by Donia Bijan
Soon after, I applied for my American passport. It was not unlike growing a set of wings. No longer would I be singled out at the airport or forced to wait in long lines for a visa; no longer would I be the subject of scrutiny. The agent who took my application asked me where I was going. When I explained that I was going to France to become a chef, his enthusiasm was genuine: Wow, your parents must be so proud of you! I was overcome with gratitude for his kind words, for my newfound freedom, my wings. For days I leafed through the pages of my precious passport, its significance becoming more profound as I considered the irony of leaving America on the heels of becoming a citizen. But of course, I would come back. This was home.
Potato Waffles with Crème Fraîche
The first time I ate waffles was on a trip to Disneyland. Until then I had only been in love with the word waffle and the warmth it implied. When my mother took me to the amusement park, we stayed at a Travelodge and ate breakfast at a nearby diner. Perched side by side on red vinyl stools, we ordered waffles. Two plates arrived with whipped cream and strawberries piled on top of the hot, golden cakes. We looked at each other and gasped. I just know she was thinking the same thing: I can’t wait to come back tomorrow! The next morning, the waitress poured coffee in a brown mug and remembered how my mother liked it. This small gesture made us feel so welcome and somehow connected to this place—an unsung diner in the maze of Los Angeles—that for years we brought it up (Remember the waffles …) yet we hardly remembered the rides in the park.
I made these savory waffles for brunch at the hotel’s coffee shop, where we jump-started a tired menu in spite of dubious guests who didn’t want us messing with their breakfast. They demanded that we dish out our sad stack of pancakes from the box mix that calls for only water, and garnish it with orange slices and curly parsley. There was an early morning showdown between the kitchen and the wait staff—they didn’t want to face cranky businessmen who hadn’t had their coffee yet. At the time, change meant everything to me; I lived for it and threatened to quit if they stood in my way. It’s beautiful when you’re young and have convictions, even if it’s just about breakfast.
Serve these waffles warm, drizzled with crème fraîche, smoked salmon, chives, and a squeeze of lemon. And if Iranian caviar is available, what a New Year’s Day treat.
Yields about 12 4-inch waffles
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes
3 large eggs
1½ cups buttermilk
4 ounces (1 stick) butter, melted
1½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ to ½ cup milk to thin the batter if needed
1. Peel and chop the potatoes into 1-inch cubes. Use a steamer to cook them over boiling, salted water until very tender, about 5 to 7 minutes. Steaming the potatoes prevents them from becoming waterlogged. Drain and transfer to a bowl to mash into a puree.
2. Whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, and melted butter.
3. Add the potato puree to the buttermilk mixture and mix well.
4. Combine the dry ingredients. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the buttermilk mixture, stirring just until smooth. If the batter is too thick, you can thin it with milk, adding ¼ cup at a time.
5. Let the batter rest at room temperature up to 30 minutes, or overnight in the refrigerator; the batter improves the longer it rests.
6. Pour about ½ cup of batter into a very hot waffle iron and bake until golden and crisp. Serve hot.
Crème Fraîche
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons buttermilk
Warm the cream gently by bringing it to a low boil and removing from heat. Stir in the buttermilk and pour the mixture into a clean glass bowl. Cover tightly and leave in a warm place, between 70°F and 80°F (I use my oven with the pilot light on), to culture for 24 hours. Refrigerate the crème fraîche. It will continue to thicken, though far more slowly.
Crème fraîche will keep refrigerated for about 10 days. If it becomes too thick, you can thin it with more heavy cream.
Salmon Gravlax with Meyer Lemon and Tarragon
If you ask me, the best part of living in California is the Meyer lemon—a fragrant, smooth-skinned juice bomb, native to our backyards. It’s enough to make you cry when you see coarse, three-dollar lemons in stores elsewhere in the country. When our tree bears fruit, I pack these fragile lemons in Bubble Wrap and send them Priority to relatives on the East Coast. I’m counting on our lemonade stands to pay for college someday.
