Wishful Thinking

I like a good baklava. Layer after layer of light, crispy dough with pistachios and walnuts coated in orange blossom syrup, a heavenly sweet for special occasions. Of course nothing could ever be quite as good as a homemade baklava but I feel that perhaps the best one I ever ate was at the quirky Persian market on Castro Street, in 2008. It happened in March, as I was making my way through the aisle of jams and tea, shopping with fellow Iranian-Americans for the Norooz holiday, the Persian New Year celebration that coincides with the first day of spring. I have loved this mini mart for its colors and perfumes of home and for the amiable old-timers who man the register and holler your take-out order on the loudspeaker. I was checking my list, each item yielding a twin I could not leave behind, saffron for rice, yogurt for cucumbers, when a clerk turned the volume up on a television set affixed to the wall. We all turned to face the screen to watch President Obama wish us a Happy Norooz. We gazed openmouthed. It was very quiet until someone clapped and then we all put our baskets down to join in the applause. Another clerk walked through the aisles with a box of baklava. How sweet it was! How far we had traveled. How this message stoked our hopes for peace. Yes, that was the best baklava of my whole life, and Ziba joon and Mrs. Escandar would understand this one-time betrayal.

Norooz ceremonies are symbolic of the reawakening of nature, its rituals secular, dating back three thousand years. In the weeks prior to the new year, homes are swept clean, new clothes are purchased, seeds are germinated for sprouts, and a ceremonial table, the Haftsin, is set with seven symbols of spring and rebirth.

Year after year, a generation of Iranian-Americans like me, who arrived nearly four decades ago as teenagers, fumble through preparations for a holiday that falls somewhere between Valentine’s Day and Easter, trying our best to follow the customs lest we lose this hallmark of our homeland, too. Nostalgia hits us each spring and we are excited again, to get the tradition right. For the next eight years, President Obama continued to send a Norooz message, always quoting a Persian poet, even going so far as setting a Haftsin table at the White House, dictating a peacefulness we had thought unattainable. We listened, clinging to every word. Let me tell you, it blew our minds. For the first time, in a long time, overcome with a sense of belonging, we celebrated spring with new vigor.

This year, the vernal equinox, that moment when the sun crosses the earth’s celestial equator, making night and day of equal length will occur on March 20^th, at 3:28 A.M. PST. I’ll set my alarm for 3:25, allowing myself four minutes to crawl out of bed and acknowledge the moment before going back to sleep. When I was a child, regardless of the hour, my parents gathered us around the haftsin table just before a radio broadcast of the countdown to the spring equinox followed by the Shah’s new year wishes. Throughout my childhood I expected something magical to happen when the clock struck spring, and afterwards, it really did feel dreamy to see my family in such good spirits, beautiful in their new clothes.

Spring comes earlier to my home in California. Already, the neighborhood trees are in full bloom. Recent rainstorms have lifted us from a five- year drought and the hills are bright green again. Ah, Spring, you never give up. You insist on coming back. I see you emerging from the cracks in the sidewalk, from the tight buds on the branches, making me tipsy with your heavy scent of hyacinth. I stand at the kitchen sink to wash the breakfast dishes and hear your song before I see you prancing for your mate. This tiny patch of earth where you flower is my garden and I ought to run out there to greet you but I shrug and turn away. This spring, no matter how much I try, my devotion to the season’s festivities has waned. In a brute reversal of goodwill, our delicate peace is threatened and the message so far has been menacing. Even so, I go to the Persian market to restock my pantry with pistachios and cardamom and I look back to the screen wistfully.

Girl Goes Down the Mountain

Iran, I have found you in the news again, but this time the landscape is promising and dotted with color. Oh, snowy slopes of my youth, what are you doing in the New York Times, brightening my kitchen counter while I light the griddle for pancakes?

I was an awkward twelve-year-old when my mother signed me up for ski lessons. She marched me straight to the only ski shop in Tehran where I was fitted for skis and boots. My outfit was borrowed--a bright tangerine parka with matching pants that were too snug. Doomed is how I felt.

On weekends, just before dawn, our instructor, Mr. Pazooki, picked up his students and drove to Dizin, the ski resort just an hour and a half from Tehran. As we wound our way up the mountain, six of us bounced on benches in the back of his Land Rover. On a good day, I threw up only three times. The five other children learned to recognize the signs and screamed "Agha (mister), pull over! Pull Over! Quickly!" Mr. P would swerve to the gravelly shoulder and leap out to watch me tumble from the back onto the snowdrift. He waited patiently on the edge of the road and listened to my shallow breaths as if he had all the time in the world. I prayed he would just leave without me.

I fell on my first run and my orange pants ripped in half exposing my underwear to the world. The children howled. These days I would have been arrested for indecency, but in 1972, my instructor shrugged off his parka and tied it around my waist, anxious to resume the lesson.

Did I refuse to go back after that first time? Yes. But my mother had paid for a season and by golly, she would carry me up that mountain herself if she had to. So I went. I vomited on the way, and it was hard, and I trailed behind the other kids, always the last link in the chain that made its slow descent towards Mr. Pazooki, who stood at the bottom, gazing up at my flailing arms.

Then it happened. I'm pretty sure it was the fifth or sixth lesson when fear washed away. Suddenly, all I could see was the light on the snow glinting around us and the only sounds were the soft slushy scrape of our skis racing down the hill and Mr. P smacking his gloved hands in applause.

