Mast o Khiar is a simple traditional Iranian side dish that goes good with almost everything. With mint, cucumbers and yogurt it makes the perfect summer snack that takes only takes a few minutes to make.
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You will need:
- 2 cups yogurt (not sweet. Just a little sour is perfect. Mine is home made)
- 1/2 a large cucumber
- 1 Tablespoon dry mint
- 4-5 sprigs fresh mint
- 1/3 Teaspoon salt
- Raisins (optional)
- Knife
- Dish to serve in
- Serving spoon
- Measuring spoons
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oh and btw eating yogurt and garlic in the same meal will make most people VERY sleepy
Secondly, Iranian (or Persian if you'd rather call it) civilization has a long history of more than 10000 years old --according to the well known archeological findings not by us Iranians but even western academics-- unlike that of Turks or Turkey which hardly dates back to 900 years ago.
Don't remember that even something called Ottoman empire didn't exist 900 years ago, and 2600 years ago there was a civilization called Lydia inhabiting today's Anatolia (current Turkey) totally irrelevant to Turks or Turkish so-called culture. That was the time the Persian (Achamenid) empire was at its full glory.
The dumb@ss who commented on Iranian culture having been influenced by Turks and even Kurds!!! pretends not to know the sheer fact that Kurds have been and are an Iranian ethnic (if not the main part of Iranian ethnicity) from the beginning. It was not until Turkish invasions from central Asia into the Anatolia that little by little the real inhabitants of these regions i.e. Iranians specifically Kurds were pushed out of their homeland; the evil policy that is still undergoing by the Turkish government against the Kurds whose crime is nothing but having a Persian identity and language (yes, the Kurdish language is actually the most pure form of ancient Persian language that unlike todays Persian spoken on the streets of Tehran has not been much affected by Arabic.
I think people without history like Turks have a strong tendency to claim whatever other nations have.
Until recently Turkish government was still denying the Greek identity of the archeological sites and ruins scattered around their country, and if it was not for international pressure for taking their ridicioulous claims back, they would still be on that maybe forever.
ازتو ممنونم كه در اين ديار غربت نام و ياد ايراني ها رو با يه دسر عالي به نام خيار ماست ! زنده كردي
khobi? mast o khair ...
yogurt and cucumber
nice recipe
-An iranin-
khodafes
Here is my contribution to the "origins of yogurt"
The thing that you are overlooking here in your Wiki cutout is that the (proto-)Bulgars were most likely a Turkic people who blended in with the Slavic people in the Balkans to form the "Bulgarians" we know today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgars
Furthermore, the history of "Persia" being 8000 (??) years old should be taken with a grain of salt, or we should at least take into account the huge external influences into Persian culture (e.g. the Turks and Kurds). It would be strange to claim that the same people that constituted the Persia of 8000 years ago are still roaming the Persian plateau. Check for example the Safavid empire (the last great dynasty in Iran) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_dynasty
Turkey being around for 1000 years is also a bit wrong. Turkey has been around for 85 years, but Turkic empires (including the Ottoman Empire) and tribes are known to have left writings dating back as far as the 8th century AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkhon_inscriptions
We should keep in mind that Turks were recorded in Chinese history two centuries BC, and are probably a much older civilization than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_peoples#Turkic_roots
Furthermore It is known however that about a century ago yogurt was not known in Europe at all while it was considered to be part of the daily diet in many Mediterranean countries.
One fact remains undeniable: Cacik, Tzatziki, Raita, Mast-i-Khiar, ... it is all the same delicious food and it would be an exercise in futility to prove who invented it. It reminds me of the claim that the pizza is an Italian invention. I find it hard to believe that the world had to wait for the Italians to come up with the idea of putting vegetables on an oven baked bread :) Similarly the concept of this dish is too simple to not have been "invented" in parallel at several places and points in time.