A Brief Report on ICSW Activities in the Festival of Elements

Post date: Feb 20, 2012 11:44:05 PM

On the 6^th February 2012 Iranian community successfully participated in the inaugural gourmet food section of Festival of the Elements under the umbrella of the Migrating Kitchen Trust.

Every year on Waitangi Day the Porirua City Council holds this huge one day multi cultural event to celebrate arts and culture of many communities living in the greater Wellington region. The visitor numbers total 30,000 people. This year the theme underlying the set up of a gourmet section was “Eating Better Food”.

The Iranian migrating Kitchen group came together again for this event with the objective of presenting beautiful food and the hospitable Persian culture to a wider public.

We prepared 11 homemade dishes from different regions of Iran including: Adas Polow, Aashe Reshteh, Baghali Ghatogh, Laboo Dip and kabob Kubideh. Our emphasis was to give a glimpse into the wide plethora of Persian cuisine and provide vegetarian options. We also sold a selection of top brands of pre–packaged Persian foods and fruit juices. In addition we offered a medley of homemade sweets such as toot, Naan-e Berenji and Naan-e Nargili.

The Iran Kitchen was a hit at the gourmet section. Our community can be proud of the following results:

· People loved Persian food. We had repeat customers. Some came back three times!

· We sold out of food twice and quickly as we finished even our contingency food.

· We were voted anecdotally as the most pleasant, organised and cultured stall to visit.

· Iran Kitchen won the zero waste award.

Success on the day was a major achievement considering we were new at this, worked alongside some major commercial vendors, and had to plan and execute our home offerings based on restrict Food Hygiene and Zero Waste regulations.

This success was only made possible for the continuous commitment, hard work, generosity, and love for Iran of the following people on the committee: Adelia Hogarth, Aida Tavassoli, Farahmand Kamali, Lobat Parsi, Minoo Meimand, Shahla Motadel, and Zarrin Shetabi.

It was also critical to our success to have the tremendous help and support of the following people: Hossein Shetabi, Rana Shetabi, Ahmad Asghari, Fatemeh Tavassoli, and Anna Williams.