Morning Cake

The first book I bought for my son was In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak. He wasn’t born yet and he didn’t have a name, but the ultrasound gave us a clear picture and the very next day, I was off to Kepler’s bookstore. I even inscribed it right there at the register: For my son and his good appetite. It hardly mattered that I had discovered this book in my twenties—it’s supple and squishy illustrations of the bakers who bake till dawn so we can have cake in the morn, spoke to me. At the time I was working ungodly bakers’ hours, sleepwalking the streets of downtown San Francisco to my job in a basement kitchen where I made enormous tubs of muffin batter.

So while my husband went to the paint store for cans of sky blue, my mother bought spools of yarn, and my sister brought over her daughter’s rocking horse, I started my son’s library. Soon his bookshelf held an impressive collection, from The Polar Express, The Giving Tree and Stone Soup, to Rascal, The Phantom Tollbooth, and To Kill a Mocking Bird. But the very first, and the books we read most often, were Sendak’s, such that Max, Mickey and Pierre were part of our family. We read them once, we read them twice, and we always made our chicken soup with rice.

Last year, I listened to Maurice Sendak’s last interview on Fresh Air while driving home. It sounded like Terry Gross was choking back tears, too, when Sendak said, “Almost certainly I will go before you so I won’t have to miss you. I will cry my way all the way to the grave. Live your life, live your life, live your life.” Remembering his earlier interviews, when he said the monsters in The Wild Things Are were modeled after the adults in his life (he had found grown-ups grotesque and never wanted to grow up to look like them with their yellow teeth, big ears and hideous hairs coming out of their noses) I wondered who looked back, when, as an old man, he’d catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Defying the world of adults, I bet he saw a ten year old boy.

Lately, my son has been spending a lot of time at the stove on Sunday mornings— inventing pancakes with sautéed bananas and chocolate, berries and yogurt, and last week, with a potato he dug out of the backyard (a compost gift). I stay out of his way, resisting the urge to butt in and flip the bananas, busying myself with the coffee press and taking photos of his creations to send to friends who inevitably reply “The apple doesn’t fall…,” and all that and I say, “Nah, he just has a good appetite.” I predicted it. More than a few have asked for his deep dish pancake recipe. So on Sunday, we poured milk in the batter and remembered Maurice Sendak, reading In The Night Kitchen out loud for what may have been the thousandth time. It was Mother’s Day, so I sat on a stool with a cup of coffee watching the careful preparation of morning cake with the season’s first cherries.

Thank you Maurice.

Writing Workshop

                                                       Pierre Bonnard,  The Letter  1906

At eleven, I was an awkward sixth grader at the Tehran International School where we were taught in English and Farsi. But on the slow bus ride home, sheets of rain falling against the windshield, you heard Norwegian, Hindi, or French in high-pitched voices rising above Radio Tehran’s tinny broadcast from the driver’s transistor radio.

Ever since my mother had started her new job, I had been letting myself in with a key she had duplicated for me on a Mickey Mouse keychain. I fretted over the key – turning it in my palm like worry beads from the moment I shut the door in the morning until I pushed it into the lock every afternoon. When the bus dropped me off, I took the stairs two at a time to get inside. I missed our afternoons. With my father at work until ten and my sisters away at college, I wasn’t crazy about coming home to an empty apartment. It took me a while to get used to sitting down alone and pulling pieces of braided bread to spread with jam she had left on the kitchen table next to a tin of cocoa and a note she had written that morning before leaving for work. She wrote—sometimes in English, sometimes in Farsi, on flowery stationery I had given for her birthday—detailed descriptions of our dinner, a recipe for salad dressing, a funny reminder about boxer shorts drying on the balcony, and her thoughts about my science project or a book she was reading. That my mother would sit down and write a letter to her daughter while she ate her toast every morning seems Victorian, but she wrote without a trace of prudishness, filling sheets of violet paper with ideas and humor and warmth. Until then, I had filled my composition books with dull paragraphs that read like lists, but her writing read like a conversation you felt privileged to be a part of. I read them again and again, filling the hours until she came home, then paced near the window overlooking the street hoping to catch a glimpse of her car before she turned into our driveway. I chopped cucumbers and tomatoes for our salad, stirred a dressing with lemon juice and olive oil, and counted to one hundred before checking the street again.

