Iran Unit

I was in middle school during Operation Desert Storm, and so I grew up with a vague awareness of the two countries and in my mind they were tied together. The reality is, they aren’t tied together in the least bit other than they are both in the Middle East and technically part of Asia, but I got to learn a fair amount about Iran during our Iran unit AND tried a recipe that was relatively popular, which is a rare thing to happen in our recent geography lessons.

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Iran resources

Ya’ll, my library had books! This hasn’t happened for many of our recent geography units, so it was exciting to see.

Iran– a good general overview book
The King and the Three Thieves: a Persian tale– I thoroughly loved this story of a king who learns how to be better
My Grandma and Me– I love stories like this where you get to see a slice of life
The Persian Cinderella– I ran out of time to read this one to the kids, but I’m keeping it a little longer because we started talking about Cinderella stories around the world (they suddenly realized we’d read at least half a dozen versions of the story)
The Rich Man and the Parrot– I laughed at the ending of this story, but for a short time the kids were telling me this was another Fat Cat book.
The Stone: a Persian Legend of the Magi– It’s always amusing to me to find a Christmas story in an area not known for celebrating Christmas

And of course, we had our now usual Geography now video.

And since this is when he had switched into flags having their own videos, and I always want to find out if red stands for the blood of the martyrs, here’s the Flag Friday video.

Seriously though, so many countries have red as the blood of the martyrs.

Iran recipe: Iranian Chicken Kebobs

I found this recipe, Easy Persian Chicken Kebabs from this website (linking because they had several delicious-looking recipes). I immediately thought I can do this recipe, but I kept forgetting it wants you to marinate the chicken for 4 hours.

I attempted to make this recipe several different times because I kept forgetting to marinate the chicken. Sigh.

Iranian Chicken Kebabs ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup minced onions
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon saffron (my saffron container has these little containers of saffron, so I just used one of those containers) (totally linking to this saffron because I like the way the container looks)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (the original recipe said up to 1/2 teaspoon, but my daughter doesn’t like a lot of spice)
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
5 chicken breasts cut into 1 inch pieces
bamboo skewers
1 red onion cut into 1 inch pieces
1 red bell pepper cut into 1 inch pieces

Let’s make the kebabs!

I started off by cutting the chicken up into 1 inch pieces and then mincing the onion, and I put it in a gallon ziploc bag
Apparently I was supposed to put the saffron in a tablespoon of hot water and let that steep for 5 minutes, then add THAT to the marinade…. Ummmm, oops, I just dropped in the saffron threads.
So put everything but the red onion and bell pepper into the ziploc bag. Then I smushed it around until the marinade was mixed and covering hte chicken. Let that sit for 4 hours minimum, but the recipe called for up to 24 hours (this seems like something you could mix up and freeze for a later meal. I might actually do that, now that I think about it.
All right after all of that marinades, thread it onto bamboo skewers with the red onion (which I didn’t use) and red bell pepper.
Grill and serve over rice.

Iranian Chicken Kebab

Iranian Chicken Kebabs are a great way to cook around the world.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Additional Time 4 hours

Total Time 4 hours 25 minutes

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup minced onion
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon saffron (optional)
1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
5 chicken breasts cut into 1 inch pieces
bamboo skewers
1 red onion cut into 1 inch pieces
2 bell peppers seeded and cut into 1 inch pieces (could use other colors of bell peppers if preferred)

Instructions

Put all the ingredients for the marinade (olive oil, lemon juice, mayonnaise, onions, garlic, turmeric, saffron, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper) in ziploc bag and mix together.
Drop in the cubed chicken and cover with marinade. Let sit in marinade for at least 4 hours and up to 24 hours.
Thread onto bamboo skewers along with red onion and bell peppers.
Grill for a few minutes on each side until cooked through, approximately 10 minutes total.
Serve over steamed rice.

Iran notebooking pages

I was mildly amused to find so much to learn in our Iran unit.

For such a short video, there was a lot of information in the Geography Now video for Iran. My biggest shock came when we looked up the climate and discovered because of its location and relatively large size, it has a variety of climates.