Summer food is simple and delightful; lots of fruits, veggies, herbs, bread and cheese. But I also love to have simple meals. I love to play with all those ingredients to make a delightful recipe, that is as easy as summer nights.

We have beautiful green peas in season and I already made lots of pasta with peas and basil, I made salads and pilafs and I serve them with meat too! But I wanted something to reminds me of Persian summer nights. So for this recipe I prepared a yogurt sauce with tahini, feta cheese (very similar to our Iranian Lighvan).

To make the sauce tasty I went for my grandmother's recipe. She is from Kerman, the city of Persian black cumin. She usually makes this delicious homemade Kermani cheese with lots of cumin and shallots! So I used her Idea and then I spread it all over my serving plates, and I basically garnished it with lots of cooked peas, herbs, zest of lemon & evo. Very simple but It's a perfect dinner serving it with a flat or middle eastern bread or It can be a big lovely platter to add to rest of your summer dinner table! - hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Ingredients for Cooking the peas:

420 g frozen or fresh Peas
water
salt
a bunch of mint leaves

Ingredients for the yogurt sauce:

170 g strained yogurt
100 g plain yogurt
50 g Greek feta or Iranian lighvan cheese
2-3 teaspoon tahini
1/2 grated shallot
1/2 juice of a Meyer lemon
1/2 teaspoon Salt
teaspoon Persian black cumin
1/2 zest of a Meyer lemon
bunch of Persian basil, mint and purple basil
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon dry damask rose or Persian mix dry herbs for yogurt

Method:

Bring to boil a pot of salted water, add the frozen or fresh peas and bunch of mint leaves into the boiling water. Cook until the peas don't lose their beautiful fresh green color, about 8 minutes. Drain and rinse the peas with cold water, remove the mint and set aside.
Meanwhile wash your herbs and let them dry on a clean kitchen towel.
In a bowl mix the strained yogurt, plain yogurt, the cheese, tahini, grated shallot, lemon juice & salt. Mix well, you can use a blender to make your sauce even silkier and smoother or you can leave it as it is, with a bit of chunky cheese in it.
Grab some serving plates, spread the yogurt sauce on your plates, sprinkle with some Persian black cumin, add the peas and decorate them with zest of lemon and fresh herbs.
At the end a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some Persian dry damask rose will finish the job! Serve the peas with your favorite bread. :)