My favorite Iranian dessert - indeed it could be my favorite "cookie" for all times - is "sohan". It is a buttery honey-coloured crisp with a generous sprinkling of chopped pistachios on top, its sweetness somehow balanced by the richness of the butter and crunch of nuts. Best eaten as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack with a strong cup of english breakfast tea, in my view. I first got hooked onto sohan back in 2009 on my first visit to Iran. At that time, I tried sohan in Yazd, but it is said that sohan is from Qom.
Now, this is a rather strange notion considering Qom is probably the second most religious place in Iran and otherwise a fairly rundown and depressing mid-size city about 2 hours drive from Tehran. Qom is where the Ayatollah Khomeini studied and preached revolution and the site of the Fatima Holy Shrine (this is Fatima, the sister of Imam Reza and not Fatima, the Prophet Mohammed's daughter). I cannot quite connect a dessert as delicious as sohan with those stern ayatollahs. But I suppose even ayatollahs need their "sweet" moments. My thoughts run to sohan crumbs in the ayatollahs' beards and scattered on their camel hair coats....
My guide studied in university in Qom and was able to direct me to what she felt was the best sohan shop in Qom, where sohan is also freshly made on the premises. For any of you planning a visit to Qom, please do not miss out a trip to the Mohammed Sima shop. The shop manager/proprietor was kind enough to let me into their kitchen to witness the process of making sohan - the sohan base (dough) is a thick and hot sticky syrup, the consistency of which is thicker than that of honey and has a uncooked meringue-like shine. After stirring, the sohan base is then dolloped onto metal trays in rounds of approximately 5 inches. Once the sohan base has cooled enough, it is flattened with a metal hammer and at the same time, chopped pistachios are sprinked liberally on it. The final step is to cut the sohan into diamond-shaped cookies using a special metal roller/cutter. (I have posted photos of the entire process)
A box of sohan (probably around 30-40 pieces) costs around US$8. It will keep for only around a month after manufacture.
