Off the shelf: The essential Persian cooking staple you probably don’t have

Los Angeles Times 

Shuffle the pages of Najmieh Batmanglij’s massive cookbook “Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets” — a 700-plus-page compendium of the cuisine of Iran that she has mastered over the last three decades — and you’ll find certain ingredients dropped like trail markers.

Her spice route is scattered with rose petals and cardamom pods, barberries like handfuls of garnets and obsidian-black nigella seeds. But one ingredient infiltrates the pages and perfumes many of the dishes: the dried limes, whether whole or powdered, that have long been a staple of Persian cooking, yet remain mysteriously unappreciated to a broader range of cooks.

Pass them on the shelf of a Middle Eastern market and they look like a forgetful grocer’s mistake — large nut-brown pebbles, dusty and desiccated, shrunken citrus skulls. But whack them with a hammer, and you’ll find a glossy interior the color of mahogany, and a sudden, magnificent fragrance that’s both bright and funky, the acidic twang of limes distilled to their essence.

Read the full article here