Vermicelli and Sweet Yogurt Birthday Breakfast

Our Iranian forebears celebrated birthdays with the roasting of a whole sheep, ox, or camel. Birthday celebrations are a lot tamer now, but auspicious days, birthdays in particular, require special breakfast foods: this dish of warm, sweet vermicelli (sev) and sweetened yogurt (mitthu dahi), and the following recipe for creamy semolina pudding called rava.

Sev dahi is one of those fundamentally Parsi things all of us need to know how to make. My mother’s