In my case the term latchkey kid is unjust. It implies neglect or the stretching of a family’s fabric. The intimacy of those letters proved that I was my mother’s confidante and when I read them, I felt cared for. Cherished. I began writing letters back. In fact, I became obsessed with paper—spending hours at the corner sundry shop in front of their small display of stationery and school supplies, taking an eternity to decide on a tablet of lined or blank sheets. I held the new notebook in my hands like a prayer book, hoping to fill its pages with words that I would later fold and leave on my mother’s pillow. Often, they were apologies—like I’m sorry I used the wrong sponge to wash the dishes, or I didn’t mean to ignore your friend’s daughter who is a year younger than me, and so on.

This letter exchange continued in my adulthood. While dating my husband, I was working grueling hours and he was often traveling for work. It was the era before email and we wrote to each other every day. Coming home dead tired I’d find an envelope in my mailbox with a seductive red and blue airmail trim, my name and address in his boyish handwriting. There was no way I was going to wait until morning to write back. Still enamored with paper, I chose the sheets lovingly and slowly we learned about each other. Now that’s Victorian! Even now, if one of us is leaving early or coming home later than usual, tender reminders are left on the kitchen counter. When our son learned to read, we tucked notes into his lunch box written in big block letters—I HOPE THIS IS THE BEST BURRITO YOU HAVE EVER EATEN!, or under his pillow from the tooth fairy, that gradually grew lengthier with illustrations and jokes. So far his replies to us have been brief, sometimes apologetic—Sorry, I left the light on. But apart from the words, we are knowing each other through our handwriting—the small close print, the big loopy cursive, tell us we are cared for. Cherished.

I don’t have my mother’s letters. They were left behind along with every glass and every spoon in our home in Tehran when we were forced into exile, but the writing lessons, even the recipes and reminders, are embedded in me like a constant companion.

In Celebration of Mother’s Day with Donia Bijan, Author of Maman's Homesick Pie

Menlo Park author and renowned chef Donia Bijan will discuss her book, Maman’s Homesick Pie: A PERSIAN HEART IN AN AMERICAN KITCHEN on Sunday, May 6^th from 3-5 pm at the Menlo Park Council Chambers, 701 Laurel Street.  Part memoir/part cookbook, Ms. Bijan uses the language of food to tell her story, and to honor her mother from whom she learned to cook and to follow her dreams.

Ms. Bijan and her book have received praise from numerous national publications such as Family Circle and Publishers Weekly:

“Treat yourself to this delectable debut …ultimately this memoir is a loving tribute to her mother, her heritage—and food. Pour yourself a cup of cardamom tea (recipe included), and indulge in this savory slice of life.” —Family Circle

A “wonderfully written memoir … so well rendered … Bijan writes movingly of her parents’ accomplishments, their difficulty adjusting to their new home, and her own burgeoning love of food and cooking … Like the perfect dessert, each chapter ends with recipes.”—Publishers Weekly

For more information about the author and her book visit: www.doniabijan.com.

For event details, call Roberta Roth at 650-330-2512 or e-mail Roberta at rlroth@menlopark.org.

Thorny with a Big Heart

Who can resist the allure of an artichoke – the bud of a thistle flower? I was a freshman in college during my first spring in California, when a girl in my dorm came back from a trip downtown with a bag of artichokes. She got permission to use the roach infested kitchen – reserved for upperclassmen – to boil them and invited a few us to join her at the picnic tables outside the cafeteria, where we plucked and dipped the thorny leaves in Miracle Whip. The days were longer and I remember we stayed out there until dusk, leisurely stacking the damp discarded leaves like a deck of cards and fanning them out until the sun went down. Those days, it seemed we had all the time in the world.

Although I enjoyed my share of doughy Domino’s pizza, I often sought the nutty taste of artichokes. From March through May you could buy four for a dollar at the grocery store, and for twenty five cents I had dinner that lasted longer than a bowl of ramen. Soon, lemon juice and olive oil replaced the cloying mayonnaise, and of course, nothing was more rewarding than scooping out the fuzzy choke and biting into that warm meaty heart.

