In December of 2017, the Iranian-American cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij tasted سوراغ (romanized: sooragh) for the first time in Evaz, a small inland town in the south of Iran. Halimeh Jonaybi, a local woman and talented cook, made the sooragh from scratch in her backyard under the shade of an old wild palm tree. Batmanglij remembers the salty, fishy taste of the sooragh, which had been pickled and preserved in a clay jar. Sooragh is a deep crimson sauce with a particular minerality that is native to the Hormozgan region,…
