Nan-e Nokhodchi

Nan-e nokhodchi is a small Iranian baked sweet made from chickpea flour. Roasted chickpea flour is combined with fat and sugar and flavored with cardamom. Made with fine flour, the dough crumbles softly in the mouth, leaving behind the toasty flavor of the chickpeas.

Cut Small, Handled Once Cool

Traditionally, the dough was formed into pieces about the size of a hazelnut, and the surface was patterned with a thimble or the tip of a knife. Today, some are cut out with small cutters in shapes such as squares, diamonds, and hearts, and some are decorated with pistachios. Because it is based mainly on chickpea flour, its ingredients differ from those of wheat-flour baked sweets, and it also has a different aroma from nan-e berenji, another Iranian sweet, made with rice flour.

The Persian name means “chickpea nan.” Methods that include egg have also been recorded, but there is no single set of ingredients or shapes.

Finely ground roasted chickpea flour is worked thoroughly together with fat and powdered sugar to bring the dough together. The dough, powdery at first, comes together as it is kneaded by hand. Some methods add a little rosewater, layering a floral scent over the aroma of cardamom. The small cut-out pieces are fragile even after baking, so they are handled gently once they have cooled.

A Sweet for Welcoming New Year Guests

The confectionery researcher Nader Mehravari notes that a recipe for this sweet appears in a Persian cookbook published around 1835. It is also said to have originated in Qazvin, but when and where the sweet was born is uncertain.

In Iran, during Nowruz, the New Year that welcomes spring, guests are received with an assortment of small sweets. The chickpea sweet is known as one of the sweets in that assortment. When visiting relatives or friends, some people have a sweet shop pack small sweets into a box to bring as a gift. Roya Soleimani, an Iranian American who grew up in Seattle, has memories of standing in the kitchen with her Iranian grandmother, and she shares the recipe as a Nowruz sweet. Though its name contains nan, meaning bread, it is a small baked sweet served with tea to welcome guests.

Glossary