Why this sudden longing in my chest? I have no idea. Standing here now, over a smoky griddle, I can hear the chair lift rattling and my friends shouting You dropped your stick! Snowy mountains are not far but nowhere is the peak so high, the range so immense and beautiful, the powder so soft as in Dizin.

Two Pigeons and a Fava Bean

Lean Food with Cook Utensils, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin

My grandfather raised pigeons in his backyard. I used to think the sound of cooing was a hymn unique to his house. To me, my grandfather's garden was an infinite maze of surprise and discovery.

I know if I went back today it would seem small and tangled, but in my childhood it loomed large and full of possibility. The rows of cages on stilts with their tiny doors were the closest thing I had to a dollhouse. Yet I was afraid of the erratic movement of birds each time my grandfather lifted the latch on those doors to "let the little devils out". If he allowed me to accompany him, I trailed behind apprehensive because I didn't much like pigeons outside of their cages. Their flutter, fits and starts between my feet made me anxious and I stood fixed as a pole in the midst of their nervous merriment. But I went for the occasion that occurred most rarely.

It seemed more like a magic trick the first time my grandfather reached inside a cubicle for an egg--like the penny he found behind my ear. I can still see the smooth and speckled orb he cradled in his palm. "How?" I gasped. "Two pigeons and time," he replied. I stared openmouthed as he pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket to wrap the egg. "Take this inside." I dashed like a courier, cautiously holding the bundle in front of me, up the path, past the fountain, to the kitchen, where the woman who cooked his meals after my grandmother died, was bent over a basket of shelling beans. How did beans make more beans? How did pigeons make more pigeons? I remained puzzled over the former, but the latter was less vague and nothing short of a miracle.

I have since learned that in Italy, there is a gentler way of achieving two ends with a single effort. In Italian, a fava bean replaces the proverbial stone to kill two birds. My friend Susanna taught me this kinder expression: due piccioni con una fava. I thought of my grandfather and how in one afternoon, he taught his granddaughter about nature and nurture.

Eternally Yours

Mitchell Johnson, "Rome (Marcello)," 2015 22x26 inches, oil/linen

My last visit to Rome was in the summer of 1968. I was six years old and my shoes were too tight. My mother agreed to a pair of two-tone, suede Mary Janes which were too small, but I kept that to myself until I was whimpering through the narrow cobblestone streets, through the Vatican and the galleries, through the ruins and the basilicas. That she kept a brisk pace and crossed the streets like a Roman, didn't help. An absolute virtuoso, weaving through Fiat toy cars, staring straight ahead, like she knew where she was going, briefly consulting a map before lunging once more into traffic, all the while pulling me along as I half ran, tripped, and hobbled to keep up.

Rome in 1968 must have been splendid, a far less congested tourists' playground. If only I could remember what I saw...Bernini's fountains, the Colosseum, the Sistine chapel, but my eyes were fixed on my shoes. Oh, how pretty they were--soft pink and pistachio green, with a small suede flower stitched to the buckle. I brushed each and every smudge with my sleeve. Oh, how they hurt. Oh, if only we could rest a bit. Then she stopped. Do you see what I see? her smile said. Inside the gelateria was like stepping into a clock and stopping time, for the minutes it took me to stretch up to the glass case, to choose a flavor from the range of colors, and the moments we sat on a bench with an ice cream in our hands, were long and indulgent--an eternity to a child.

When the opportunity to spend a few weeks in Rome came up, I immediately recalled my suede shoes and the taste of my first gelato forty six years ago. My husband is a visiting artist at the American Academy, and in hindsight, I cannot believe I initially resisted the idea of joining him for part of his stay. What about our son's school, homework, basketball practice, I protested? What about my novel at the finish line? They stared at me Are you nuts? Well, yes.

Returning to Rome with my own family this winter, I watch my son, now taller than me, taking long strides across the same streets, stopping motorists with the same bravado as his grandmother, and once again I'm half jogging to keep up. At a cross light he slaps away the hand of a pick-pocketer unzipping my bag Don't touch her! he yells into the woman's face and she flees. He spends the next few hours devising schemes for catching thieves, luring them with fake money or filling a backpack with shards of glass. He's wound up. What does he think, I wonder, of walking along the Via Sacra in the footsteps of Julius Caesar, or the multilayered Basilica of San Clemente above a 1st-century Roman house, and the spooky underground passages beneath the Colosseum where men and beasts waited to be slaughtered? What about the young doctor in skinny jeans and a leather jacket who makes a house call when he's sick and examines him with such tenderness (say aaah like an Italian), or the homeless man who plays soccer with him in the park? What will he remember?

I'm seeing it all for the first time, really. Inside the Pantheon, my eyes are drawn to the dome and the opening to the sky. In the Sistine Chapel, I look to the ceiling for Michelangelo's Last Judgement. Bird watching beneath the tall umbrella pines in the Pamphili park, oh, how formal and dignified they stand, and yes, those are parrots nesting in the parasols! My gaze is unaccustomed to such splendor. It's like love and a new sky just opened above me. How can there be this feeling of newness in a place so ancient? They have all been here for an eternity, adapting again and again over centuries to their latest surroundings, to the next wave of humanity, insisting on their place. It is impossible to explain where we've been, but this time I feel connected to what we've seen. I won't wait so long to come back.

I wear more sensible shoes now, but my neck hurts. Isn't it time for an ice cream?

