by Donia Bijan
Gazing back at my family’s experience, it is with an eye to the immense gap between life as it ought to be and life as it actually is: what my parents had hoped to accomplish for their country, and their reversal of allegiance; what I would have become in Iran, and what became of me in America. My mother worked hard to bridge that gap, to make our home here. And in building that bridge, she made certain that I knew where I had come from, what I had left behind, and what I would find on the other side.
Rice Pudding
Sometimes rice pudding is the only thing that cures the blues. I remember being scolded once by my grandfather for reaching into one of his pigeons’ cages for a tiny egg that I let slip from my hand. The louder he yelled, the noisier the pigeons cooed, and I was trapped by their erratic flutter around my ankles. I took refuge in my grandmother’s kitchen, where I sat on a step stool and cried and she soothed me with a bowl of rice pudding scented with rose water.
Serves 6
2¼ cups whole milk
½ vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup arborio rice
2½ tablespoons sugar
¼ cup rose water
1 cup heavy cream
1. Pour the milk into a medium saucepan. Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds from the pod with the tip of a sharp knife, and add the seeds to the milk. Bring to a simmer.
2. Stir in the rice and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it is the consistency of oatmeal. Stir in the sugar and cook for 5 more minutes.
3. Transfer the pudding to a bowl, and when it has cooled, fold in the rose water, then chill.
4. Whip the cream to soft peaks and gently fold into the rice for a creamy texture.
5. Serve in glass bowls with a dollop of jam, or a sprinkling of pistachio brittle (see following recipe), or all by itself.
Pistachio Brittle
½ tablespoon butter for greasing the pan
1 cup peeled, lightly toasted pistachios
A pinch of salt
¾ cup sugar
1. Butter a cookie sheet.
2. Toss the pistachios in a bowl with a pinch of salt.
3. Place the sugar in a medium saucepan over high heat. As the sugar begins to caramelize, gently swirl the pan without stirring. Once it has reached a rich caramel brown, remove from the heat and fold in the pistachios with a wooden spoon. Spread onto the greased cookie sheet and cool.
4. Break into small pieces and store in an airtight container.
Chapter 14
ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON, I sat in my mother’s kitchen with a notebook and pencil, sipping a Coke with lemon she had made for me. I watched as she moved from sink to stove, fetching a colander to strain the rice, melting a pad of butter in her dig, a large pot for cooking rice, steam rising from the sink and dampening her face, and all the while she was singing instructions: Soak it, boil it, strain it, and don’t forget the salt! Rice was the first dish I learned to cook. I was eight. I say that as though I learned on my first try, when in fact it was one of the lessons I had to learn over and over again.
Almost forty years later, I find this scene repeating itself, only now my son sits watching me in the kitchen. He doesn’t take notes yet, but he asks a lot of questions and he listens. And each time I recite a recipe, I’m unpacking another box, pulling open another drawer. The recipe doesn’t tell him how to cook something; it tells a story that began on a school yard, in a garden, at the seaside, on a balcony, and how it smelled of jasmine that day, how it was so hot the butter melted right off the counter, how my grandfather yelled at me for filling the ice trays with hot water: Do you know how hard that bloody refrigerator has to work to make ice? How my mother sliced melons but let me scoop mine with a spoon, and how she shook the mulberry tree while I danced underneath, holding my skirt up to catch the falling berries:
How old were you, Maman?
I was seven.
Same age as me.
Yes.
Why did your grandpa yell at you?
It was so hot and he couldn’t stand foolishness.
Did you cry?
No. We were used to him hollering.
Did you eat the “mallberries” out of your skirt?
As many as I could fit in my mouth.
Who do you miss more, your mom or your dad?
I miss my mom so much. We laughed a lot together.
I make you laugh, too, Maman.
Yes. Yes, you do.
Can she hear us laughing?
My son is greedy to hear again and again the stories I’m unpacking, but I know one day he will say: You’ve told me this story a hundred times already! By then, he will know what was lost and what was found, and how he, like the recipe, is a little bit of this and a sprinkling of that, how his humor is his grandmother’s and his hands are his father’s. In the meantime, he will have learned to make a perfect poached egg, corn bread, a pot of rice.
