Lettuce with mint vinegar syrup
On Sizdah Bedar, the thirteenth day of the new year, Iranian families leave the city for parks and riverbanks around Tehran and Isfahan, and the picnic cloth almost always holds a jar of sekanjabin and a head of crisp romaine. The syrup is an ancient one: sugar and vinegar simmered together and steeped with fresh mint, sweet-sour and cooling. You tear off a lettuce leaf, dip it and crunch. The usual mistake is boiling the syrup too long, which turns it into hard toffee once cold. Chef's tip: keep the lettuce in iced water until the moment you serve; the colder and crisper the leaf, the better the contrast with the syrup.
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