by Donia Bijan
After spending the day on the beach, we would walk back to the simple villas we shared with the other families. We sat at long picnic-style tables and ate whole grilled fish drizzled with bitter oranges from the local orchards, or fava bean omelets with flat parsley, or rooster stew, while our fathers fought over the coveted rooster’s comb, considered a delicacy. As summer wore on, our mothers wrapped their hair in floral scarves to hide the beginnings of graying roots. My mother made marmalade, peeling the oranges we had picked for her, filling the villa with fragrant citrus, her fingertips still bearing the tangy scent when she stroked my forehead at bedtime.
On his return trips to Iran, my father did his best to participate in the old string of dinners and get-togethers, but after a while he stopped going. He couldn’t summon the enthusiasm for returning to our old haunts. He was no longer the jovial companion who loved to play practical jokes, like tying everybody’s shoelaces together while they were napping, or putting their hats in the freezer when it was snowing. It was all he could do to keep his clinic open and see his patients, sleeping on the cot in the corner of his office, cooking his old chicken and plums on a two-burner tabletop range. He would return home to my mother in California, frail and tired to the bone.
When I reconnect with my childhood friends, dispersed though we may be, we tenderly reminisce about our mothers and fathers and their affection for us, holding one another’s hands to walk back in time. We keep our shared memories in deep storage until we see one another, and then we dust them off, showcasing them one by one, like precious antiques.
Remember the time you shot yourself in the groin?
Yeah, and your dad yelled at me for a half hour before he took the bullet out!
Remember how you’d throw up on the drive to the mountains?
It was one sniff of your evil egg salad sandwich that made me do it!
Remember when we drank your dad’s vodka?
Sure, and we filled the bottle with water.
As if he wouldn’t notice!
We collapse laughing over one another while our spouses sit back and grin politely. If it weren’t for these friends, I would worry that I had imagined all those picnics, all those small, only-funny-to-us, you-had-to-be-there incidents that reveal who we are and where we came from. Without them, these memories grow milky with time, and my ability to sort through them becomes myopic. What remains fixed are the warm scents and flavors of childhood, like the cherry syrup that flavored our summer drinks, the sour fruit leather we shared in the backseat of the car, the sharp scent of sumac on grilled skewers of kebab. We may not agree on whose car we were in, or where we stopped for kebab, but the essentials are clear and true, understood by nobody but my family, my sisters, my cousins and childhood friends.
My Mother’s Pot Roast
My mother often made this pot roast (although she called it roast beef) for our Friday potluck lunches with friends. She varied the vegetables—root vegetables in the winter, peas in the spring—but toward the end she always added potatoes, which were cooked until tender and coated with the meat juices.
Serves 4 to 6
4 pounds top rump of beef, tied in a compact shape
4 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion
4 carrots
4 celery stalks
4 medium tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 bay leaf
4 strips orange peel, 2 inches long
4 sprigs thyme
2 cups red wine
1 cup beef or chicken stock
2 pounds Yukon Gold creamer or fingerling potatoes, peeled
½ pound brown cremini mushrooms
Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper
1. With the tip of a sharp knife, make small incisions in your roast and insert the garlic cloves. Rub the roast with salt, fresh-ground pepper, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Cover and marinate your roast overnight if possible. The next day, remove the roast from the refrigerator 1 hour before cooking so it will be at room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
3. Place the roast on a rack in a deep roasting pan and put in the center of the oven. After 20 minutes, when the roast has browned evenly, remove from the oven. Lower the heat to 350°F. Remove the rack from underneath the roast. At this point the meat can remain in the roasting pan or be transferred to a dutch oven.
4. Peel and chop the onion, carrots, and celery into ½-inch pieces. Skin the tomatoes by plunging them into boiling water for a few seconds. Cut them in half horizontally, scoop out the seeds, and chop the tomatoes. In a skillet, over medium heat, sauté the onions, carrots, and celery in 3 tablespoons of olive oil just until they are tender. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaf, orange peel, and thyme. Stir to coat the vegetables. Add the red wine and bring to a light boil. Add the stock and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Pour over and around the meat.
5. Cover the pan with foil or, if using a dutch oven, a well-fitting lid. Put in the oven and cook for 1½ hours.
6. Wash, drain, and halve the potatoes and mushrooms. Toss with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, salt, and fresh-ground pepper. Remove the pan from the oven and fold the potatoes and mushrooms in around the meat. Cover and continue cooking another 1½ hours.
7. To serve, slice the roast into ¼-inch slices and arrange on a platter with the potatoes. Remove the thyme, bay leaf, and orange peel and pour the sauce with the remaining vegetables into a saucepan to bring to a boil before spooning around the roast.
Note: Any leftover meat can be saved for sandwiches, or shredded and tossed with fresh noodles and the remaining gravy.
Fava Bean Omelet
A variation of this dish, baqala ghatoq, hails from northern Iran near the Caspian Sea, where my father grew up with four brothers and sisters. With chickens pecking in the yard, my grandmother could make this delicious and economical meal for her family with the freshest eggs, their yolks bright as saffron. My mother learned how to make it from her mother-in-law, but she made it her own with the addition of fresh herbs.
