Salt Icing

Salt Icing
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

I love to snack, it’s a curse of sorts (hey, we all have our vices) but as soon as I got to Afghanistan I began my search for the “proverbial sunflower seed” (In the US I have taken to eating unshelled Chinese sunflower seeds [I got started on them while in Beijing, stopped for awhile and then found that some Chinese Asian markets, not Japanese, Korean, or southern Asian carry them] because they are cheap, tasty, healthy and take a bit of effort to eat so it keeps my mouth busier than my stomach, a good thing), something that was yummy, cheap, and not too many calories.

Well I found they have pistachios here and due to my poor math and converting Afs to USD I misunderstood their cost (they are about $4/lb here, not exactly cheap) so I bought a bag of them. Apparently the Iranians are not as picky about the “crackability” of their nuts so many of the nuts are a bit difficult to open, good for me I guess. The one thing that struck me was the way they salted their nuts, I believe in the US the process normally involves soaking the nuts in salt water then roasting them (not sure about that though) but the Iranian version they have what looks like hard cake icing but is salt flavored and they dribble it over the nuts, shell and all. I don’t think this is a particularly effective way to do it since I find myself sucking on the shells to I don’t feel like I am eating unsalted nuts. Anyway, I am quite curious about the composition of the salt icing (perhaps corn starch, salt, and some liquid?) and will continue to probe my Afghan colleagues.