also raisins that are lightly toasted with some butter and a little bit of saffron. Everything is mixed together with a little bit of cinnamon.

So from the most simple ingredient, this one is actually a very poor dish but it turns out to be a very tasty and a very nutritious dish. If I have it, I usually have this with yogurt because we have this sort of thing that we mix rice with yogurt. It’s even said that it’s not the nicest thing to do if you are at a party or in a wedding, it’s not nice to add yogurt to your rice but it just works so well, the combination of yogurt and different sorts of spices. You can find it on my blog, too. I made some sort of risotto out of it. I mixed it with the Italian rice. That’s one of the dishes that reminds me a lot of my childhood among many other.

On Her Current Home, Rome, Italy:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her current home, Rome, Italy.

What brought me to Rome was really chance because I was just graduating from university, and I had always wanted to go abroad and I had mainly thought about Europe. I came to know about coming to Italy as a student with a student visa and continue to study by chance, and I realized that it was quite an affordable way, especially comparing to other countries in the same situation. And I thought, “Okay let’s do this,” so I had actually never thought about Italy before that, before knowing about this.

I chose Rome simply because it’s the capital city and by my measurement of things, the Iranian way, the capital cities are always the best. So that’s how I chose the city, and I fell in love with it almost immediately. I’m very attached to the city. I notice that whenever I take tourists around, friends come from different parts of the world, friends of family, I take them around and I realize most of the times that I have seen these places. I have been there millions of times by now. I am still the one that is most enthusiastic about these places.

On Food Culture in Italy Versus Iran:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Iranian food versus Italian food.

I think the attention and how Italian people care about their food is something very unique. That you wouldn’t find it anywhere else. I remember one of the things I was most amazed by the early months is that when you call somebody on the phone, a friend, your mom, your child and you’re talking on the phone, the first question is, “Hi, how are you?” Immediately, the second or the third question is, “Have you eaten?” and then, “What have you eaten?” This doesn’t happen anywhere else.

If you want to look at it from this point of view, no, there are not much similarities. But in terms of ingredients, sometimes there are some foods that remind you of some particular Iranian dishes while at the same time, the cooking is very different because Italian cooking is all about the simplicity, few ingredients, few great ingredients. So it’s all about the original ingredient and just a few touches and you have a great dish. While in Iran, we have even the most simple dish of all, you always have some onions somewhere, some spices somewhere, some turmeric or something. So Iranian cooking is more complex and definitely it takes much more time compared to some kinds of Italian cooking.

But, in terms of taste, I think that there are some dishes that recall each other. For example, there is this very, very, very Roman dish which is called coda alla vaccinara, which means the oxtail with tomato sauce. And it kind of tastes like. . . we have some sort of stew that we make with filet. I think it’s either sheep filet or maybe it’s beef. I’m not sure. But they kind of … with sauce and everything, they kind of taste the same but we would serve it with rice. These are the dishes that are most similar.

On Her Blog:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

The blog was and still is connected to the other side of my life, which is graphic design because I have studied graphic design and I have been a graphic designer for so many years now. I was searching and I stumbled upon many different food blogs, I was awed by the beauty of the pictures. And I had the critic eye, I would say, to recognize composition and the graphic element actually. That’s why I was not really surprised when I read about these people and most of them were graphic designers or designers of some sort. I said, “Oh my God this is really cool!” It’s a great way to express creativity and it’s a great way to create this sort of window through the world.

And it’s a perfect way to combine these two sorts of passion also because, before actually launching the blog, one of projects in my specialist course, my Master’s course in Graphic Design and Photography, was about the design of a food event. So I had already done a lot of graphic material for this, and I realized that I loved this. This is something that I wanted to do not only in the process of recipe developing but also in the process of the graphic design. That’s how I thought, “Okay, let’s do this.” Although Lab Noon was initially not intended to be only a food blog, actually I intended to create more. By the time I actually launched the blog, it kind of found its own way just as time went by. Also because I realized that it needs a huge amount of time to create high quality content, from the idea of the recipe to developing it, shooting, editing and the text and everything and then I have to also translate it.