Swimming with the Stars

Henri Matisse The Swimming Pool

Never mind the oldest and the youngest. In the pool we are all the strongest. Our lane mate, Ann, turned eighty yesterday. Our pool sleeps under covers in the dark and on most mornings, Ann wakes up before the birds to lift and reel the heavy bedspread on a spool. At 5:45, it's always our turn to play! We show up like an army, thirty or forty of us to break the glitter she has uncovered, to splash and puff and shiver and swing our arms, to leave our rigid selves on land and watch the first, small, pink clouds sail above.

For years we've watched and learned from Ann's long, beautiful stroke, her razor sharp flip turn, the ear to ear smile and praise she lavishes on us when we've shaved a second off our interval. If I've arrived early enough to watch her take aim and jump in the pool, I'm reminded of hopping into fountains as a child and the defiant whoop whooping, I am the life in the fountain! Catch me if you can! 

This morning she swam beneath a canopy of balloons tied to a vase of flowers from Karen's garden. There goes joy in the water, I thought. 

Happy Birthday Ann.

Simmering Dinner

Photo: Wayne Bremser

Hearing that Judy Rodgers had passed away sent me to the kitchen. Her beautiful cookbook is one of three on my shelf and I've turned to it again and again because Judy, anchored as she was to technique and history, often had answers to all my questions, because repetition came before creativity and innovation. If you think making the same dish day after day is easy, it's not. If you're not falling in love with the same dish each time you carefully gather the ingredients for it, whether it's a caesar salad or a hamburger, you should untie your apron and order take-out. 

I never had the privilege to work with Judy, but have always felt her tall slender presence nearby--a quirky angel with waist length hair, mini skirt and bright colored tights--you would have to search the planet for a more serious, dedicated, intelligent chef. Restaurants come and go, chefs tire and retire, but Zuni stayed and Judy never looked away. She spoke to every single diner through her intensely flavorful soups, her simmered dinners, creamy scrambled eggs, and summer puddings. Moored to her stove, gliding through the dining room with a champagne flute was not for her. She was marrow to the bone.

Tonight, in memory of Judy, we're making her braised chicken with honey and vinegar, substituting dates for figs, and remembering all the soulful meals, the birthdays and anniversaries we celebrated at Zuni.

So long Chef. 

At Last

“Hey, do you know this author Alice Munro,” my husband asked. “She’s Canadian. Did you ever read any of her books?” I woke up at five fifteen this morning to the news of my beloved author’s Nobel prize. What a glorious day! It’s been too long since I’ve actually jumped up and down over the announcement. The last time was in 1995 when Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), another good shepherd, received the award.

I’ve devoured every word Munro has ever written and reread her books when I miss her. Her stories come in teaspoons to be read and savored, page by slow page. To choose a favorite would be like finding one child more enchanting than the other. She taught me that all stories are right here in our backyards, laying low, subversive, unassuming as leaves, if only you bend down to examine them. I learned that a leaf lives an interesting life if you care to look closely and trace its veins like a palm reader to find the miracle of economy. Your entire world is there like an only child.

“Do I know her?” “I worship her!” How had he missed that?

Seventeen Going On Eighteen

During my senior year in high school, I took home economics with Mrs. P. The bulk of my repertoire at the time included banana bread and its many variations, but I came eager to learn how to transform eggs, butter, and sugar into cake, ground beef into meatballs, or flour, water, and yeast into bread. A teenager is always starving and I was no exception. There was no limit to my appetite and the 6th period class came late in the afternoon when I would've eaten my binder if it weren't for the promise of macaroni and cheese or shredded carrot raisin salad with honey mustard dressing.

Our co-ed class met in a big airy room with a cheery light that came through the windows. It felt like being let out of prison. Finally, in this space between the deep sinks, four burner stoves, and Mrs. P's pantry, I felt free. I didn't know it at the time, nor did I have a word for it--the closest image I can draw for you is that of Julie Andrews on the green Alpine pastures, breaking into song. Most of my classmates weren't there to learn how to feed themselves. Let's face it, it was an easy A and despite her stern expression, Mrs. P was a sweetheart, a P-for-pussycat who had been teaching for thirty years and passed the A's like a platter of snickerdoodles--more on her generosity later. Her curriculum focused on comfort food, dishes I turned to again and again in college. Except for her wonderful bran muffin recipe (the only one I've ever had that didn't taste like tree bark), there was no back-to-the earth, holier-than-whole buckwheat and barley gruel. She started each lesson by handing out a recipe or two, three-hole punched for our Home Ec binders, then walked away, leaving us to gather the ingredients, to weigh and measure. Oh, how I wished she wouldn't turn her back because the moment she disappeared around the corner into her office (more like a cubby in the back where I think she took the edge off with a pony of sherry), the first raisins followed by a scoop of ketchup (yes, we made our own) flew across the kitchen to land at your feet, if you were lucky, but often on your neck. This business of a "food fight" and its battle cry was as alien to me as pink hair and punk rock. Call me prudence, but this was where you could single me out as the foreign student. Throwing food was not only unthinkable and barbaric, but my mother would've yanked the hair from my scalp if I threw a grape in the air and tried to catch it. I had no choice but to appoint myself as the class monitor, at first begging them with Come on guys, stop it please, to emphatic cries of Children are starving in Ethiopia! Of course, it was useless but little did I know that trying to maintain order in a kitchen full of teenagers would be my first step to becoming a chef. Bless my friends for taking it well and girding the area around me, but they weren't about to stop. After all, what better place to offer their affection to the person they fancied?When you're young and savage, you show your love with a lump of baking chocolate and butter slipped into an unbuttoned polo shirt. A juvenile be-my-valentine, but effective.

