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Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 10, Rice, Reduction and the Country Beyond the Kebab House · Cooked by cue

Siravavij

Gilan

Siravavij: dark green fried garlic leaves with egg set through them in an iron pan, beside a bowl of rice.

Illustration

Siravavij, also sirabij, is young garlic leaves chopped and fried, with eggs stirred through until they set, eaten with kateh, Gilan's simple rice. It is a spring dish: the leaves are picked before the garlic grows large, while they are tender. Vavij or abij is Gilaki for fried, and dishes that are dry carry the suffix, as the Gilan produce shop Atre Gilan explains it. The skill of making it is on Iran's national heritage list.

The cookbook that gives it is Zari Khavar's Honar-e Ashpazi-ye Gilan, The Art of Gilan Cooking, of 1987, as Persian Wikipedia cites it: garlic leaf chopped evenly, fried a little in oil, a few eggs, salt, pepper and turmeric, sometimes with the wild herb gijavash, or tareh, Persian leek greens, where gijavash cannot be had. The book was not reached directly.

As tradition built it

A Gilan spring dish, with kateh.

Ingredients

Siravavij is cooked by cue: no source weighs the leaves or counts the eggs beyond a few, and the cue is the leaves wilting, then the egg setting.

Method

  1. Wash the young garlic leaves well and chop them evenly.
  2. Fry them a little in the oil, with the gijavash or tareh if you have it, until they wilt.
  3. Season with salt, black pepper and turmeric.
  4. Break in the eggs and stir until they set through the leaves. Serve with kateh.

Notes

Atre Gilan, a Gilan shop's blog, gives four bunches of leaves to two eggs, the leaves soaked and rinsed and cut to 1 to 2cm, and notes a version with chicken, or with heart and liver.

What a modern chef changes

Wet garlic from Britain in April, and the egg kept soft

Rung 3

Method

  1. Use British wet or green garlic in April and May, leaves and the soft white stem, which is the same young plant the dish is made from in Gilan.
  2. Fry the leaves until their water has gone and they darken a shade, and stop well short of black. Rung 3 in miniature: the depth is made in the fat, and garlic leaf turns bitter faster than ghormeh's herbs.
  3. Take the pan off the heat before the eggs go in and fold them through so they set soft in the residual heat.
  4. Serve it on kateh with its crust broken over, the soft egg against the crisp rice.
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