The blog was meant to be in three languages, English, Italian and Persian. Eventually, right in the very early month I realized this is not going to be possible. So I almost immediately omitted the Persian. Right now I struggle to write the Italian part because it’s not very easy to me, but I try. So I think it’s something that puts everything together for me. Actually, I get my final project, my thesis in this semester of university. I created a cookbook with my own photos and recipes. Most of them have been already published on the blog by now, and it has become an interesting book speaking directly from the aesthetic and design point of view.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I always watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube, and that I found really, really entertaining. You learn a lot from it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There are so many of them. I am pretty much in love with this food blog called Hortus Natural Cooking. It was written by Valentina Solfrini who is an Italian girl who has lived a long amount of time in New York. She is amazing, very inspiring.

The other blog that I really like is The Vanilla Bean Blog. I really like it, especially for the dessert. She’s also a fellow SAVEUR finalist.

I love a friend of mine who is actually, it’s not quite a blog, but she has this little food strategy company that is really amazing, and it’s called WE Factory.

If you want to know more about some good Persian cooking, there is another blog who was another SAVEUR finalist a couple of years ago, who’s called Bottom of the Pot. I think these are really good.

There are too many of them. I could make a list that would never end.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I follow way too many people. People who make me really happy, especially in the terms of photography, one of them is Call Me Cupcake, the blog, by this amazing Swedish blogger who is called Linda.

The other one is by Beth Kirby who writes the Local Milk blog, and her photos are just out of the world. I also follow Two Red Bowls. I love them. My Blue and White Kitchen, I follow these people on almost all of their socials, and they are very good, especially in terms of the visual impact.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t think I have any unusual because, especially once you’ve entered the world of food, nothing is really unusual. My most treasured item is definitely my saffron because it comes from Iran. My mom has made it for me, prepared it for me and it’s a tiny little box and a tiny little jar. It definitely is the most precious one.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love. 

There are so many of them. I almost hated all sorts of vegetable and now I love them. Especially eggplant, I hated eggplant and now I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have this cookbook called What Katie Ate, which is the name of the same blog by the Irish photographer and blogger Katie. I love her photography.

Another cookbook which has definitely made my life better, not now that I cook but when I was younger is actually a Persian cookbook. It’s a huge cookbook by Miss Roza Montazemi, Iranian lady who has this huge cookbook which is a must in all Iranian kitchens. Then the Italian ones, the Artusi cookbook, the very famous cookbook by Artusi about the Italian cooking. They’re very good.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the Juno soundtrack, the movie, and there are some certain songs on that album that I get relaxed and say, “Okay let’s whip up something!”

On Keeping Posted with Saghar:

Saghar Setareh of Lab Noon on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep in touch with her.

I would say that my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the most updated. Of course, the blog itself www.labnoon.com where you have most of the postings both in Italian and English, but I do have quite a lot of things on my socials that are not always updated on the blog.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2015 Saveur Food Blog Awards, Artusi cookbook, Bottom of the Pot, Call Me Cupcake, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Tube, Hortus Natural Cooking, Iran, Iranian Cuisine, Italy, Jamie Oliver, Juno soundtrack, Lab Noon, Local Milk, My Blue and White Kitchen, Persian, Rome, Roza Montazemi, Saghar Setareh, Saveur Finalist, Tehran, The Vanilla Bean Blog, Two Red Bowls, WE Factory, What Katie Ate

046: Valentina Solfrini: Olive Oil and Italian Countryside Living

June 8, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about living in the Italian countryside and moving to New York City.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/thedinnerspecial/TDS046.mp3

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Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about olive oil and Italian countryside living.

Hortus Cuisine

On her blog, Valentina writes as she explores a more natural form of cooking and food, which is always real and locally harvested. She focuses on unprocessed ingredients from her farm and makes simple traditional Italian meals with a creative, modern twist.

Hortus Cuisine was recognized in the 2014 Saveur Food Blog Awards for Best New Blog Editor’s Choice.

I am so thrilled to have Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine joining me here on the show today.

On Where She Currently Lives, Writes and Cooks:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about living in the Italian countryside and moving to New York City.

I am placed in between two regions in Italy, one is called Marche and the other one is called Romagna, and I’m right on the border.

