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Persians, Food, Memories
We all know that Persian food and cooking is amongst the most healthy of the world's menus. One of my favorite cookbook in the world is the New food of life by Najmieh Batmanglij. What a delightful lady and what an amazing portray of our tradition and to top it all the book is filled with Persian poetry. My hat off to you lady.
Here is the preface to her book:
When I am at home with the samovar steaming and the house fragrant with the smell of onions and garlic cooking, when the air is filled with the captivating aroma of mint and rare spices, what beautiful memories come back to me! I see the pantry behind the kitchen of my childhood home once again. The odors of savory, fenugreek, marjoram, and angelica burst through the white cloth sacks that hang from the ceiling. Perhaps this book was inspired most by those perfumed memories. Above all, though, the cuisine of my country brings back to me the image of my parents and friends sitting cross-legged on a Persian carpet around the sofreh, a cotton tablecloth embroidered with poems and prayers.
Iranians wake up early, before the sun rises. In our family, my father and grandmother engaged in an amusing little contest every morning. The first one up was the proud winner. As soon as he awoke, my father would usually go out into the garden and head straight for the jasmine we had growing in red clay pots. He would pick all the flowers that had bloomed overnight and lay them at my mother's place on the sofreh. But sometimes Grandmother would get to the garden first. I can still hear father speaking in that mock-angry tone of his as he discovered that the jasmine bushes had been stripped of their flowers. "That grandmother has been here already!" he would say out loud. When our grandmother nonchalantly joined the rest of the family at breakfast, she casually plucked the concealed flowers from their hiding place under her shawl and dropped the fragrant bouquet near my father. He would pretend to ignore her as he waited to take his sweet revenge the next morning. I have fond memories of those breakfasts, or sobhaneh. The meal itself usually consists of sweet tea, feta cheese, and nan-e barbari, a crusty, flat bread made fresh very early every morning. Breakfast sometimes includes other types of bread, jam and honey, fresh cream, butter, and hot milk. Fried or soft-boiled eggs, saffron cake or pudding (halva or sholeh zard) might also be served, or even, before a long mountain hike, a soup made of tripe (sirab shir-dun) and lamb head and feet (kalleh pacheh). Sobhaneh is a very important and pleasant moment in the life of an Iranian family, a time to be together before everyone leaves for work.
The cuisine of any country is a fundamental part of its heritage. The ingredients reflect its geography, while the savor and colors accent the aesthetic tastes of its inhabitants. And food is associated with so many major social events-births, weddings, funerals-that culinary traditions are intertwined with a country's history and religion. This is especially true of Iran (called "Persia" by Westerners in ancient times).
Thousands of years ago, Zoroaster elaborated the ancient myth of the Twins. One became good and the other evil, one the follower of truth and the other of falsehood. This concept of duality is typically Persian, and it extends beyond moral issues. We often balance light and darkness, sweet and sour, hot and cold. For us, food is also classified as "hot" (garmi), which thickens the blood and speeds the metabolism, and "cold" (sardi), which dilutes the blood and slows the metabolism. Dates, figs, and grapes, for example, are hot fruits; plums, peaches, and oranges are cold.
It takes a certain skill to correctly select food for the family, since people too can have hot and cold natures. An extremely out-of-balance diet can lead to illness. For example, those with "hot" natures must eat cold foods to achieve a balance. My son, like many other five-year-olds, sometimes eats too many dates or chocolates. Because he has a hot nature-something I learned very early in his life!-too much of this hot food does not agree with him at all. Drinking watermelon or grapefruit juice, or the nectar from other cold fruits, quickly helps restore his balance-and his smile.
Increasingly, science is discovering links between food and health. And while the ancient Persian system of balance does not eliminate the need for doctors, experience has proven that it is an excellent nutritional adjunct to good health.
My objective in writing this book was not just to compile a collection of recipes, however delicious they might be. Instead I have tucked in among them other pearls of wisdom from my country-verses from our poets and old legends. I have described an Iranian wedding and some of our joyful holiday traditions. I have included photographs to show that our dishes are as colorful as our most beautiful carpets. For us, feasting our eyes is the first pleasure of a good meal.
I have always enjoyed cooking and have selected these recipes on the basis of my personal preferences and experience. I was aided in my research by my mother and other great cooks, who gave me valuable advice. As my knowledge grew, so did my curiosity and interest in my country's gastronomic heritage. This led me to research the origins of many of our ceremonies.
Among all the traditional recipes I have collected, only the simplest are included here. I have refined them over the years, first in France and then in the United States. In many instances, I have adapted old recipes to modern kitchen tools, like the food processor and the electric rice cooker. All the recipes were systematically tested using ingredients that are now, because of the increasing Iranian expatriate community, available almost everywhere in America.