I didn’t know then that artichokes are a California commodity. The first farms were planted on a few acres near Half Moon Bay by Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. The cool foggy summers, mild winters and proximity to the ocean were the perfect growing climate, producing a heavy spring crop and a lighter fall crop that today provides nearly one hundred percent of the nation’s supply. It’s a labor-intensive plant requiring hand harvesting with a knife and tossing the buds into a sack that workers carry on their backs as they walk in between the rows. Attempts at developing thorn-free varieties that can be harvested year round have not been able to surpass the taste of the perennial Green Globe. So from now until May, we feast on artichokes – steamed, grilled, braised, fried, raw, buried under ashes or stuffed – nothing spells spring quite like it.

It wasn’t until I went to France that my whole-steamed method seemed archaic. I was given crates of artichokes to prep and watched wide-eyed as my fellow cooks stripped the silvery green suit of armor going straight for the heart, whacking away at great speed and amassing mountains of leaves. The shelves in the walk-in refrigerator held buckets of artichoke hearts with long trimmed stems like old fashioned champagne glasses floating in acidulated water. I learned to shred through cases but never stopped lamenting the waste of all those teaspoons of flesh at the base of each leaf. Later, working for a frugal chef, I boiled the leaves and scraped their ends to make a luscious puree with lemon, shallots and butter for an exquisitely simple rack of lamb.

Back in California, I waited for March and the first sign of my prickly crop to launch the spring menu. We paraded them in a butter lettuce salad with chunks of seared foie gras, in lemony broths poached with fish and saffron, on savory tarts with hazelnut butter and ricotta, and yes, we scrimped and scraped the leaves to fill ravioli. And when the first case of baby artichokes arrived, we braised them with carrots and pearl onions, dry white wine and bay leaves, to eat warm in a shallow bowl with good crusty bread – unhurried, like we had all the time in the world.

L’Amie Donia’s Braised Artichokes

Serves 4-6

2 carrots

½ pound pearl onions

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bay leaf

2 sprigs of thyme

2 pounds baby artichokes or 6-8 medium artichokes

2 lemons and zest of one

¼ teaspoon saffron

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup dry white wine

Vegetable broth or water

1 tablespoon capers

1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

-Peel the carrots and cut into ¼ inch slices. Peel the pearl onions and leave whole.

-Cut the stems of the artichokes and cut about ¾ inch off the tops, then break off 2 rows of leaves from the base and trim the bottoms. Gently spread the leaves of each artichoke and use a small spoon to remove the choke. Place in a bowl of cold water with the juice of one lemon.

-In a heavy saucepan, warm 4 tablespoons of olive oil over low heat. Slowly cook the carrots and onions until they begin to turn golden. Arrange the artichokes in the pan in a single layer. Add the bay leaf, fresh thyme, crushed garlic, the juice and zest of one lemon, saffron, and salt and pepper to taste.

-Pour the wine over the artichokes and add vegetable broth or water until they are just immersed. Cover and cook over medium heat for 15-20 minutes, then remove the lid, add capers, and reduce the cooking liquid over medium high heat. Use the tip of a paring knife to test the artichokes and remove from heat when they are tender.

-Sprinkle with parsley and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Serve warm in a bowl with good bread to mop up the juices, or as a side dish with roast lamb, rabbit, or fish.

A Taste For Small Things

There is a quirky Persian market a half hour away, beloved by my family not only for its delicious grilled kebabs, but for the dry humor of the cranky old-timers who run the register and the take-out counter. I don’t have to drive twelve miles to buy parsley, leeks, and dill, but my list is filled with longing and the herbs are just an excuse. The Rose Market gives me a taste of home; to sniff packets of sumac and cardamom, even cakes of soap; to eavesdrop on the easy banter between the clerks—how I love to hear their voices over the static of a loudspeaker calling the kebab orders like life sentences to guys who man the grill—Two chicken, two koobideh. For here! I linger in the tea isle and study the script on each tin, I fondle jars of fig and sour cherry jam, filling my basket with lavashak - pomegranate fruit leather, pistachio halva, and noghl - sugar coated almonds. If I need saffron, I know the mister keeps it under the cash register like hundred dollar bills. When I tease him about his secret stash, he hands me a tiny cellophane envelope filled with delicate threads, like crimson hay. Here, good things come in small packages.

When I first met my husband, he was a regular at The Rose Market. Every Saturday morning, after a pick-up soccer game, he joined two Iranian teammates for lunch, and there he was introduced to Persian cuisine. Ah, the things we do for love. Eager to please my family, he asked his friends to teach him Farsi and they obliged. Later, while boasting to my mother that they had ordered koobideh, a ground beef kebab, gojeh, a grilled tomato, and dool - penis, for lunch, she howled knowing his friends had set a trap. “You mean doogh, honey. Not dool!” she corrected. “Yes, the fizzy yogurt drink. It’s delicious!” he replied. No doubt.