So each region in Italy is very different but it’s really nice because I get the best of every world. I’m right at the seaside, and I have the woods next to me, and the hills, and the countryside. So I have a little bit of everything and it’s really a great place to live in, in my opinion.

On Moving to New York City:

I wanted to really explore the world and I felt like New York City had it all condensed in one place.

So especially back then, we don’t really have much internationality, so to speak. I really wanted to explore the Asian world and the Mexican world. I wanted to know what everything was all about. I had the chance to do this trip to New York and I fell in love with it.

It was amazing.

I knew that there was a lot that I couldn’t impossibly know about other cultures, about the world and everything, but it was so much and it felt so overwhelming but in a very good way. Every time I went out the door and I walked into the street, everything seemed just so huge and I loved it.

On What Drew Her Back to Countryside Living:

Life here is quieter. The pace is much slower especially compared to New York where everybody is super-fast. Everything here is quite laid back. Nothing is really a big deal for Italians.

So sometimes we help my grandparents tend the garden, the vegetable garden or when winter comes, we go to collect the wood for the fireplace.

I have a desk job but our life really revolves around this little moment when you have to plant a seed or collect some vegetables, or me to go forage for wild herbs and stuff like that. It’s all very, very close to nature.

On Her Interest in Food and Cooking:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her interest in cooking and food.

Food was one of those things that fell into the realm of the things that I took for granted because it’s something that always happen in my house.

My mom and my grandmother, they were always cooking, always. I’m lucky because I was in one of those families where women can stay at home and take care of us and the kids, and they’d be cooking, making pasta or baking something or anything.

I pretty much always learned to appreciate good food. We never really had anything processed or we didn’t buy snacks or anything even as kids because we felt that we didn’t need them. We never liked candy or anything just because my mom made amazing sweets at home.

I love to look at my mom doing stuff. I wouldn’t always do something but I would always stay there and look or sometimes would maybe shape the cookies or shape the pasta.

I would help or sometimes I would eat when she was cooking or lick the bowls. I was always there watching and eventually it grew on me.

When I went to New York, I was surprised that nobody was cooking. It was, “Are you serious? What, you go and buy salad that’s already been cut?”

On What Natural Cooking Means to Her:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about what natural cooking means to her.

To me, natural cooking means cooking with ingredients that have not been processed too much. Sometimes, if you learn to read the labels, you’ll see that some foods have really unnecessary ingredients.

If you buy a jar of mayonnaise, you’ll find that it has preservatives and maybe food coloring or even sugar.

So to me, natural cooking is cooking with a list of ingredients that doesn’t have a list of ingredients.

On Her Blog:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her blog.

So that was a very interesting process because when I got back from New York, I realized that I had absorbed so much of other cultures that I was starting to forget about my own.

I realized that Italian cooking is actually quite healthy by itself. It has always been full of legumes and vegetables and there were so many recipes that are Italian and perfectly vegetarian, so I thought it would be interesting to rediscover my own culture with natural food. And I thought of combining those two things and it worked wonders.

I started the blog as a way to explore my own country. I realized that I didn’t understand Italy because I was feeling so good in New York and I didn’t really feel Italian. And then in the process, I rediscovered cooking and I really started to learn about the foods that we used have as kids and to really, really fall in love with it.

On Olive Oil:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about olive oil.

Once the olives are at a good ripeness point in November, it’s usually November, you lay huge nets below the trees and you have little rakes and you rake through the branches and the olives fall out. Then you collect those huge nets of olives and these olives are cleaned.

You separate leaves from the olives and this is quite important because if your leaves get into the olives, then the olive oil taste like grass, and that happens a lot. So you have to be careful with that process.

And then we take it to the mill. I call it a mill. It’s just basically this huge stone, you have two grinding stones, pretty much like flour, and that’s why it’s called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. The very first layer of fat that you get out of this cold pressing, grinding between two stones, then the olive oil just filters out and you get this bright green beautiful thing but it’s actually murky. It’s not as clear.

Olive oil actually gets that golden and that clear when it’s about four or five months old. When it’s super fresh, it’s bright green and quite cloudy. And that’s it, that’s virgin olive oil.

