I did not know this fried delicacy existed until about a day ago. I saw a post on a radio station fanpage talking about foods that are unique to cities or regions in Canada. One post mentioned the “Persians of Thunder Bay” and I had to look them up. And after seeing them…I knew I had to try one. Now, Thunder Bay is a loooooong drive away from Saskatoon to get a ‘donut’. Even one as renowned as these appear to be.
Now, I don’t have a commercial bakery and all the fancy tools, but I did manage to find a recipe online and…they turned out pretty alright.
I honestly love the concept of foods that are geographically unique. I really wish I enjoyed traveling more, but it’s not my ‘jam’. And so, maybe finding a recipe and recreating that unique flavour in my kitchen is the way to go?
The recipe itself was pretty fun to make. Nothing overly finicky. In reality these are just cinnamon buns (I’ve made those before) that you deep fry instead of bake. The recipe seemed about the same for making the dough. This one was a little sticky to start with, but as I added more flour, it really turned pretty thick and not as ‘elastic and smooth’ as the recipe claimed it would be. I wound up adding a little more milk to try and soften things up before the first rise. After that, things went pretty well as instructed until the deep fry. I’ve actually never cooked with oil before this attempt. Well, I’ve put a dab of it in the skillet to cook some meat or a stirfry, but this was my first time doing the full immersion fry. My handy kitchen thermometer came in quite useful again as I got the oil to 350. It went a bit higher, I dropped the burner temp a bit and then began the frying process. The recipe calls for about 4 minutes overall cook time for the pastry. I pulled mine out at about half of that and they were already starting to look a bit ‘over-done’. A little bit of dancing and I really think a decent time was around 45 seconds per side. My oil might have been too hot, I might be at a different elevation, maybe things needed to be even more moist for the rise and proof…who knows?
The thing that really sets a Persian apart – aside from deepfry on the cinnamon bun – is the fruit flavoured icing on top. I went with raspberry as it is my favourite fruit in baking and I happened to have some frozen ones in the main floor freezer. That worked out just fine. I didn’t quite go up to 4 cups of icing sugar. I topped out around 3 1/4 as the bowl I choose for the topping was getting pretty full, the icing was feeling pretty thick, and c’mon. 4 CUPS of icing sugar? I can feel Wilford Brimley shaking his head at me from here.
I know a guy from Thunder Bay way. I’m going to have to run him over a couple tomorrow to see how they measure up to the ‘taste of home’ for him. At the very least, I’ll know if I was able to pull off a semi-accurate reproduction of the original and be able to mark off another regional delicacy.
Dad's Turn To Cook 