Making lavashak (fruit leather) in Iran

It's the depth of winter here, and I've been eating lavashak -  which to me is like essence of summer. 

Lavashak is a fruit puree dried into thin strips which look (and feel) like leather. In Iranian villages, it is a widely used way to preserve fruit for the winter - it is a nutritious snack and a fantastically flavourful, slightly sour addition to soups and stews.  In the pictures below we were processing about 20kg of fruit from our orchard.

Here's how to make it (as taught to me by  Mahboobeh, our Kurdish neighbour).

 1. Pick a lot of fruit. A good mix is about 50% plums of any colour (for sweetness), 40% apple (for bulk), and 10% sour cherry or albaloo (for colour and sour-ness).

Picking albaloo

Picking different kinds of plums

2. Wash the fruit and let it dry. You don't want any excess water.

3. Boil it all up together in the biggest pan you can find. As soon as it's soft, take it off the heat.

Sieving a batch into a bucket.

4. Now sieve it all to remove pips and stones and make it as smooth as possible. Keep scraping handfuls of the fruit around the sieve to get as much of the pulp out as possible. You might get tired of sieving it and end up chucking out some of the pulp with the stones (as I did). You should end up with a handful of stones and skins - throw these away.




5. Boil it all up again, this time for longer - the aim is to boil off as much water as possible without the thick fruit concentrate sticking and burning to the bottom of the pan. Do not add sugar - if you've chosen your fruit well, you don't need any other ingredients.

Laying down the non-stick baking paper

6. Now prepare an area to spread the liquid fruit onto. This is usually plastic sheeting in Iran, but I prefer to put some non-stick baking paper down on top of the plastic. The plastic can give a bad taste and is harder to peel off the 'leather'.

7. Pour your fruit puree onto the prepared sheets.

8. Spread it out evenly so that it is not more than about 3mm thick (like tomato paste on a pizza base).



9. Leave it in full sun for about 2-3 days (in Iran). In the UK you might need to put it on trays in an Aga or airing cupboard, unless you have guaranteed 7-10 days of sunshine. Protect from dust, flies, pets, birds, and accidental watering with mosquito netting or similar.





10. When it's ready (it peels away in one piece and doesn't break unless  you tug hard), cut up the lavashak into strips or convenient pieces for storing in a tin or plastic box. It doesn't need to be in the fridge.  We made about 5kg on this occasion which is a lot, believe me.

Rolls of lavashak on display in Tajrish market, surrounded by sour cherries (darker) and fresh barberries (zereshk).

Iran homecoming

Two weeks in Iran. It felt like months - renewing old friendships, seeing family we'd not seen for 4 years, and being bombarded with the sights and sounds of a city of 20 million people. A long way from Cambridge!

What's new? Motorways through the city centre, air conditioned buses, bus lanes, metro from north to south Tehran, electronic number queuing system in banks, supermarket deliveries to your door, top of the range safe playgrounds in every park, paintings and tiles on kilometers of motorway walls, and tight mini roopoushes (Islamic coats)on young women .

What's the same? Taxi drivers complaining about the government; family warm and welcoming; people unwillingly observing Ramadan; zoolbia and bamieh; every market trader and acquaintance remembers you. This is a city that doesn't need surveillance cameras: there is always someone watching you.

What's surprising? Water fountains working during Ramadan; women actors performing and reciting poetry in a public park; the price of bread and virtually everything else, has more than tripled in 3 years.

It was a wonderful, intense, 12 days.

Now back to the slugs and weeds on the allotment.