Making food from scratch typically requires advance preparation, adherence to a recipe, and your third and final genie wish. Save the third wish for more wishes with today's Groupon: for $25, you get dinner for two at Orchard Market and Café in Towson (a $51.80 total value). Orchard Market is closed on Mondays. Each dinner includes:

• Choice of soup or salad for two (up to a $6.95 value)
• Two entrees (up to $18.95 each)

At Orchard Market and Café, chef Nahid Vaezpour accents the menu's traditional Persian soups with khoresh and kebabs with a motherly touch and exotic spices. Like an unmarked box filled with fireworks, the aash-o-reshteh soup bears warm surprises, including sun-dried herbs, lentils, and chickpeas in vermicelli-filled broth. The gulf salad satisfies legume cravings with a medley of pepperoncini, black olives, and artichokes that graze atop a pasture of mixed greens abundantly sprinkled with Bulgarian feta. Diners can bite into chicken fesenjune khoresh, which is poached in a sauce spiced with cinnamon, walnut, and pomegranate molasses, or slide filet mignon, grilled tomato, and onion off the soltani kebab. The small, luxurious dining room sports regal touches such as a glass waterfall, bas-reliefs, gleaming brass samovars, and paintings by local artists of Cleopatra opulently drinking ranch dressing.