Then you have other kinds of olive oil that are lesser quality. You can obtain by pressing what is left by pressing extra virgin olive oil.

And then you have another press which is regular olive oil.

What I’ve always seen in Italy was extra virgin olive oil. It might be very bad quality extra virgin olive oil, with olives they are not Italian that come from other countries, but we only cook with extra virgin olive oil essentially.

You have great quality extra virgin oil and you have so so quality extra virgin oil and you use the so so for cooking, for stir fries and for stuff like that, and the best quality for dressing.

That’s my experience at least.

I think that the best olive oil, it has to be quite a strong character. It’s really difficult to tell maybe by the color or the smell because it really depends on the kind of olive or on how old the olive oil is.

But usually the green sort of cloudy olive oil is really the best and it’s actually quite difficult to plant and sell because that’s going to be very expensive.

I saw that some supermarkets or some stores had a little sampler with bread that you could try, and at the end of the day, if it’s virgin olive oil, you should just taste it and see if you like it.

You can tell olive oil from extra virgin olive oil because regular olive oil is much clearer and it has a more pale color. So that’s how you tell.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love to watch Jamie Oliver. Just whatever he does, he puts such passion in it that I just love watching his enthusiasm.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There are so many. I love Green Kitchen Stories. They got me inspired to actually start a blog. They were probably the first bloggers that I started to follow seriously.

And then there is another one that’s called In The Making By Belen, which is a healthy food blog. She is a yoga teacher who shares vegetarian recipes. They are really awesome.

And then there is Beth Kirby from Local Milk. She is like pure aesthetics. I love her blog so much.

And then Skye McAlpine’s blog From My Dining Table. She talks about Venice in such a beautiful way.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I follow definitely Beth Kirby, again, on Pinterest. She has a well-organized Pinterest account. It’s so so beautiful.

And then I love to follow Japanese photographers on Instagram. I’m not sure about the names right now but just a bunch of Japanese people. I really love the bright style that they have.

My favorites to follow on Facebook are probably everybody who has something to do with healthy food and Mimi Thorisson from Manger, the French blog. She is amazing. She really has quite the sense for aesthetics as well.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My Vitamix. It’s unusual for Italy because actually when I bought it, it wasn’t available here and I had to buy it from Germany but I love it so much.

It’s probably the best spent money of my entire life. I use it every day, two times per day. I love it.

Some ingredients are really hard to find in Italy, so I have to make my own like almond milk.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

That has to be sesame oil or sesame in general.

I wasn’t into sesame probably because it’s not that known in Italian cooking. It’s not an ingredient that we use. But then I started to experiment with Asian cooking and Middle Eastern cooking and, of course, sesame is there.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Actually, the cookbooks I cook from are those old cookbooks made from the 50s or from the 70s that have those very nice recipes that I love to reinterpret in a healthier way.

And then I have my favorite cookbook to look at is probably Isa Does It. It’s a vegan cookbook that is so so full of fun ideas. I don’t think it’s always healthy but it’s amazing.

I also love to read the Julia Child’s cookbook because it’s amazing. Just so well done. It’s my kind of cookbook.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a song in particular. I guess all French or Italian songs get me in the mood. There are a bunch of French songs that really getting me in the mood for cooking.

Old French songs, maybe like Edith Piaf. You know these people but maybe the happier kind of songs. Not the super romantic French songs.

On Keeping Posted on Valentina:

Valentina Solfrini of Hortus Cuisine on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

You can follow me on Facebook at Hortus Cuisine, Pinterest, then I’m on Instagram, and I love receiving comments of all kinds. I look forward to hearing from people who write in on my blog.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2014 Saveur Food Blog Awards, Beth Kirby, Countryside Living, Edith Piaf, Farm, From My Dining Table, Green Kitchen Stories, Hortus Cuisine, Hortus Natural Cooking, In The Making By Belen, Isa Does It, Italy, Jamie Oliver, Julia Child, Local Food, Local Milk, Manger, Mimi Thorisson, New York City, Olive Oil, Skye McAlpine, Valentina Solfrini, Vitamix

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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