Ab-Havij Bastani

Ab-havij bastani is a fixture of Iran's juice bars, the aab-mive-foroushi shops that press fresh fruit and vegetable juices to order and are found on busy streets in every Iranian town. It pairs two staples of that menu — carrot juice and bastani sonnati, the saffron-rosewater ice cream commercialized in Tehran in the late 1920s — into a single glass, a float in the manner of an ice-cream soda. Carrots have grown in the Iranian plateau for centuries, and the combination of their sweetness with cold saffron cream became a beloved street-side order rather than a dish with a single inventor.

The first pull through the straw is cold, sweet carrot juice; then the spoon brings up softening ice cream gone half-liquid where it meets the juice. The two blend on the tongue into something like a creamsicle — vegetal sweetness, saffron warmth, a floral rosewater note from the cream. Pistachio slivers and a cinnamon dusting add crunch and spice. It drinks rich, almost a light meal in a glass.

Carrots are juiced raw so their natural sugars and beta-carotene come through bright and unheated; the juice is served at once before it oxidizes and dulls. The ice cream is floated rather than blended so the contrast holds — cold dense cream against thin cold juice — and the eater controls the mix with each spoonful. As the cream melts it thickens the top of the drink and rounds the carrot's edge; the saffron and rosewater, fat-soluble and water-soluble in turn, perfume both layers as they merge.