Food like love

In my family, love looks like an intricately crafted meal.

It looks like a big pot of stew that starts first with long-sauteed onions and turmeric. It looks like basmati rice made just right so the bottom of the pot creates crispy rice we all fight over called tahdig.

When I think about the women in my family, I first think about their meals. Khaleh Afi makes incredible nokhodchi (she owned a bakery in Shiraz, you know). Ameh Shamsi’s fesenjan is special because she adds sugar despite the pomegranate molasses and still doesn’t lose the sour undertones. Ameh Joon Shokooh brings her European flair to food. She mashes jam and minty veggies with ricotta between bread on a pan, like a griddle, and calls them sandeh-veech. She makes a mean almond cake, delicately pressing a marcona almond atop each slice for appeal.

We overfeed.

We pull something from the freezer to defrost while drinking morning coffee and start discussing possibilities over breakfast about our cooking plans, as if we have not another thing in the world to do.

Khoreshteh ghormeh sabzi, which I used to call ‘green stew’ as a kid, takes all day. Do you have cilantro and fenugreek? My mom asks. Okay how about khoreshteh bamieh? Did you buy okra? It has to be whole, not that frozen chopped kind, my aunt chimes in. In Khoramshahr, they make it spicy you know. Ah, Jon calls okra slimy. Let’s make tahchin- chicken baked into rice with yogurt like a cake- because then the kids will happily eat. What time are we aiming for? Good, tahchin it is.

When I was a teenager visiting my grandparents’ apartment in Shiraz, Maman Ghanieh asked me what I wanted as my last meal before heading back to the States. I remember my answer was shir berenj, rice pudding, with extra cardamom on top. She would make it in little bowls and serve them with the tiniest spoons that became the only thing I inherited when she left us.

My mother baked cookies and cake from scratch nearly every day when I was a child, without a recipe.  I learned to do the same. She taught me the ratios of wet to dry and explained the chemistry of fat vs. firming ingredients. I even used to keep an Instagram account called nqcooks with pretty pictures of all that I concocted, not often able to replicate the same dish given all my experimenting. As a child, her ghottab was my favorite because of the filling. I’d eat a dozen of those walnut-filled pastries in a sitting after watching her mash cardamom pods with a pestle to mix with cinnamon for the insides.

The smell of baking for me is synonymous with love.

But I’ve been uninspired.

My cousin-in-law Tillie, another big cook, told me this morning the thing that she loved has become the thing she hates. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Defrosting something in the morning just means work later on, when I am likely going to be spent and uninterested. I don’t care to admit the number of times recently that the kids eat bread and cheese and fruit for a meal.

Yesterday when I called my family, my father’s first question was, “What are you making for dinner?”

My answer: I’m going to throw every vegetable from the fridge into a skillet and crack some eggs on it.

I swallowed and pushed the guilt aside.

“Oh, like kuku sabzi?” he asked.

“Yep Daddy, just like kuku sabzi.”

Right now, easy is what we need. But I’ll be dreaming of shir berenj.

Slice of Life, Day 11

Recipes for foods mentioned:

Tahdig crispy rice

Nokhodchi chickpea cookies

Fesenjan pomegranate walnut stew

Tahchin baked chicken in rice

Ghormeh Sabzi greens stew

Shir Berenj rice pudding

Khoreshteh Bamieh okra stew

Ghottab almond + walnut-filled crescents

Kuku Sabzi greens frittata