In the traditional recipe, the fava beans are cooked longer, until they are nearly pureed, and the eggs are cracked and fried directly over the beans. In my version, I cook the beans just until tender, then add a pinch of sugar, to caramelize the shallots with the beans, and fold them into an omelet. I’m certain you will find a variation, too, and whether it’s scrambling the eggs or adding juicy bacon, croutons, or smoked salmon, it will be delicious as long as you have fresh eggs and young, tender fava beans. With a glass of dry white wine, it’s a royal meal.
Serves 4
2 pounds whole fresh fava beans
2 medium shallots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
A pinch of sugar
8 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper
½ tablespoon fresh Italian parsley, chopped
½ tablespoon fresh tarragon, chopped
1. Shell the fava beans by removing them from their padded pods.
2. Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil and blanch the beans for 1 minute to ease peeling the second skin. Rinse with cold water and strain. Gently peel away the outer skin (they should pop out easily). Discard any beans that are yellowing. Peeled, they yield a little over 1 cup.
3. In a skillet, brown the shallots and garlic in olive oil. Fold in the fava beans, allowing them to soften, then gently break them up with a wooden spoon and toss with a pinch of sugar. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Crack the eggs and whisk with 1 teaspoon of salt just until the yolks and whites are combined.
5. To make the omelet, set your pan on low heat and allow the bottom and sides to heat thoroughly.
6. Once your pan is heated, turn the heat to medium, add the butter, and tilt the pan to coat the bottom and sides. When the butter begins to sizzle
and foam, pour in the eggs and allow them to form and get puffy around the edges, then scramble with a spatula and leave for a few seconds to form another edge. If the eggs begin to brown, lower your heat. Continue to scramble and set until the eggs are halfway done. Scatter the fava bean mixture and the herbs, tilting the pan to let the raw egg slide down to the hot surface of the pan. Season with salt and fresh-ground pepper. Continue to push the set eggs into the cooked mass. Tip your pan to push the omelet to the edge, and with your spatula, fold one end over itself. Repeat with the other end. Nudge any errant favas back into the folds.
7. Slide onto a warm platter and serve immediately.
Chapter 7
MY MOTHER FLEW with me to Paris, holding a return ticket for two weeks later. During the flight, she held my hand for comfort as I lamented the new relationship I was leaving behind. Here I was, finally on a flight that would deliver me to my dream, after my mother had endured two years of my father’s wrath and worked double shifts to supplement her salary to pay for my cooking school, and I couldn’t stop hot tears from rolling down my face. She gave me her white cotton handkerchief with pink roses embroidered along the edge without mentioning the doomed nature of the relationship—a girl who questioned faith, in love with a Jewish boy from a conservative family. There were no words of caution, not even a Mind your heart, the way she would’ve said, Mind your step, if I were walking to the edge of a cliff. She knew that her children would love whomever they chose, that their hearts would break, and that other than offering comfort, parents were powerless. It was clear to her I would dismiss her wariness as old-fashioned bunk: Oh, Mommy, it’s 1984! As if that had anything to do with it. Ah, what young people don’t know—what seemed to me full of possibilities, she saw for the dead end it was. But I had to learn such hard lessons on my own.
As we circled over Paris, she pointed out the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, which looked like toys on the grid surrounding the river Seine. It was a pearly white morning, and the captain’s voice was reassuring as he deftly pushed through the clouds to land. I wiped away my tears with my mother’s handkerchief—I could be in love and learn how to cook. The two were not mutually exclusive, and in fact, each longing could tend the other.
We boarded a shuttle bus to the city, and the driver quickly began a flirtatious exchange: Ah, c’est super les sœurs qui voyagent ensemble! Ah, how nice to see sisters traveling together! As I counted the change for our tickets, I was glad that my degree in French was not useless and I could participate in these harmless and necessary flirtations without becoming flustered. I replied, En plus, elle est beaucoup plus belle, n’est-ce pas? And she’s far more beautiful, isn’t she? After we’d taken our seats, my mother reached into her purse, broke off a piece from a chocolate bar, and popped it in my mouth: Welcome to Paris, sweetheart! I don’t know whether it was hunger and fatigue, or the exhilaration of being with her on this adventure, but I had never tasted chocolate so good. That taste remains my first memory of Paris. To this day, when I travel to France, I always take the shuttle, and I always tear open a bar of chocolate and gaze out the window to spot the first red awning of a café with its rattan chairs scattered on the sidewalk. Then it feels as if I have come home.
We found my flat—a maid’s room down the hallway from a three-bedroom apartment, where the tenants rented their housekeeper’s quarters for extra income. My aunt Farah, who was living in exile in Paris, had secured this lovely little room for me. She had sneaked in before our arrival to open the big window overlooking the Seine and leave a neat stack of sheets and towels on a simple cot next to a bowl of purple grapes. I may have been lovesick, but the sight of those grapes on the white table, and the cool breeze blowing in from the river, made everything right. We put our bags down and rushed to see her. What a feast she had prepared for our arrival: pomegranate and duck stew, jeweled rice, and chocolate éclairs from Dalloyau for dessert. Everything in Paris tasted delicious, even the cup of coffee she brewed for me in her percolator with a lump of sugar stirred into it.
