New Food of Life is a treasury of 240 classical and regional Iranian recipes. 120 color photographs intertwined with descriptions of ancient and modern ceremonies, poetry, folk tales, travelogue excerpts, and anecdotes make New Food of Life not just a collection of recipes but also an introduction to Persian art and culture.

Each recipe is presented in a format that is brilliantly logical and marvelously easy to follow. You will learn how to cook rice, the jewel of Persian cooking, simply yet deliciously. And by combining it with a little meat, fowl, or fish, vegetables, fruits, and herbs, you'll have a balanced diet--colorful, yet healthy, simple yet exotic.

Iranian festivals, ceremonies, and celebrations, together with the menus and recipes associated with them are described in detail: from the ancient winter solstice celebration, Yalda, or the "sun's birthday," which is the origin of such Western holidays as Christmas and Halloween, to the rituals and symbolism involved in a modern Iranian marriage.

Like a magnificent Persian carpet, 1,000 years of Persian literature and art have been woven into the book. Food-related pieces from such classics as the 10th century Book of Kings, and 1,001 Nights to the miniatures of Mir Mussavar and Aq Mirak, from the poetry of Omar Khayyam to the humor of Mulla Nasruddin are all included.

Now with the ingredients for Iranian food available in most US cities, New Food of Life makes accessible one of the world's oldest--yet least known--culinary traditions where the first recipes were written 4,000 years ago in a cuneiform script on clay tablets.

---

Los Angeles Times: "The definitive book on Persian cooking: not just a recipe collection but a fond introduction to a culture and a fascinating cuisine."

The Washington Post: "A jewel of a book."

The New York Times: "Too delightful to miss."

Chicago Sun-Times: "A stunning cookbook."

USA Today: "A beautiful introduction to Persian cuisine and culture."

Booklist: "Modern Iranian cooking fits perfectly with today's lighter eating styles. Recipes are presented in an easily followed style."

World of Cookbooks: "Persian-Iranian cuisine can have no better introduction than this book."

The Toronto Star: "A fabulous new cookbook.... The glossy tome-an array of elegant recipes peppered with lavish color photos of food; Persian miniatures and artwork-is the result of 12 years of painstaking research."

Publishers Weekly: "Effectively weaves Iranian cookery with ancient Persian legends and poetry and descriptions of traditional ceremonies and holidays."

The Baltimore Sun: "[Mrs. Batmanglij] has been careful to keep the recipes authentic."

Middle East Studies Association Bulletin: "For those who find ethnic cookbooks a bit daunting and pretentious, here's one that holds true on what it promises, plus much much more.... suggests in book form what Babette's Feast and Like Water For Chocolate did through film.... this book will meet if not surpass your expectations."

{Full text of all reviews>>}

return to top

---

Preface
Appetizers and Side Dishes
Soups and Ashes
Vegetables
Egg Dishes
Meat, Chicken, and Fish
Rice
Khoresh
Pickles and Relishes
Preserves
Pastries and Breads
Desserts
Persian Snacks
Hot and Cold Drinks
Made and Stored Kitchen Ingedients
Ceremonies
Classification of Hot and Cold Foods
Equipment / Measures / Essential Ingredients
Persian-English Glossary
Menu Suggestions
Specialty Stores and Restaurants
Index / Bibliography

return to top

---

Preface to the First Edition


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.

Najmieh Batmanglij
Georgetown, March 1986

Preface to the New Edition

New Food of Life is the result of twelve years of testing recipes and creating new techniques for cooking Persian food in the West. It is also the culmination of my work on the three cookbooks I have written about Persian food and ceremonies in French, English, and Persian. I am writing this book for those new to Persian food and culture, those who enjoy having creative fun in the kitchen, and for gourmet cooks, both Iranian and American.

I have revised and added many new recipes and incorporated 100 color photographs, since they complete the text and make it easier to grasp the way a recipe should look. I have also added more explanations where it has seemed necessary and included an up-to-date list of Persian stores and restaurants. I have also added to this book ancient ceremonies and rituals still maintained in various parts of Iran.

Persian food is a very important and integral part of our life and culture, so important that it is very frequently used as a metaphor for describing beauty. Farzaneh Milani tells us in her book, Veil and Words, for example: "Moon-faced beauties have almond-shaped eyes, peachy complexions, pistachio-like mouths, jujube colored lips, hazelnut-like noses, red apple cheeks, and lemon- or pomegranate-like breasts-a mobile green grocery, if you will."

I believe that the same qualities that govern the Persian arts, a sense of unity achieved by juxtaposing many elements-each a unit in itself-and what one might call a particular feeling for the "delicate touch," or as we say in Persian, letafat, govern the art of Persian cuisine. I have tried to demonstrate this by including not only photographs of the dishes but also textiles, copper ware and pottery, miniatures, poetry, calligraphy, and pieces from classical Persian literature all related to food. I have explored the rich garden of Persian literature and art through the ages and have picked some images: from the fourth-century Pahlavi language text, King Khusrau and His Boy, the story of a boy who, before being knighted, is tested by the King not on his prowess in archery, sword fighting or riding, but on his knowledge of food, to the sixteenth-century miniatures of Mir Mussavar; from the Shahnameh by the great tenth-century Persian poet Ferdowsi, who gives a detailed description of fillet of veal marinated in saffron, rose water, old wine, and pure musk, to the contemporary writer Simin Daneshvar, who begins her best-selling novel, Savushun, with a description of a loaf of flat sangak bread, the likes of which had never been seen before.

I hope that while you try the recipes in the book, you will also read and look at these images, all of which draw from the rich spring of Persian culture, where the first recipes were written four thousand years ago in a cuneiform script on clay tablets.

Najmieh Batmanglij
Georgetown, June 1992

return to top

---

Introducing people to the pleasures of Persian cuisine has been a lifelong mission for Najmieh Batmanglij. Her New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Cerimonies was called "The definitive book of Persian cooking" by the Los Angeles Times, and her Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as one of the Vegetarian Cookbooks of 2004 by the New York Times. She has spent the past 25 years traveling, teaching cooking, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and has taught and lectured throughout the United States. She currently lives in Washington, DC, where she is teaching master classes in Persian cooking and is working on a new book for children to cook with the family.

return to top

•
•
•
•
•
•