Louisa Shafia - The New Persian Kitchen

Copyright 2013 by Louisa Shafia
Photographs copyright 2013 by Sara Remington

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Persian rugs courtesy The Oriental Carpet, Menlo Park, California www.theorientalcarpet.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shafia, Louisa.
The new Persian kitchen / Louisa Shafia ; photography by Sara Remington. First edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Cooking, Iranian. I. Title.
TX725.I7S38 2013
641.5953dc23

2012038828

eBook ISBN: 9781607743583
Hardcover ISBN 9781607743576

Food styling by Karen Shinto
Prop styling by Ethel Brennan
Food styling assistance by Jeffrey Larsen

v3.1

I saw a garden pure as paradise

A myriad different hues were mingled there

A myriad scents drenched miles of perfumed air

The rose lay in the hyacinths embrace

The jasmine nuzzled the carnations face

I magine that you are in a vast desert with the hot sun searing your back. A high stone wall with an elaborate gate appears, and you walk through it. Suddenly you feel cool air on your skin and hear the soft melody of water dancing in a fountain. You are in a lush, blooming garden, and a deep breath brings the honeyed fragrance of roses to your nose. All around you are fruiting trees of pistachios, almonds, walnuts, peaches, apples, pears, sour cherries, and pomegranates. From the ground rise neat rows of squash, cucumber, carrot, eggplant, garlic, and rhubarb. A patch of purple crocus reveals three red saffron stigmas sprouting from each dewy flower, while the scent of limes, turmeric, cardamom, and mint fill the air.

Im often asked, So, what exactly is Persian food? The best way I can think of to describe it is as a lush garden in the desert, a familiar image from classical Persian lore. Like our mythical garden, Persian cuisine is perfumed with the floral scents of citrus, rose water, and quince. Indeed, fresh and dried fruits feature in meat, rice, and desserts alike, while ingredients such as pomegranates, saffron, and pistachios are called on as much for their taste as for their striking appearance, which evokes the colors of nature. Why a desert garden? Through a system of underground aquifers, ancient Persians transformed vast stretches of arid land into fertile oases, and over thousands of years, the miracle of water in such unlikely places led to a cuisine that relishes the gifts of the garden in every bite. The New Persian Kitchen takes this reverence for fresh food as its starting point, drawing on traditional Persian ingredients and health-conscious cooking techniques, to create a new Persian cuisine thats part contemporary America and part ancient Iran.

The journey of writing this book began a dozen years ago at my first cooking job, at San Franciscos vegan Millennium restaurant, when head chef Eric Tucker asked me to come up with a new entre. Out of the blue, my first idea was to make the classic Persian dish fesenjan , a sweet and tart stew of pomegranate molasses, ground walnuts, and seared chicken or duck. I crafted a meatless version of the dish and enhanced the color with grated red beets. To my delight, the chef and kitchen staff received my creation enthusiastically, and the dish made it onto the menu. Though my father comes from Iran, and I had grown up eating dishes like fesenjan , I had simply never given much thought to Persian cooking. Happily, that little push would jump-start my exploration into the food of Iran, and ultimately, into my own Persian heritage.

I grew up in a leafy neighborhood in Philadelphia in the 1970s, a time and place in culinary history marked by a growing enthusiasm for natural foods, contrasting obsessions with Chinese home cooking and Julia Child, and the onset of the quick weeknight dinnera boon to working moms in the form of Ortega tacos, frozen pizza, and canned soup. Our home was influenced by all of these trends, but with a notable difference: there was an otherworldly Persian element in the form of red eggplant stew spiced with pomegranate molasses; fluffy saffron rice; succulent lamb kebabs pulled from hot metal skewers with reams of pillowy flatbread; and a love of fresh fruits like watermelon, oranges, and grapes, all owing to my fathers Iranian heritage.

My mother, an Ashkenazi Jew who was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia, and my father, the product of a large Muslim family in Tehran, met while my mom was working as a librarian at the hospital where my dad was an intern. He was late returning books; she called to remind him, and the rest is history. Although my dad had no relatives in the States, and few Persian friends, we did attend grand Norooz (Persian New Year) banquets and dinners at the homes of my dads Persian colleagues. There were also rare visits from our family in Iran, when my dads sister, my beautiful Aunt Meliheh, would spend days in our kitchen making a feast worthy of Cyrus the Great. Through these experiences, and my moms impressive attempts to re-create the food of my dads homeland, the tastes and smells of Persian food were imprinted on my senses.

In the years since, as a culinary professional, Ive been drawn to fresh food and healthful cooking, and Ive prepared everything from raw to vegan to high-end Swedish food at restaurants in New York and San Francisco. Over time, the allure of my Iranian ancestry has grown stronger, and my passion for produce-centered cooking has been increasingly colored by childhood memories of burbling Persian stews and steaming pyramids of rice. The New Persian Kitchen represents the synthesis of those influences and my experience in contemporary cooking.

Obscured for years by a veil of political animosity, Persian food is a global treasure waiting to be discovered. Poised between East and West, Iran boasts a remarkable history that stretches back at least three millennia. Crisscrossed for centuries by intercontinental traders, and at one time extending from North Africa to the Hindu Kush, the Persian Empire was subjugated by both neighboring countries and distant rivals. These many outside influences resulted in a cuisine seasoned by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Africans, Indians, Chinese, and even Britons and the French. Yet even while embracing new flavors, Persian food has retained its startlingly unique fundamental character.