When I think of a meal, I think of the family all together. I hope that my sons will have similar memories of the simple pleasures of life when they are grown. I dedicate this collection to them and to all Iranian children living far from the country of their heritage by the course of political events.
Here is the preface to her book:
When I am at home with the samovar steaming and the house fragrant with the smell of onions and garlic cooking, when the air is filled with the captivating aroma of mint and rare spices, what beautiful memories come back to me! I see the pantry behind the kitchen of my childhood home once again. The odors of savory, fenugreek, marjoram, and angelica burst through the white cloth sacks that hang from the ceiling. Perhaps this book was inspired most by those perfumed memories. Above all, though, the cuisine of my country brings back to me the image of my parents and friends sitting cross-legged on a Persian carpet around the sofreh, a cotton tablecloth embroidered with poems and prayers.
Iranians wake up early, before the sun rises. In our family, my father and grandmother engaged in an amusing little contest every morning. The first one up was the proud winner. As soon as he awoke, my father would usually go out into the garden and head straight for the jasmine we had growing in red clay pots. He would pick all the flowers that had bloomed overnight and lay them at my mother's place on the sofreh. But sometimes Grandmother would get to the garden first. I can still hear father speaking in that mock-angry tone of his as he discovered that the jasmine bushes had been stripped of their flowers. "That grandmother has been here already!" he would say out loud. When our grandmother nonchalantly joined the rest of the family at breakfast, she casually plucked the concealed flowers from their hiding place under her shawl and dropped the fragrant bouquet near my father. He would pretend to ignore her as he waited to take his sweet revenge the next morning. I have fond memories of those breakfasts, or sobhaneh. The meal itself usually consists of sweet tea, feta cheese, and nan-e barbari, a crusty, flat bread made fresh very early every morning. Breakfast sometimes includes other types of bread, jam and honey, fresh cream, butter, and hot milk. Fried or soft-boiled eggs, saffron cake or pudding (halva or sholeh zard) might also be served, or even, before a long mountain hike, a soup made of tripe (sirab shir-dun) and lamb head and feet (kalleh pacheh). Sobhaneh is a very important and pleasant moment in the life of an Iranian family, a time to be together before everyone leaves for work.
The cuisine of any country is a fundamental part of its heritage. The ingredients reflect its geography, while the savor and colors accent the aesthetic tastes of its inhabitants. And food is associated with so many major social events-births, weddings, funerals-that culinary traditions are intertwined with a country's history and religion. This is especially true of Iran (called "Persia" by Westerners in ancient times).
Thousands of years ago, Zoroaster elaborated the ancient myth of the Twins. One became good and the other evil, one the follower of truth and the other of falsehood. This concept of duality is typically Persian, and it extends beyond moral issues. We often balance light and darkness, sweet and sour, hot and cold. For us, food is also classified as "hot" (garmi), which thickens the blood and speeds the metabolism, and "cold" (sardi), which dilutes the blood and slows the metabolism. Dates, figs, and grapes, for example, are hot fruits; plums, peaches, and oranges are cold.
It takes a certain skill to correctly select food for the family, since people too can have hot and cold natures. An extremely out-of-balance diet can lead to illness. For example, those with "hot" natures must eat cold foods to achieve a balance. My son, like many other five-year-olds, sometimes eats too many dates or chocolates. Because he has a hot nature-something I learned very early in his life!-too much of this hot food does not agree with him at all. Drinking watermelon or grapefruit juice, or the nectar from other cold fruits, quickly helps restore his balance-and his smile.
Increasingly, science is discovering links between food and health. And while the ancient Persian system of balance does not eliminate the need for doctors, experience has proven that it is an excellent nutritional adjunct to good health.
My objective in writing this book was not just to compile a collection of recipes, however delicious they might be. Instead I have tucked in among them other pearls of wisdom from my country-verses from our poets and old legends. I have described an Iranian wedding and some of our joyful holiday traditions. I have included photographs to show that our dishes are as colorful as our most beautiful carpets. For us, feasting our eyes is the first pleasure of a good meal.
I have always enjoyed cooking and have selected these recipes on the basis of my personal preferences and experience. I was aided in my research by my mother and other great cooks, who gave me valuable advice. As my knowledge grew, so did my curiosity and interest in my country's gastronomic heritage. This led me to research the origins of many of our ceremonies.
Among all the traditional recipes I have collected, only the simplest are included here. I have refined them over the years, first in France and then in the United States. In many instances, I have adapted old recipes to modern kitchen tools, like the food processor and the electric rice cooker. All the recipes were systematically tested using ingredients that are now, because of the increasing Iranian expatriate community, available almost everywhere in America.
When I think of a meal, I think of the family all together. I hope that my sons will have similar memories of the simple pleasures of life when they are grown. I dedicate this collection to them and to all Iranian children living far from the country of their heritage by the course of political events.
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