Mrs. P emerged from her cubby, tall and teetering a little on her sensible heels, to praise our efforts, refusing a taste with an elegant wave of her hand, Oh no dear, I couldn't possibly digest that! She had sampled enough meatloaf and quick bread, knowing the good ones from the bad at a glance. We were dismissed lovingly and allowed to take home the remains of our cakes and custards. 

One March afternoon, upon receiving my first college rejection letter, I went to class with a lump in my throat. One of those lumps that a tap on my shoulder or a simple Are you okay? would have me dissolve into a puddle of tears--you know the kind. At five feet three inches, I came to Mrs. P's waist and she folded in half to look into my eyes before shooing me to her office where I wept on her shoulder and she brought me a glass of cold water and actually said there, there. When my hiccups subsided, she suggested I stop by her house for a chat one evening. I rode my bike to her little bungalow and she greeted me at the door in the same belted knee-length dress she wore to school (did I expect she'd be wearing sweatpants?) and ushered me to "the parlor" for a little glass of sherry served in a doll size cordial glass. I smelled almonds but tasted figs. Less than an ounce, but enough to overcome my awkward disposition so I could sit on a beautiful old chair across from her. She didn't offer me a cigarette (that would've blown my mind), it was a thrill just watching my teacher light one in front of me-- a smoke signal that graduation was near and we would part friends. Mrs. P spent the next hour asking me about what I expected to do with my life. No one had ever asked before. She didn't realize that I was straw in the wind, that she had given me the confidence to shape my longings into food, to tide over that gnawing hunger. 

It all started in a home economics class that is no longer offered in high school. I thought of Mrs. P after reading and commiserating with Jim Sollisch's article, Cooking is Freedom, in the Sunday Times. He reminded me of my Julie Andrews moment.

Mrs. P's Snickerdoodles

4 ounces unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/3 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

-Preheat oven to 350'.

-Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

-Add the egg and mix thoroughly.

-Fold in the flour, baking soda and salt. Mix just until combined.

-Chill the dough for 15-30 minutes before rolling into 1 inch balls.

-Combine cinnamon and sugar in a bowl.

-Toss the balls in cinnamon sugar, not at each other! 

-Place 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake 8-10 minutes until golden.

Child Labor

I have shelled my share of beans but none have ever made me wish I were a bean, like the fava bean. The moment I pull the zipper and see three, sometimes four or five fat beans nestled in their padded shell, I want to snuggle up next to them. A springtime delight, often overshadowed by the arrival of peas, asparagus, and artichokes, these friendly pods were made for small hands to shuck. If you have access to a few children, and you’re always nagging them about time spent on the computer, here’s a task that will keep their hands busy and hopefully trigger a sense of wonder. I would start with five pounds—the yield is so small that anything less is silly. If they don’t stop to fondle the fleshy pod and resist the temptation to try one raw, they are made of stone and you may consider trading them for more sensitive creatures.

When I was a child, my mother steamed them whole, dusted them with angelica and a drizzle of vinegar, and piled them on a big platter to serve as a snack. My sisters and I sat in a circle and peeled one after another, slipping off their rubbery skin with our fingernails and popping them in our mouths like missiles. I never had a chance to see, nor fondle, or I would’ve missed my share.

It wasn’t until I was an apprentice and given a few cases to shell that I saw them raw and held the bright green emeralds in my palm. Perhaps it’s just as well because as a child I would’ve wanted to line a box with Kleenex and tuck them in for the night. As it was, the chef was very annoyed that after an hour, I had made little progress. Later, I saw him layer those favas with braised butter lettuce and sweetbreads in a startlingly simple composition of spring. Enchanted and terrified (would I be capable of bringing these elements together with such grace?), I understood why I was there, in that kitchen, at that moment. Over the next few hours, we assembled that dish dozens of times and I imagined diners looking longingly at their neighbor’s plate, unable to resist ordering the same. Side by side, we repeated the pattern—soft greens against milky white, a tangle of herbs aloft, a drizzle of jus. It was new each time. Our chef inspected every single plate before letting it get whisked away. Like a father sending his child to the first day of kindergarten, he all but kissed the rim adieu.

It’s been years since I’ve eaten them steamed like my mother used to make. Tonight I may have to forgo the delight of seeing them snug in their cushy beds, unless I find some kids to help me shell.

Wonder Bread

My husband flew home from Copenhagen with Rugbrød lovingly wrapped in brown paper and tucked in his carry-on bag. Rug what, you say? This dark, sour, rye bread is a staple of the Danish diet and the pallet upon which smorrebrød, their delicious, sometimes elaborate, often humble, open-faced sandwiches are served. Some of you may be familiar with my bread tourette’s and therefore may not find it surprising that this loaf, warm from a Danish bakery, carried over the ocean, is a gift of true love.