In late June, when wild salmon becomes available, gravlax is a nice alternative to smoked salmon. Curing it with salt and lemon peel lends a succulent flavor that pairs well with the potato waffles.
Serves 6
4 tablespoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons fresh tarragon, chopped
3 Meyer lemons, zested
1 side (approximately 2 pounds) wild salmon fillet, skin on
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup Meyer lemon juice with pulp
2 medium shallots, sliced thinly
1. Two days before serving, toss the salt, sugar, tarragon, and lemon in a bowl. Lay the salmon on a long piece of foil. Rub the salt mixture on both sides of the fillet. Lay another piece of foil on top and neatly seal the edges. Place a weight on the fish, the equivalent of 5 to 6 pounds (6 cans on a tray will do; 2-or 3-pound hand weights work well, too) and refrigerate for 48 hours.
2. Rinse away the lemon and herb mixture under cold running water. Pat the fish dry with paper towels and lay on a platter. Brush generously with olive oil and pulpy lemon juice. Sprinkle with shallots. Cover and marinate overnight before serving.
3. To serve, slice horizontally into paper-thin slices and lay on a chilled plate, with fresh lemons, capers, and crème fraîche.
Chapter 10
WHEN I STARTED kindergarten, my mother dropped off a hot lunch at the office in a three-tiered metal lunch box with rice, stew, and fresh fruit. I attended the Lycée Razi, a French elementary school where segregation manifested itself in the order in which we were allowed to eat lunch. At noon, the French children were escorted by our teacher to the cafeteria and promptly served a French meal. The Iranian children were lined up outside the cafeteria behind glass doors, through which we witnessed our classmates enjoying their lunch. Unaware of discrimination, we thought this was how things were done, but our stomachs grumbled nevertheless. We were allowed inside only after the French kids were done, and were given the privilege of eating over their trash.
My mother was running late one afternoon. She came running with my lunch box directly to the cafeteria. She stood frozen in place, her eyes searching for me among the crowd of kids with faces plastered to the glass doors. I turned to see her raw rage. Grabbing my wrist, she marched us toward the principal’s office, sputtering, The nerve, the nerve of these people! I burst out crying, frightened and certain that I had done something unspeakable, but she was too angry to reassure me. She left me on a chair outside the office, stormed inside, and slammed the door. I heard her yelling in French, spitting out words I didn’t understand but later learned. Who, monsieur, do you think you are? You are a guest in my country. When she finally came out, her face was flushed. She smiled down at me and took my hand, gently this time, and walked us through the gate. Once beyond the gate, she knelt down to hold me and broke into a sob, rocking me against her and saying she was sorry over and over again. We went home, where she warmed my lunch and sat quietly across from me, folding and refolding the corner of a napkin. That evening, the principal called to reassure her that he had called a meeting to reassess the lunch-hour protocol, but my mother hadn’t used up all her sharp words, warning him to tread carefully, as she was reporting him to the board of education. A week later I was enrolled at a different school. Later, through friends, we heard that the French and Iranian children w
ere eating lunch together, albeit at separate tables.
With an American passport in my chest pocket, I arrived in the French village of Vonnas. My late-afternoon train pulled into the little station—just a set of tracks between fields of wheat—and I stepped onto the platform, pulling a suitcase that landed with a loud thud, breaking the stillness that greeted me. No one else got off, and no one was there to tell me to go left or right, so I went left, dragging my suitcase behind me. I had packed my knives, two pairs of pressed checkered pants, two starched chef’s coats, two pairs of black Reeboks, T-shirts, socks and underwear, a parka, sheets, towels, toiletries, paperback books, a radio, notepaper and pens, and an alarm clock. At the first café I asked for directions.
