Shab-e-Yalda: Our Persian Food Shop in Newcastle upon Tyne

There are things you should never say before entering a food shop with my husband. “We only need a couple of things” is one of them. It was 21 December 2023, Christmas was four days away and we’d set off for The Newcastle Halal Superstore with a short shopping list. Pomegranates. A few of them, preferably without blemishes, for Shab-e-Yalda, the Persian celebration of the winter solstice. I wasn’t planning to do the weekly shop, stock the freezer or investigate every ingredient used in Iranian cooking. I just wanted to buy some fruit and get home.

At 48, with a seven-year-old son, a full-time job in PR and the usual December arrangements still demanding attention, I was already beginning to wonder whether Christmas was worth the amount of organisation it took. There were presents to wrap, meals to think about and the constant suspicion that I’d forgotten something important. Cyrus, meanwhile, was enjoying the build-up enormously. At seven, Christmas still held all its magic, and he had little sympathy for a mum who would have quite happily exchanged another shopping trip for a coffee and half an hour of peace.

I was in my element. H might have grown up in Iran, where shopping for food is as much about knowing the ingredients and enjoying the process as it is about getting something on the table. But he should have realised that taking me into a shop stocked with foods from his childhood wasn’t going to be a quick affair. Within minutes, I’d begun examining the shelves, picking things up and pointing out ingredients I recognised. He followed,  reminding me that we had only come for pomegranates.

Quite easily, apparently, when your husband is Persian, the shop is full of ingredients from his childhood and you’re incapable of resisting an interesting food aisle.

The Newcastle Halal Superstore is one of the best-stocked purveyors of pulses, spices and rice I’ve encountered in Newcastle upon Tyne, it also combines a traditional grocery store with an in-house bakery. There are huge sacks of rice, shelves filled with dried beans and lentils, fragrant spices, herbs, so many nuts and ingredients that don’t make an appearance in the average British supermarket. For someone who enjoys cooking and has a weakness for browsing food shops, it’s a dangerous place for me to visit without a time limit.

I love supermarkets abroad. Some people want to see museums or historic buildings when they travel, and I enjoy those too, but give me half an hour in a local food shop and I’m perfectly happy. I’ll examine packets, look at unfamiliar vegetables and wonder what people cook with ingredients I’ve never seen before. The Newcastle Halal Superstore offers a little of that experience without leaving the North East. H generally knows what he’s looking for, while I trail behind him asking whether we need something and what exactly we’re supposed to do with it once we get home.

The bakery adds another distraction. Freshly baked naan bread is difficult enough to resist when you’ve gone out specifically to buy it, never mind when you’re supposed to be shopping for fruit. Bread is an important part of Persian food culture, and H has often talked about the different varieties he remembers from Iran. Listening to him describe the food of his childhood is one of the things I enjoy most about our conversations. A discussion about bread can turn into a story about family, neighbours, rations, the Iran / Iraq war or just everyday life in a country I knew very little about before meeting him.

By the time we’d finished browsing, our modest pomegranate expedition had become a much larger shopping trip. We emerged carrying three bags filled with Persian delights and other ingredients that had somehow become essential during our visit. H can’t lay all the blame entirely at my door because he was equally guilty of picking up the biggest jars of khiar shoor I’ve seen. I kept spotting ingredients I wanted to try, saffron coated cashew nuts, lemon roasted almonds, it seemed sensible to buy them while we were there. Whether I would find the time to eat everything was another matter entirely.

Shab-e-Yalda, also known as Shab-e-Chelleh, is one of Iran’s oldest celebrations. It takes place on the night of the winter solstice, when families gather to mark the longest night of the year and the gradual return of longer days. Pomegranates are among its most recognisable symbols, their deep red seeds associated with life and abundance. Watermelon is another traditional favourite, while bowls of nuts, dried fruits and Persian sweets are shared throughout the evening. Poetry also plays an important part, particularly the work of Hafez, the 14th-century Persian poet whose verses remain familiar to generations of Iranians.

Before meeting H, I’d never heard of Yalda. December, as far as I was concerned, meant Christmas trees, presents, mince pies and the annual debate about whether we’d bought enough cheese. Yet I liked the idea of celebrating the longest night of the year in Newcastle, where winter afternoons seem to disappear before they’ve properly begun. By December 2023, Yalda had become part of our family calendar, and I wanted Cyrus to grow up knowing about the celebrations his dad had enjoyed in Iran, just as he knew about Christmas and the British traditions I’d grown up with.

At seven, Cyrus wasn’t that interested in the history of the winter solstice, but he understood that Yalda meant special food, family and friends time and the possibility of staying up a lot later than usual. He was growing up with two sets of traditions. Sometimes it was enough for him to come shopping with us, hear H talking about traditional foods and help himself to the treats we’d bought for the evening.

Shopping with H has taught me more about Persian cooking than any recipe book I’ve owned. Rice is a serious subject in our household, and I’ve learned that there is a big difference between boiling it until it’s edible and preparing it properly for a Persian meal. The grains should be beautifully separated, ideally with a golden layer of tahdig at the bottom of the pan. The superstore is useful because it stocks many of the ingredients needed for Persian cooking, including a good selection of rice, pulses, herbs and spices. It isn’t exclusively Persian, but its range makes it a valuable place for families who cook Middle Eastern and South Asian dishes.

Our Yalda shopping also included a visit to Honey, the confectionery shop in Newcastle’s West End, where we went to buy sweets and nuts. The shelves were filled with colourful treats, and I was quite happy examining everything while H pointed out the things he recognised from his childhood. Cyrus, meanwhile, had discovered the cashew nuts and was showing more interest in them than anything else in the shop. He hovered near them.