Packed with cracked rye kernels, flaxseed, sunflower seeds, and weighing nearly three pounds, it is three times the weight of Milton’s multi-grain bread and mustn’t be confused with pumpernickel, which is steamed, and like language (German, Swedish, or Norwegian), it has a distinctly different flavor. Rugbrød (try saying it with your mouth closed like the Danes) would be my choice of sustenance if I were stranded in the wild, given that I could use it to crack nuts or build a raft. It is a complete package. One slice for breakfast spread with butter and honey, or two slices in your lunch box with goat cheese, cucumbers and dill, or a soft boiled egg with radishes, and you may not feel hungry till the next afternoon. Then again, at dusk, just before the day vanishes, what could be better than an open-faced sandwich of liver pate and pickled red onions with a cold beer on the patio? Let’s keep it simple tonight and save the gastronomical somersaults for another day when the light isn’t so pretty.

Over the next week, we will most likely carve this brick to feast morning, noon, and night. When it’s nearly gone, we’ll crumble the end piece for the sparrows, and think back on it with a real nostalgia. How wholesome it was! How it comforted me! How it was, yes, the best bread of my whole life and all other beloved bakeries would understand my brief betrayal.

Rebound

Gone are the days I could shield my son from the news. Driving to basketball practice with four boys on Monday afternoon, he turned to me “Did you hear, mom?” “Hear what,” was my response. Blood stained scenes of the Boston sidewalks and maimed runners had already traveled across their screens and my urge to reach for his phone and shut it off, or better yet, hurl it out the window, was too little, too late. All I could do was keep my eyes on the road, my hands trembling at ten and two—please, let me carry these children safely, please. “Do you have your seatbelts on?” I asked. Were they five years old? Did I seriously just ask them that?

At eleven and twelve, they’re still like puppies, scrambling over each other’s conversations, eager to tell me where, when, how they heard about the Marathon bombing. I struggled for something to say, but I wasn’t fast enough so I drove and listened. It occurred to me that they had received this news with a good measure of detachment, drawing parallels to other horrors of their times.

I was supposed to be baptized on nine-eleven, but my parents cancelled it.

So you mean you weren’t baptized?

Yeah, maybe a week later.

Dude, do you remember water splashed on your head?

Yeah. I was, like, whoa, what’s going on?

How could you possibly remember that?

My mom told me.

Dude, my cousin was in a restaurant and they had to evacuate cuz there was a bomb.

Did it explode?

Nah. It was just a bomb scare. Some nut called and said he’s gonna blow up the place.

Who does that?

Aliens.

Good. Good for you, I thought, for wiping away the terror, for dismissing these maladjusted nuts and insisting that we return to normal as quickly as possible. In the decade since their birth, they have grown accustomed to this cycle of horror as routine, but it hasn’t diminished their trust in us, or in the world, as large and compassionate. I wanted to pull over and just hug them.

Afterward, I watched them saunter leisurely to the gym, jostling and slugging each other playfully. Was I going to sit there in the car for two hours and wait for them? It didn’t seem like a bad plan. Rage and sorrow made it hard to move a muscle. It was a beautiful afternoon. A lacrosse team was running laps on the track. I had my running shoes in the trunk. The only logical thing to do was to see if I could keep up with them.

A Bone to Pick

                                                   Paul Cezanne Still Life with Onions 1896

If you live in the Bay Area you know we had a heat spell this week with temperatures in the upper eighties. Our heat is coy—stopping by unannounced at lunch time, gone by sundown, always leaves you wondering if he’ll be back, if it was something you said, if you need a sweater. At noon, it was eighty five degrees—not a day I would have chosen to make French onion soup. If it were up to me, we’d have Popsicles for dinner.

Since my son read a short story by Roald Dahl about a young boy who muses about onion soup, he’s been asking me why I haven’t made it for him. He’s right to wonder. After all, I ran a French restaurant with onion soup on the menu year round. Even in July I wouldn’t dare take it off the menu lest I face a revolution. A third reminder came last night before he fell asleep “How about that onion soup?” What is wrong with me, I wondered, this is the simplest, most delicious creation in culinary history and I’ve denied him? The thing is, it’s not so easy to find a bowl of authentic onion soup—even cafés in France keep it on their menus for tourists and serve boiled bouillon cubes with three strands of limp onions, forgotten pieces of baguette that fell behind the counter, and a sad sprinkling of what could be string cheese.

Even the butcher was surprised by my request for beef bones when almost everyone will surely be firing up their grills tonight. It didn’t take long for the house to heat up with ten pounds of knuckles roasting in the oven and I do love the sweet smell of caramelized bones. If you’re going to make stock, you might as well make a couple of gallons—at least it seemed like a good idea before the two stock pots came to a boil on the stove. I took a cold shower, then prepped the onions. If you saw the movie Julie and Julia with the one and only Meryl Streep, you may remember the mountain of onions she sliced to earn her stripes. Well, that’s how much you need for a pot of onion soup. If you think you have enough, keep going. Do you have a pot big enough to sauté a wheelbarrow of onions? Yes you do. Grab your big belly pot and throw them all in there, or do it in two batches if you must—like spinach, they shrink as they cook. Add a whole clove or two and a bouquet of thyme and bay leaf (just one). If you’re an impatient person you probably haven’t read this far so it doesn’t seem necessary to mention that now is the time to work on your taxes or fold some laundry, because this part takes a while. Slowly, another sweet aroma will overcome the scent of that rich broth simmering on the back burner. I like to stick my head in the pot when the onions are just turning golden and have a good sniff, then drizzle a little honey to hush a sweet tooth. When I was an apprentice, my chef used to say I was capable of making even pickled herring sweet. “Mon dieu,” he’d cry every time I reached for the honey pot.