My walking through a sleepy village with a noisy suitcase in tow made the local gendarme suspicious. He stopped me for identification: Vos papiers, s’il vous plaît. I thought he was joking. What was this, 1942? He held out his hand, his jaw set. I proudly pulled out my brand-new blue passport and the letter from Monsieur Blanc, the proprietor of the restaurant where I would be working. At the mention of Monsieur Blanc, his face softened: Alors! Why didn’t you speak up sooner, mademoiselle? He threw my suitcase into the trunk of his car and gave me a ride to the foyer des travailleurs, the lodging house for migrant workers on the edge of town. A round and grumpy manager gave me the keys to my room on the fourth floor. Everyone was still at work when I made my way up the stairs. I had given up a good job and an apartment in San Francisco’s Russian Hill, with a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, for this plain and functional room with an army cot and a shared bathroom down the hall. It was a chance I had to take to set myself apart. There were no shortcuts to becoming the chef I wanted to be. I unpacked and made my bed with sheets from home, set my alarm clock on the stack of books, dusted the windowsill, and tuned the radio to hear some French banter. I stood on my bed to put my suitcase away on top of the closet, glad that it would stay there for a while. The house was essentially a dormitory, and though I never saw the other workers, the smell of the bathroom told me I was the only woman on that floor. I also knew there were no Frenchmen among the workers; the voices I heard through the thin walls, when they came home from work late at night, were the tired French of Arab immigrants. I had a sense of calm and well-being, perhaps from the knowledge that here, in these blocks of rooms, there were no degrees of separation. I was simply a member of the proletariat.
In the lingering daylight, I found my way to Restaurant Georges Blanc. The ladies at the front desk were unimpressed when I gave them my name and explained why I was there. Clearly I wasn’t a client and therefore I merited an indifferent shrug before they told me to return the next morning at eight o’clock and ask for Chef Patrick. I stopped for a bite to eat at the village café before turning in early, resisting the urge to call home or ring Aunt Farah in Paris to solicit some tender words.
Introductions were quick the next morning. I was assigned to Marie, the only woman in a brigade of forty, who was in charge of the vegetables. In the farthest corner of the kitchen, she left me to shuck an enormous crate of fava beans next to some Japanese stagiaires, apprentices like me, who were shucking peas. They barely nodded at me but didn’t waste time interrogating me in rapid-fire French: Where are you from? What other three-stars have you done? What is your position in America? They needed to know that I did not pose a threat to their status as pea shuckers. When I delivered the favas, Marie gave me a pan of steamed buttered frogs’ legs to debone. At eleven thirty I followed the Japanese delegation to a back room where a long table was set for lunch. I took a seat among a flock of French boys, who elbowed me to help themselves to platters of something-from-nothing casseroles prepared for the staff meal. I waited my turn for the plate of leftover cheeses from the cheese cart and the thin caramelized apple tart that was to become a staple of my diet. At home I had never sat down to a staff meal, so this was luxurious, and mandatory. Nevertheless, we ate as though we were being chased by wild dogs—the boys quickly ducking out for a smoke before lunch service started.
I watched as everyone filed into the kitchen and took their positions around a massive island stove with Chef Patrick at the helm, arching his eyebrows and tugging on his apron like a chevalier. I hung back with the Japanese boys for the first few orders, but before long the familiar rush of tickets poured in. I flew to the plating area to take a place next to the young men and carefully helped assemble the components of a dish, perfectly cooked and passed down the line by each chef de partie, the person responsible for each station. Meat, gorgeously browned, would arrive from Mark. Fish was handed down from Bruno. Vegetables came glistening from Marie. Gilles hollered from the garde-manger when he had sent the cold appetizers. For the next two hours I kept my head down and dressed the plates, only looking over to the chef to make sure it was done correctly. When it was over, I resumed my position in the back and was told by astonished cooks that no rookie had ever walked on line without an invitation from the chef.