The next morning, with a great sense of urgency, my mother marched me to the market on the avenue de la Motte-Picquet, which runs along the underpass of a metro line, where in no time she filled our shopping cart with big heads of lettuce, cheese, eggs, flowers, and a chicken—its head and feet intact. She walked briskly through the stalls, as if she had always shopped in this market, chatting with the vendors, persuading them to select only the ripest peaches and most perfect clusters of grapes for her. I did my best to keep up with her as she pushed through the crowd, pulling a red and black tartan-print cart we had borrowed from my aunt for the day. This was my first field trip, and having grown tired of explaining to me that to learn a craft well, you must go to the source, my mother was enjoying the show-and-tell. We rarely argued, but in the months before my departure, I had debated that I didn’t need to go to France for cooking school. After all, Berkeley was a food mecca, and why couldn’t I learn by working in a renowned restaurant? It was the only time she persisted: If you’re going to do this, then do it right. I now understood why she had brought me to the market on my first morning and why she had insisted on Paris. Markets and restaurants exist everywhere, but very few have the sensual appeal of a French still life. I had walked along only a few crooked streets, but already I felt as if I were inside a painting, a large canvas commissioned by a hungry gourmand with urgent desires: pheasants, cockles, mackerel, ceramic tubs of crème fraîche, slim green beans, and fat little golden pears in pyramids under the watchful eye of vendors prohibiting your touch. But I wondered what on earth she planned to do once we returned to my tiny flat, where the kitchen in the coat closet was never intended for anyone to make leek and potato soup or chicken fricassee on its two-burner stove.
For the next few nights we cooked and invited Aunt Farah and my mother’s old friends from Iran. I made us coffee, and there, with the toasty smell enveloping my little room, they sat on the cot and told stories of their shattered lives. Poets, ministers, housewives, journalists, doctors—all disenfranchised citizens who had narrowly escaped the sweeping hand of the Revolutionary Guards prowling the streets and making random arrests. The men held the tired gaze of hopelessness, while the women looked defiant, their anger still palpable after six years. They blinked wildly, and tears welled up in their eyes at the mention of a sibling, a spouse, an aging parent, a friend, a colleague in hiding, on the run, imprisoned, dead, or simply left behind. Families were rarely intact, mothers and children having been sent abroad while fathers stayed to work and sustain the lifestyle their spouses were accustomed to. Those who joined their families spent their days brooding over lost fortunes while their resourceful wives consigned hand-knit sweaters to boutiques or became seamstresses who offered alterations, taking in hems and putting shoulder pads in old jackets to bring them up to date. Fiercely proud and acutely aware of perceptions, they kept up appearances. My mother understood their vulnerability, knowing all too well the thin line that existed between security and homelessness. Her friends translated displacement and despair into chronic aches she had no cure for, but she admired their resilience, the brave face they put on for their children, and how they kept an eye out for fellow expatriates, the husband who had lost his wife, or the daughter on her own for the first time, showing them how to make long distance calls, accompanying them to the post office, bringing them home for meals.
They asked me curious questions about America: Is it true that women go to the grocery store with curlers in their hair? As if this infraction, above all, made it an intolerable place. How absurd this concern for style: Who cares what they wear to the store when they can voice an opinion and not get thrown into jail? My mother knew to brush off these comments: Every time I leave our apartment to go to the store, my neighbors ask me why I’m all dressed up. Well, what should I wear? And you know I can’t wear shoes without hose! Her friends nodded. They couldn’t imagine my father either, always dapper, going out for eggs in a jogging suit. Thei
r queries revealed a unique Persian sensibility: Aren’t they quite gullible? No, I answered, they take things at face value. It wasn’t the first time I had heard American friendliness misconstrued as naïveté, a candid Hi! interpreted as oafish. They wondered how people could say, Have a nice day, and just go about their business, wheel their shopping carts, and walk their dogs, when there were places where children were sent to mine-filled battlefronts. On the other hand, Iranians are quite good at not saying what they mean, concealing their disapproval of everyone else with poetic euphemism, scrutiny veiled in praise: Is that rich mahogany the natural color of your hair? Of course someone of your stature must drive the latest Mercedes Benz, but we’re very happy with our Camry. This carpet is very nice, looks antique, is it machine made? These deprecatory remarks are essential to Iranians for survival in their society, which runs on the engine of ruse and conspiracy. Overt friendliness implies artlessness. Speaking in a circuitous manner, dodging a direct exchange, is considered cunning and clever. It was amusing to hear a fresh hybrid of Farsi emerge as Iranians assimilated into new cultures. An American friend described her outrage when early in her marriage, her Iranian husband told their dinner guests in Farsi, This scanty meal was hardly worthy of you. When he translated for her, she refused to speak to him for days. He quickly learned to tone it down: My wife is learning to make Persian food. Please don’t be afraid to try some.