Traditionally, rice was present in Norther Iran cooking and in the houses of wealthy, while in the rest of the Country bread was the main element. Nowadays, the most appreciated varieties of rice thanks to their flavour are the ones cultivated in Northern Iran. The proposed recipe is Meigoo Polow, a dish cooked in Southern Iran.

Tahchin Morgh is a rice-based dish. It’s made of two parts: the lower layer, called Tahdig (Tah=lower + dig=pot), obtained by mixing chicken, saffron and the other ingredients and the upper layer made only of white rice. In Farsi, Tahchin means “spread at the bottom” and Morgh means “chicken”.

Kormas comes probably from Persia. The name derives from the Hindi word that means “braising”: it’s the type of cooking, since the meat or vegetables are braised in a pot with little quantities of liquid, (yogurt or water).

In the area of Pavia, the “culture of pig” is deep-seated: quand’s gà fam, ghe’l pän e salàm (“when you are hungry, you can have bread and salami”) is still a common saying. In the past, breed a pig meant having a life insurance and when it was killed, once a year, in order to check whether the meat prepared to make salami was good, a little part of it was used to prepare a risotto.