The honey is like a sigh. You’ll know when you hear it to open a bottle of good red wine and drench the onions, saving a glass for yourself. Here, the onions will look gloomy, overcast, but not for long (long enough to fold some more laundry, strain your beef stock, toast some croutons), as they will simmer from murky to a glossy crimson, ready for their broth. Let everybody meet and greet, but not too enthusiastically—think British restraint—a gentle boil for a half hour and your soup is ready to be ladled into bowls. I do love the classic ones with the stubby handles that allow you to slide them under the broiler (salamander, for you colts). But first, drop in your croutons (please, make your own), layer some shaved Gruyere cheese, and let it melt—as in bubbling and dripping over the sides. Then wipe your brow and call the cubs to the table—if the heavenly fragrance hasn’t beckoned already. Hopefully you will have extra croutons because those warm bones from your stock are cannons loaded with marrow. Lacquer a spoonful on toast to savor and swallow this magnificent reward.

Donia Bijan Bay Area Author Events

Mountain View Library
Mountain View, CA
Thursday, May 9th, 7 pm


Burlingame Library Foundation
Author Lunch
Saturday May 11th, Noon


Draeger's Cooking School
Menlo Park, CA
Wednesday May 5th, 6:30 pm

Shake n' Bake

I was twelve the first time I ate fried chicken. My mother was away for a conference and my Aunt Homa invited my father and me for dinner. I always enjoyed going to her house because she not only had a wicked sense of humor, but a delicious hand—her cooking was tasty. She kept au courant with songs, film, recipes from Good Housekeeping sent to her from abroad. I also loved that Aunt Homa stood up to my dad if he so much as whispered a complaint about his wife’s absence. “You should be so proud of her,” she’d snap.

On this February night, she served us crispy golden chicken legs with parsley potatoes and a green salad. The simplicity of this meal would’ve struck an Iranian guest as miserly. A measure of a ‘better’ host is the surplus of food, a galaxy of dishes on a buffet around which your guests will orbit sampling everything, crowding their plates with pyramids of rice and stews, pickled vegetables and yogurts, bread and feta cheese, herbs and salad. I think my father may have even dared tease my aunt about her scanty offering. That first bite of fried chicken was unlike anything I had ever tasted. I closed my eyes and chewed slowly to understand the crackling outside and the tender inside. I glanced at my father devouring a drumstick, his mustache glistening. Quickly I ate everything else on my plate—saving the best for last. No sooner had I finished than my aunt served me another piece, then another. Like love, I would never tire of it.

Later in the kitchen when I was helping Aunt Homa clean up, she asked if I wanted to know how to make her chicken. An invitation to the ball would not have excited me as much. She handed me pen and paper to write: Rub chicken legs with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put Corn Flakes in a bowl and crush the flakes with your hands. Toss the chicken with the Corn Flakes and lay flat on a greased baking dish. Bake in a 400-degree oven until they’re golden brown. She didn’t tell me to pre-heat the oven, or how many chicken legs, or how long to bake them, but taught me that anyone who cared could learn.

My dad did the grocery shopping while my mother was away. We’d been eating a lot of eggs in her absence, so I asked him to buy chicken. Corn Flakes, however, were not so easy to come by, but one nearby market kept a paltry selection of stale American cereal. When my father came home from work, I served him ‘Kellogg’s chicken’ with radishes and a sliced cucumber drizzled with lemon juice, then watched him chew happily the first meal I had ever made him. He was the hardest working man I knew and usually never came home before ten o’clock which gave me plenty of time to experiment and tweak the only dish I’d learned to cook. Night after night we feasted on chicken until my mother came home, surprised to find her enameled stove spotless. We resumed a more balanced, colorful menu, which after days of browned bird legs, felt like a carnival.

Just because I’m a chef doesn’t mean that we eat duck a l’orange every night. Even though in my family we talk about what’s-for-dinner at breakfast, there are days when I have to fall upon my tried and true. The other night, after a busy day, I crushed a couple bars of Weetabix (if you’re wondering why I have that in my pantry, it’s not as bad as Twix), and tossed seasoned chicken legs with the crumbled flakes in a Ziploc bag. And since the oven was on anyway, I roasted some fingerling potatoes, too. A butter lettuce salad with Dijon vinaigrette and voila! Dinner was ready. Weetabix, we agreed, is a happy substitution for Corn Flakes, breadcrumbs, or even real fried chicken. At the table, I made a toast to my auntie who knew that less is more and you’re never too young to cook for your parents. 

Bisquick

Raise your hand if you ever took a typing class in high school. One or two hours a week dedicated to tapping keys in a windowless room, all girls except for two boys in the back row. I was of the Hunt and Peck variety, which meant I sacrificed speed by glancing away from the copy to find and press each key individually instead of relying on the memorized position of the keys. I probably took the class because I thought it would have something to do with writing, not transcribing at record speed. Nevertheless, it came in handy in college when I stayed up all night to finish term papers—the ding of the carriage return and clickety-clack not only made good company in the still dormitory, they provided just the right little-engine-that-could motion that kept me on track.

In the early nineties, I upgraded to a portable Brother electric typewriter to write a business plan for a restaurant. At the time, it seemed harebrained—an impossible dream (I was told many times), but once I started pecking, the words nudged each other forward—I think I can, I think I can. And when the lease for L’amie Donia was signed (oddly the space used to be a typewriter repair shop), we shoved a desk into the storage room upstairs and it became my office where I wrote menus with Brother. Downstairs carpenters hammered and drilled booths and bar tops, while I perched in my nest hatching summer dishes for a July opening.