Passing years have not diminished my enthusiasm for the charms of Rose Market. I anticipate the long drive like a dog wags its tail before leaving for a walk. It begins in the morning as I’m staring out the window at the first blossom on the crabapple tree. By the time the breakfast dishes are done, I’ve composed a list: dried mulberries, sugar cubes, feta, cucumbers, but I’ll come home with much more. I don’t want to leave looking over my shoulder, wondering if I might have forgotten something. Each ingredient yields a twin I would not want to leave behind, tea for sugar cubes, yogurt for cucumbers, lavash for feta. But these trips are quotidian compared to our Norouz pilgrimage. That’s when I make up for all the wish lists I never wrote to Santa.

Norouz, the Persian New Year, coincides with the first day of spring and in my efforts to get it right, to follow tradition and uphold a cherished holiday, I look to my grumpy grocer. The shelves at The Rose are stocked with everything from hyacinth to delicate chickpea cookies scented with rosewater, the owners going so far as bringing in a fish tank and scooping out goldfish for your haftsin, the symbolic table you will likely find in every Iranian household days before March 20^th. I sense the old-timers are on my side. They will send me home with everything I need to celebrate like a pro.

When I’ve marinated my fish with lemon peel and salt, and washed the fresh herbs for sabzi polo, a rice dish as quintessential as turkey on Thanksgiving, I am once again an apprentice to the alchemist, a student of Persian cuisine. No matter how many times I’ve made this dish, after chopping dill, parsley, and cilantro, spooning layers of rice with herbs, cinnamon, leeks, and green garlic, then wrapping the lid of my rice pot with a dishtowel to trap the steam, I still feel the eyes of generations before me with raised eyebrows and their discontent. Humph! Look how coarsely she chopped the herbs. My God that rice is begging for butter! Where is the fenugreek? Did you see how stingy she was with the cinnamon? I drizzle more butter and say grace because an apprentice is never sure if she got it right, always getting by on a song and a prayer with a little help from the fellas.

NPR's Tell Me More is doing a wonderful broadcast all about Norouz on Tuesday March 20th.

Vernal Equinox

Daylight savings precedes the first day of spring, but that moment when the sun crosses the earth’s celestial equator, making night and day of equal length all over the earth will be on March 19^th, at 10:14 pm PST. Perhaps after such a mild winter it isn’t worth noting the actual date. After all, trees are already blossoming, and the other day, my husband opened the trunk to display a dazzling selection of perennials in pinks, oranges, and whites to plant in the backyard. But the spring equinox marks the Persian New Year, a holiday we have not forsaken in exile. Norooz ceremonies are symbolic of the reawakening of nature, its rituals dating back three thousand years. In the weeks prior to the new year, homes are swept clean, new clothes are sewn or purchased, seeds are germinated for sprouts, and a ceremonial table is set with the seven dishes that herald spring and rebirth. As part of a generation that straddles two cultures, we are the sons and daughters who sweep what remains of our parents’ dreams for peace and a new beginning.

My earliest memories of Norooz carry the scent of hyacinth and toasted almonds, slivered and caramelized with saffron and honey. My grandmother served them with tea when we paid our first day of spring visit, noticing at last, my new suede shoes. I had insisted on them, even though they were too tight and my heels were scraped. I couldn’t resist the soft two-tone tassels, one mauve, one rose. Every year, in early March, my mother shepherded us through the shops that lined the avenues of Tehran to buy new clothes for the holiday, calling on a seamstress to make our dresses. I pictured bright patterns, sashes and satin collars, but after standing still for too long to be pinned and measured, I inevitably ended up in a modest shift with cap sleeves—like ordering chicken after you’ve considered chateaubriand. The trees along the wide boulevards were in full bloom, shopkeepers kept longer hours, serenading us with saz o avaz, our holiday “carols”, if you will, filling those early evenings with music and promise. To me, the world smelled like flowers.