When we came back that afternoon after a short break, Marie was a little nicer to me, and we prepped more frogs’ legs together. Until then she had been the only woman, so maybe she was glad for the company. She talked little, and I was grateful for that. We worked quietly, side by side, and when we were done she sent me to help with breaking down the ducks. I learned that every afternoon a nearby poultry farmer delivered Monsieur Blanc’s ducks. They had been killed at dawn and lay intact in wooden crates. To take these birds apart, we first switched to ankle-length plastic butcher aprons, which weighed nearly as much as X-ray bibs. We walked around the stove with all the pilots on, holding the ducks up like dance partners and swaying them over the flames, the smell of their singed feathers clinging to us. It got a lot messier once we chopped the necks and took the legs and breasts off, scrubbing the blood that splattered on the white tiled corridor where we were lined up by the sinks. The breasts were cured for duck prosciutto, the legs were saved for confit, and the carcasses were roasted to make a dark stock. After the first day, I didn’t ask anymore; I walked over to the crates and joined the waltz around the stove.
Once again at six o’clock the staff rushed to eat dinner. After the earlier warning of my unprecedented faux pas, I waited in the back and busied myself until suddenly I heard Chef Patrick call my name. I flew through the maze of cooks to take my spot. He cocked one eyebrow and I fell right into step with the assembly. Nobody said anything after that, and the boys from Japan wouldn’t look at me.
In a letter to my parents that night I described the butchery in detail, even attempting a lame joke about its resemblance to surgery, which I later crossed out. Why torment my poor father? Instead I elaborated on the presentation of the duck prosciutto, sliced paper-thin and laid with ribbons of olive tapenade, a lattice of rose and inky black, like Persian tiles. Did my father miss the flavor of the classic winter stew fesenjan, made with wild duck, pomegranate, and crushed walnuts, which he favored in Iran? I asked. On occasion, knowing that Doktor loved this dish, his patients would bring him ducks from the countryside. He would bring them home and lay them lovingly on the kitchen counter. Oh, for heaven’s sake, not again! cried my mother. Tired from a long day at work, she couldn’t face breaking down the birds, juicing pomegranates, grinding walnuts, and the long, slow braising that followed. He gave her his dreamiest look, beseeching, offering to shell the walnuts, pluck the feathers, massage her sore feet. I could butcher them for you in no time, Mommy, I boasted in my letter, and you could sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, giving me instructions. It so happened that I did have the opportunity to learn this dish with her when I returned to America. We substituted supermarket chicken, which needed much doctoring to taste as rich and complex, but the pomegranates came from a neighbor’s tree, and we had fun scooping out the seeds and eating them like popcorn sprinkled with salt and angelica.
Writing to my parents helped me document my days. Unlike a diary, it allowed a conversation that might have been strained
had I attempted to tell these stories in person, testing my father’s patience for ingenue observations—my mother would find them charming, but he would most likely mutter: Oh, grow up, will you? The world is not a French pastoral landscape! I told them about Chef Patrick’s rage if he found a carton of cream with a teaspoon left in it, or even a bruised tomato in the trash can—his intolerance for waste, a valuable lesson I’d missed in cooking school. My letters were filled with anecdotes: the farmer who named all seven hundred of his goats Julie and arranged his miniature goat-cheese pyramids on straw mats for the restaurant’s cheese cart; the two dozen crates of tomatoes we peeled, seeded, and slowly roasted overnight with sea salt and sugar; the mouthwatering assembly of the caramel apple napoleons; the famous poulets de Bresse, chickens from a nearby poultry farm, all named Bavarde (Chatty), which roamed the field just outside my window and later became fried chicken, the recipe handed down from Monsieur Blanc’s mother, from the days when the restaurant was just a roadside inn serving la mère Blanc’s home cooking. I stared long at the black-and-white photos of that era lining the restaurant corridors—a young Madame Blanc and her crew, all women, bent over a stove, stirring and skimming enormous pots with ladles, her son at her knee. I wished we had photos of my parents in the early days of the hospital, their earnestness captured—my mother in a fitted nurse’s uniform, buttoned down the front and belted at the waist, her hair gathered under her cap, my father in a white doctor’s coat, hands clasped behind his back, his stethoscope looped around his neck. But for a handful of pictures, our albums were left abandoned under the rubble of revolution.