This dish extremely delicious and very healthy, there is definitely no guilty feeling in eating this dish. pomegranate & yogurt dish can be used as a snack, as a dip, can be used as a side dish with basmati rice, baked chicken, and lamb meat. I love this dish, it has a tangy, sweet, crunchy and smooth tasting. As has been said “it has a party in my mouth”, this dish can really have a party in your mouth from all the tasty flavors that were included in the dish.
As I was searching on the internet to find the story about pomegranate to write about and connected with this recipe, I have found a very interesting novel about pomegranate “The pomegranate alone” written by Sinan Antoon, born in Baghdad, Iraq. He is a scholar, award-winning poet, and a novelist. He left Iraq to move to the United States in 1991. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He wrote this novel “Wahdaha Shajarat Al-Rumman (The Pomegranate tree stand Alone)” published by Yale University Press in 2013. (1)
The novel is extremely beautiful, and it has such powerful message of all the violence that Iraq had to endure throughout the years. The novel has been translated into many languages and got so many awards and prizes. The novel is about a corpse washer’s that took the time, effort, care and respect of each corpse that he washed. Iraq is a country who endure so much violence and devastation in the past 27 years. In every street in Iraq are filled with the bodies of the victims and even more disturbing are the sadness and sorrows that filled the minds, hearts, and soul of every single Iraqi that live there. This is the summary of his novel, please take the time to read it and it is a truly powerful message. The link to the summary is below.
“One does not choose to wash corpses. It is a work that needs to be done, for the world to go on as we know it, and for the deceased to be buried like we know how to bury. One inherits this profession from their father, or one becomes a corpse washer out of necessity.
Jawad did not want to wash corpses. He wanted to be an artist. A student of the faculty of art at the University of Baghdad, he was esteemed by his instructors, who had hope in his remarkable talent. Art proved to be a difficult way to earn a living, especially in a country torn by war. As a teenager, Jawad was introduced to the tradition of washing corpses by his father. Washing corpses is a delicate, methodic, almost aesthetic practice, that brings peace to the dead, and to their family. Jawad’s father, a religious man, saw in this practice a noble task which contributed to maintaining the worldly order. The corpses of Shiite believers are brought to him; he then stretches them on the stone table, washes them three times, using soap and camphor, following the washing ritual rigorously. The water used to wash the corpses is not disposed of like other used waters. Through a small canal, the water is led to the garden where it quenches a thirsty pomegranate tree.
For years, Jawad is haunted by the faces of the dead. For years, he resisted his father’s will. After his father’s death, in dire need of money, Jawad finally gives in. His practice, although rigorous, is however not aesthetic like his father was. For Jawad, beauty is in the stone and metal he sculpts, in the drawings he makes, not in the religious duty of washing of corpses. But art has failed Jawad, and so has the world. The war in Iraq is raging, and the corpses he is asked to wash are often nameless or terribly disfigured. As a corpse washer, Jawad has an intimate and unique understanding of the war in Baghdad. Like the pomegranate tree, he stands alone, and lives off death.”(2)
Sinan Antoon’s “The pomegranate alone” “http://www.rayaagency.org/2014/09/sinan-antoons-the-pomegranate-alone/”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinan_Antoon
http://www.rayaagency.org/clients/antoon-sinan/the-pomegranate-alone/
Ingredients:
7 cups plain yogurt
2 whole pomegranates seeded
7 Persian cucumber chopped
½ cup mint chopped
½ cup cilantro chopped
½ cup parsley chopped
Salt as preferred
¼ cup olive oil
5 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 sequence lemon juice
3 tablespoon Zaater
5 tablespoon sumacs
3 tablespoon black pepper
Direction
In a large bowl add the yogurt and mix with a wire whisk for amount 3 minute until all the yogurt become incorporated. Then add the pomegranates, cucumber, mint, cilantro, parsley, olive oil, cider vinegar, lemon juice, Zaater, sumacs, black pepper. Mix well and enjoy.