The other day, I sat next to my son on the floor surrounded by Legos, watching him maneuver gently like Gulliver between Lilliputian rooftop gardens, garages, fountains with statues surrounded by park benches, and a car wash. Even in Lego City there were signs of spring and I was compelled to ask what Norooz meant to him. Year after year, he’s watched me fumble through preparations for a holiday that falls somewhere between Valentine’s Day and Easter, a cherished tradition that we, as Iranian Americans, hold dear lest we lose this hallmark of our homeland, too. I was curious to know if it mattered to him whether we set the haftsin, the symbolic table with seven elements of life, namely sabzeh, wheat sprouts representing rebirth; sib, apple, a symbol of health; sumac, which mirrors the color of sunrise; sekeh, coins for prosperity; serkeh, vinegar, representing the wisdom of age; seer, garlic, a tribute to health;senjed, the dried fruit of a lotus tree, symbolic of love, and other components such as a flowering hyacinth, candles lit for every child in the family, painted eggs, goldfish, a volume of poems by Hafez, and a mirror to reflect everything we hope for in the new year, to be mindful and present. I wondered if he would miss buying goldfish and giving them silly Farsi names, coloring eggs, going to the bank for crisp dollar bills (the only gift exchange being new money for children), spring cleaning, or buying new shoes. Would he look in the pantry cupboard for the clover shaped chickpea cookies he adored? His answer came slowly but clearly, that mostly he liked celebrating something unique, different from the other holidays: “It’s not commercial…you don’t see the junk at Target.” If a nightingale lit on my shoulder at that moment and sang, it would not have sounded sweeter.

Yes, it mattered. That I am still learning how to tend wheat sprouts for the haftsin isn’t important. For too long, I had relied on my mother to carry the tradition, not paying close enough attention to how it all came together—like a terrific Thanksgiving meal you show up for with a napkin tucked in your collar. I’m no longer a visiting grandchild to a scene where smoke from my grandfather’s pipe floats above my face when he reaches to put a gold coin in my pocket. An immigrant’s career continues as long as there are children walking between us, mapping the space between their parents and grandparents. It’s not enough to sit them down and tell them stories about the ancient land of Persia and its empire. Singing them a version of Glory Days won’t suffice, for they are over. We have to plant real gardens, in real earth, in front of our new homes, and when the hyacinth blooms, to bring the scent inside and tell them: “This, this is what Norooz smells like.”

Masterful

Robert Motherwell, 1973 "Blue Painting"

Heidi swam an elegant backstroke. Extending her arms in long powerful arches like a painter gone mad with his brush—coloring crescent moons blue with sweeping motions across his canvas. So when I picture her now, it is always in the pool, on her back, her eyes looking up at the clouds and migrating birds, swinging her arms in that carefree look-at-me-I’m-a-bird way.

Eight years ago, I was a rookie masters swimmer and she welcomed me warmly in the pre-dawn hours. Heidi made sure she knew who she was swimming with—no anonymity allowed, waiting for us at the wall to make sure we all knew the warm-up, but more importantly, to say hello, and always, always, greeting us with: “It’s so nice to see you.” And an hour later, when we heard Coach Tim call: “That’s a wrap.”, she’d look in your eyes and say: “Thank you for swimming with me.” Really.

Our friendship was limited to time spent at the pool and in the showers, but what struck me was that Heidi didn’t waste time on small talk, delving into conversations about travel, marriage, your new baby, movies, and being an avid reader, books. She talked to everyone indiscriminately and earnestly like the child who waves hello from his car seat to people in adjacent cars. And sometimes, you would almost be annoyed with this goodwill ambassador, but not for long, for she disarmed you with her open smile.  Because it wasn’t so much friendliness, but her genuine interest in knowing what you cared about, who you were underneath the swim cap and goggles. She asked good questions and listened for your answer with her head tilted, as if what you had to say was all she cared about.

When Heidi had a stroke, we swam, filling our days with yards. What else were we to do? Some people pray. Some people swim. We did a lot of both—convinced that if we swam hard enough, long enough, she would come back to us. One thing I’ve learned about swimmers is, we’re a dogged bunch. Fill a three-foot hole with water, we’ll jump in and try to do laps.

They say that when loved ones die, they leave a hole. Heidi’s loss on the other hand, has filled us with a capacity to love we didn’t know we had—our hearts have grown fonder, of each other, of water, of trees, rain, sun, clouds, grueling work-outs, warm showers. We’ve become like the mad painter, filling our canvas with blues, imitating her arc.