For our first anniversary, my husband gave me a vintage Smith Corona (he’s never been subtle in urging me to write). It has a nice clatter even with neighboring arms jamming when pressed at the same time. In a crazy dream not too long ago, every key I pressed spurted batter instead of ink on the page. With every mistake I was forced to scrape away what looked like buttermilk pancakes off the carriage with a paring knife. I won’t even address the symbolism here, but what a mess! Talk about think before you write.

Brother retired sometime after my sister gave us a bright blue iMac which sat like a spaceship on my desk urging me to hop on board. Well, there was no going back after that, but I miss the bell, the springing forward of words that can’t be deleted, the commitment to staying on track. I love my laptop, but Brother never made it easy for me to walk away, erase, cut and paste, or check email in the middle of a paragraph. And when the day was done, you had something to show for it.

Walk With Me

In the shopping center near my parents’ old apartment, there was a flower shop that stood apart from the rest of the storefronts, angular like a kiosk dropped there accidentally. Home for the holidays on winter break, I carefully filled an application there, even listed my hobbies (cooking, reading, writing), left out where I was from, and confessed to my lack of experience. I could identify roses, carnations, and tulips but couldn’t tell apart poinsettias from amaryllis. It didn’t matter. When I handed it to the lady behind the counter, she asked if I had a driver’s license and sighed with relief when I opened my wallet. Never mind that I hadn’t driven since I totaled the used ’72 Firebird my parents had scraped together the funds to buy for my graduation. She called her husband who was out making deliveries to give him the good news. He rushed back to give me the keys to a white Dodge van in the parking lot with it’s rear doors thrown open displaying several wreaths with huge red bows destined for a house in Atherton.

I was terrified. The van was like a small bus. I drove ten miles an hour with my foot on the brakes, peering over the steering wheel, sweaty palms clenching it like a lifesaver. How do I get to Atherton? Where the hell is Atherton? I had an address on Oak Grove and a map open on the passenger seat. I was lost. Circling Menlo Park, stopping to read the house numbers, realizing too late I was in the wrong town. Joyous when I finally found the house, I parked and carried the enormous wreath to an iron gate that opened to a long driveway. I heard the bark before I saw the German Shepard bounding toward me, all fangs, snarl and spit with nothing between us but laurel and holly, so I bolted like a scared rabbit back to the van. It was noon when I had left the shop and four-fifteen when I pulled into their parking spot, pretty scraped up from trying to squeeze into the driver’s seat with a holly wreath.

The proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. Wells, didn’t fire me. Instead, they let me stay in the shop to help take orders and learn to assemble flowers and wreaths in elaborate baskets. I was glad for this paid apprenticeship and they never asked me to make another delivery. Their children were grown with families of their own, they had both graduated from Berkeley and I suppose they were glad to have a student from their alma mater around. They once asked me where I was from originally and I lied, of course. No one in her right mind would confess to being Iranian in the middle of the hostage crisis.

My day started at nine when I helped Mr. Wells pull all the Christmas greens out front, all the while quizzing me on their names, then leaving me to arrange the giant clay pots of cyclamen and boxwood topiaries. Back inside, Mrs. W would offer me some of her Earl Grey tea and we’d go about the store and in the fridge “to shop”, as she liked to say, for that day’s orders. We filled the hours quickly. At noon I would be sent to the deli to pick up their usual (pastrami on rye) while I ate a tuna sandwich from home. They were generous with their knowledge and I proved to be reliable as long as I didn’t have to drive. After lunch, I’d help pack the van and Mr. Wells would leave to make the deliveries, always rolling down the window to call out “Now you girls hold down the fort 'til I get back!”

And we did. I helped guys who were buying flowers for their dates, ladies looking for pretty centerpieces for their dinner parties, and once, a nice man with shaggy hair who stopped in to buy some ferns and camellias. Together we carried the plants to his pick up truck and he followed me back into the shop and handed me a check. When I asked to see his driver’s license, his face lit up with a smile. I took down the number like I’d been told to do and he left whistling. Closing the drawer that evening, Mr. Wells gasped, “Neil Young was here? Here in my shop? Donia did you see him? Martha, did you help him? Look, look, look at this check!” He caressed the signature. “Who’s Neil Young?” I asked. He stared at me, incredulous.

Already dark by five thirty, I would bring the greenery inside and carry a watering can around the store, giving the plants one last drink. My father would often take an evening stroll and walk me home. More than once I saw him standing a few yards away in the waning light, wearing his dark wool coat with the collar turned up, hands shoved in his pockets. I’d wave. He’d nod and look away, quietly sobbing. His shoulders told me—oh how they shook. My father buried his face in his coat and waited for me to finish. We walked home in silence and you would think I’d have asked “Why are you crying, Daddy?” But no, I was too afraid of the answer: because it wasn’t meant to happen this way, because I dreamed a different dream for my daughters, because you have dirt under your fingernails, because you are too young, because you’re giving up your youth, because. His daughter should not have to work in a flower shop, for god’s sake! But my parents had taught me everything I knew about hard work. And what about everything they’d given up for me? Their home, their country, brothers and sisters, friends, patients, work, family albums, all left behind so I could be here, in this world of possibilities, to live in it, free and in charge of my own becoming.