The assistant greeted him affectionately with azizam, a Persian term meaning ‘my dear’ or ‘darling’, and he was immediately charmed. I loved hearing someone outside our family use a familiar Persian expression with him. At home, he was used to H speaking to him in affectionate phrases, but hearing the language in an ordinary Newcastle shop gave it a different context. We bought our sweets and nuts and eventually managed to leave before Cyrus became too comfortable with the idea of sampling everything in sight.

Earlier in our Yalda preparations, H and Cyrus had visited Zahir at Charles Cuts in Ponteland, returning with matching number two haircuts. H looked very smart, while Cyrus reminded him of a jujeh tighee, a Persian expression for a little bird with its feathers just coming through. With his closely cropped hair, our son looked like a newly hatched chicken, although I doubt he would have appreciated the comparison quite as much as we did.

H has always used affectionate Persian expressions with Cyrus, some of which sound rather unusual when translated into English. I’ve learned that being compared to a fruit, a flower or even an internal organ can be a sign of enormous affection. The words don’t always have an obvious English equivalent, and sometimes the explanation takes longer than the original expression. I enjoy hearing them because they’re part of the language H grew up with, passed on to our son almost without him thinking about it.

Despite having successfully purchased the ingredients for our celebration, I was a bit preoccupied with buying fruit knives. My search led me to eBay, where the only examples I could find seemed to be antiques. I briefly considered whether buying a set of old knives was a reasonable expense four days before Christmas, especially when we already owned several perfectly serviceable knives. I looked around, but couldn’t find anything quite like what I had in mind. Then it occurred to me that we don’t eat enough fresh fruit in Britain to warrant having special knives for it. We do have one for slicing pizza though and also a device to remove the stones from olives.

In Iran, where bowls of fresh fruit are part of hospitality and family get togethers, the knives make much more sense. H was considerably less concerned about the equipment. I suspect he found my determination amusing, although he was sensible enough not to make too much of it. Eventually, I abandoned the search and accepted that our ordinary kitchen knives would have to do. It was probably for the best, given the amount we’d already spent on food.

By the time we returned home, Newcastle upon Tyne was firmly in Christmas mode. The shops were decorated, festive music seemed to be playing everywhere and Cyrus was counting down the days until Father Christmas arrived. Inside our house, however, we were preparing for something different. There were pomegranates to open, nuts and sweets to arrange, Persian food to prepare and music to play. Christmas was still coming, but for one evening, Yalda was our focus.

Before meeting H, most of what I’d heard about Iran came from television news reports. The country was usually discussed in terms of politics, conflict and international relations, rarely through the ordinary lives of its people. H introduced me to another side of Iran, one filled with family gatherings, poetry, music, affectionate expressions and a huge amount of food. For Cyrus, though, Persian culture was part of his life.

Around that time, a teacher friend told me about a young Persian girl who had recently joined her class. The child was finding her feet in unfamiliar surroundings, and my friend wanted to help her feel welcome. We talked about Iran and some of the traditions I’d come to know through H, including Shab-e-Yalda. My friend mentioned the celebration to the little girl, and it gave them something to connect over and talk about. I was touched by the story because it showed how something as easy as recognising a family tradition could help a child feel more comfortable in an unfamiliar place.

By the time we sat down to eat, any hopes I’d had of a beautifully organised Yalda dinner had largely disappeared. The food was ready, everyone was hungry, and the youngest member of the get together had decided that sitting properly at the table was not for her. Rather than spend the evening arguing about dining arrangements, we spread out a blanket, brought the food down and joined in. There we were, eating our Yalda meal on the floor, with bowls of fesenjan and rice.

Fesenjan has become one of my favourite Persian dishes. Made with walnuts and pomegranate, it has a rich, slightly tart flavour that I find completely irresistible. The first time I tried it, I wasn’t sure what to expect, having grown up eating nothing remotely similar. Now, the smell reminds me of H’s family, generous portions and the encouragement to eat just a little more. We’d spent the afternoon shopping for ingredients, I’d worried about finding fruit knives, and here we were eating from bowls on a blanket. Nobody seemed to care.

One of the traditions I enjoy during Yalda is fal-e Hafez, the practice of opening a collection of Hafez’s poetry and interpreting the verse as a response to a question or wish. I’ve always loved poetry, having won a junior poetry competition in the Evening Chronicle in 1986, and I like that poetry still has a place in ordinary Iranian family life. H would explain the verses to me, sometimes translating lines and talking about their meaning. I knew I was missing some of the beauty of the original Persian, but I enjoyed listening to him and watching Cyrus hear the language his dad had grown up speaking.

When I think back to Shab-e-Yalda 2023, the shopping trip still makes me smile. We’d set out to buy a few pomegranates and somehow managed to return with three bags of Persian delights, a selection of sweets and enough ingredients to inspire several more meals. It was a thoroughly typical outing with H. What began as an errand turned into an afternoon spent examining foods, discussing childhood memories and buying things we hadn’t known we needed until we saw them on a shelf.

I hope that when Cyrus is older, he’ll remember these celebrations. Perhaps he’ll prepare a Yalda meal for his own family or explain why Persians eat pomegranates on the longest night of the year. More likely, he’ll remember following us around the shops in Newcastle, looking at unfamiliar foods and being allowed a few extra cashew nuts. Either would make me happy, although I’ve learned one thing from our December shopping expedition. The next time H suggests popping out for a few pomegranates, I’ll take three shopping bags with me.

Do you have a favourite food shop where you always leave with more than you intended? Or are there particular foods and family traditions that remind you of your childhood? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and questions from Saffron & Cyrus.