By the time we reached our front door, one of us would wonder aloud what my mother had made for dinner and the spell was broken. My mother opened the door and pulled me in for a hug and a sniff. She said she liked the wintry smell we carried inside and while I washed up, I’d hear them in the kitchen carrying silverware and glasses, the evening news coming on, and the smell of rice and stew that drew us to the table where we were no longer unmoored. The television glowed and while we waited for Jeopardy, I told them about my day, sometimes embellishing an encounter to draw a chuckle. My mother nourished us, anchored us, and slowly we felt the ebb of the emotion that had blindsided us out there.

Three weeks went by and it was time to go back to school. I hated leaving the cozy routine of the shop. They even had a little goodbye party for me. Mr. Wells, always generous, said, “Invite your mom and dad!” But on my last afternoon, it was just the three of us, and a carrot cake. Neil Young on the stereo. A few weeks later, I wrote to the Wells and told them where I was from. Originally. They wrote back and said they didn’t care.

Ancient Fruit

Quince, Apples, and Pears  1886 Paul Cezanne

My friend Julia and I met a thousand years ago. Just days before I opened my restaurant L’Amie Donia, I ran an ad in the Palo Alto Weekly looking for line cooks and dishwashers. My office was a desk my sister had hauled out of her garage and tucked into a corner of the cozy storage room where I wrote menus and listened to NPR nestled between one hundred pound bags of flour, five gallon bins of cornmeal, gunny sacks of lentils, rice, and cannellini beans. Slowly, slowly, I had been stocking our pantry and preparing for our opening, scared out of my mind, running on coffee and adrenaline. Julia came by one morning holding out an application she’d only half filled. A tall, skinny, tanned blond, with strong ropey arms who sat on the floor even though I offered her my chair (there wasn’t room for two chairs), wearing a white T-shirt that smelled of laundry soap with faded jeans and Tevas. Who is this girl? I thought. She had just arrived home from a long cycling trip through Washington State, when her mother had shown her the ad and here she was, sitting cross legged against a case of wine, sizing me up with pursed lips (they didn’t stay that way for long). I could only offer seven dollars an hour. Okay. What time shall I be here? When I arrived the next morning at seven, she was already there, sitting by the front door on the ground in another clean white T-shirt, her hair in a loose bun. I unlocked the door, we walked in, and for the next two years, she never left my side.

To say those first few months were hard is like saying war is hard. Ask a soldier to describe the front lines, and if she’s come home unscathed, perhaps you’ll hear how poorly reality compares with what she remembers as the swell of daunting tasks intensified and swallowed her whole and that she would not exchange any of it for the easy industry of an air conditioned office with a coffee maker and a microwave in a break room. Even on grim days when incident and no-show dishwashers collided, we summoned grace in the kitchen, and I’d go home only to return just a few hours later, playing with the keys in my pocket, ready to do it all over again. I’m here because you’re here, you go, I go, put the coffee on, crank up the ovens, roast the veal bones, blanch the fries, freeze the dough, cook the apples, strain the stock, check the walk in, mise-en-place, mise-en-place, mise-en-place, whatever we can do, we will do, and no one leaves until it gets done. Yes chef.

Within this orbit, rich with friendship and work, cooks come to know each other all too well, and it wasn’t long before Julia showed her mettle. This shy, freckled girl swore like a sailor and cooked like a couple of grandmothers, reaching back to essential ingredients before they were gussied up. Ask her to make pot roast and she’d sigh, intoxicated from the beefy aroma, as if it was already on her fork. And she provided the soundtrack to those long hours we spent prepping before the doors opened. Annie Lenox, The Pretenders, Sinead, so loud, the lady next door complained. Goodbye NPR. Alchemy and curiosity made Julia a wonderful chef—like her freckles, she was born into her talent. So when she was certain that I had a very capable brigade, she went off to take the helm of another kitchen in San Francisco and we remained war buddies with plenty of scars and mangled joints for souvenirs.

The other day, I came home to find a humungous bag of lumpy, yellow quince on my porch. No note. No sorry I missed you. I reached and put one right up to my nose to sniff its lemon rose scent through a gray fuzzy coat. It didn’t take me two seconds to know who they were from. Like I said, we know each other all too well. A different fellow might have forgotten how crazy I am for this ancient fruit. Julia remembered.

I’m making this Quince Cranberry sauce to take to Thanksgiving dinner at my sister-in-law’s house. That is, if I don’t eat it all before then with yogurt and granola.

Quince Cranberry Sauce

8 medium size quinces, peeled, seeded, and cut into eighths

1 ½ cups sugar

2 Tablespoons honey

2 cups water

Zest and juice of 2 oranges

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

4-5 cardamom pods cracked

2 cups fresh cranberries

Peel and core the quince very carefully, removing any fibrous pieces. Save a tablespoon of seeds. They’re packed with pectin and will give your sauce a lovely honey consistency.

In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, honey, water, citrus juice and zest and bring to a simmer on medium heat. Wrap the crushed cardamom pods and a tablespoon of quince seeds in a piece of cheesecloth and place in the warm liquid.

Add the quince and place a piece of parchment paper with a 2 inch hole cut in the center on top to keep the fruit immersed and allow steam to escape. Simmer for an hour until the quince are tender and have begun to turn rosy.

Gently fold the cranberries with the poached quince and simmer on low heat another 45 minutes until thickened and glossy. Remove the spice pouch. Pour into jelly jars, seal, and keep refrigerated.