Last night we read the story Stone Soup, and he laughed when I told him about Ahmed Agha, the hospital chef my sisters sabotaged by putting pebbles in his food. I told him that the soldiers in the folktale, who stumble into town, tired and hungry, are not unlike his grandparents, who came to America with nothing but a willingness. They won over the villagers, taught them to make soup with ingredients they said they didn’t have, and brought them to the table to break bread. And all the while they cooked as if they knew a pleasant secret: the desire for food, security, and love is a shared thing. My mother began on the premise that we were all hungry and if we could just sit at the table together, and the soup was hot, and the bread came from the oven, we would know that we had not tasted anything that good in a long time. If she asked a neighbor for a recipe, she was just stopping to ask for directions. When she taught herself to make apple pie, she cubed the apples and cooked them slowly with sugar, clove, and cinnamon until they caramelized, and then she filled her pie crust. All those hundreds of casserole and corn bread recipes weren’t translated word for word. They simply opened a door and invited you in, they told you a Pilgrim story, or a love story, or suggested a longing for sweet or savory. With each recipe, she sampled a slice of America; she solved a riddle, inching closer to belonging and pulling us along, easing our way home, here in this kitchen.
I SPREAD NEWSPAPER on the floor and give my son a pile of walnuts to crack. He likes them with feta and mint leaves wrapped in large squares of lavash bread in his lunch box. He smooths the paper with the palms of his hands and sits cross-legged, gripping my mother’s ancient nutcracker in his little fist and squeezing his eyes shut with the effort. The rest of the house is dark, but the kitchen glows, and the light from the ceiling falls on one side of his face when he looks up at me to check if we have enough, and I swear that a wise old man lives behind those bright eyes, because he understands so much more than I do.
It’s still early, too early to go to school. And in the long stretch of these quiet mornings together—only his voice and mine, and the gurgle of the coffee machine, and his spoon tapping against a pale blue cup while I stir cocoa on the stove—I know I’m finally home. I brought in a stool so he could climb up, knees first, to see his egg come to a boil. Bare legs dangle to and fro, and with the first bubbles, he counts to sixty twice for soft-boiled while I take out plates from the cupboard above the counter.
He fills this kitchen with warmth, so that even after I’ve walked him to school, come home and washed the breakfast plates, stacked them in the cupboard, wiped the stove and gathered the walnut shells, and laid my mother’s nutcracker in the middle drawer next to her spoon, I still feel his warmth.
My Mother’s Apple Pie
Not too long ago, I was reading a book called Each Peach Pear Plum, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. It is a lovely “I spy” book, where favorite nursery characters hide in the pictures and the rhyme provides the clues to their whereabouts. In a delightful ending, Jack and Jill, the Three Bears, Tom Thumb, and a host of others come out of their hiding places to eat plum pie. It
was like seeing old friends at a reunion, my son pointing in recognition as each one emerged: Oh, look, there’s Old Mother Hubbard! The illustration of that pie, with its golden dome in the center of a blue checkered picnic blanket, was evocative of a picture book my mother read to me when I was four or five. What I remember from that story is the drawing of an apple pie on a table set with cups and saucers, and my instant longing for it. I asked her if she could make one that looked just like that. I’ll try, she said.
My mother taught herself to make apple pie. She didn’t have a taste for the starchy, raw filling in soggy-bottomed pies, so she applied her baking knowledge and made this delicious version of the American classic. It is the best I have ever tasted.
Serves 8
Pastry for a double-crust pie (see following recipe)
12 to 15 Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, or Pippin apples
5 tablespoons butter
3 cups sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon milk
1. Peel and core the apples, then dice into about ¼-inch pieces. In a large skillet, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and sauté the apples over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. If necessary, cook them in 2 batches so as not to crowd them in your pan. Add the sugar and cinnamon and stir with a wooden spoon to distribute the sugar evenly. Don’t worry about the liquid that will be released once the sugar begins to melt. Continue stirring often so that the apples on the bottom won’t burn. Cook the apples until they have caramelized but are not mushy, about 20 to 25 minutes.
2. Spread the apples on a baking sheet to cool completely.
3. To assemble the pie, divide the dough into 2 unequal halves, the larger half for the bottom crust and the smaller for the top.
4. Roll the larger half on a lightly floured surface until it is about ⅛ inch thick and large enough to fit your pie dish with about 1 inch extra to overlap the edges. Chill while you roll out the remainder of the dough.
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the smaller half of the dough until it is about ⅛ inch thick and large enough to top the pie.
6. Fill the pie shell with the cooled, sautéed apples, shaped into a pyramid, and dot with the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Lay the top crust over the apples and press gently to form. With your thumb and fingertips, pinch the bottom and top crust together to seal, trimming the extra dough with a knife.
7. Poke a hole in the center with the tip of a knife and cut 2 or 3 slits around the hole to allow steam to escape. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. It is possible to make this pie and freeze it to bake later, a particularly helpful technique during feverish holiday baking marathons.
8. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
9. Beat 1 egg yolk with 1 tablespoon of milk to brush the top of your pie. Sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar. Place the pie on the middle shelf of the oven with a baking sheet below to catch the juices in case they drip. Bake 1 hour, until the top crust is golden brown.
Pie Pastry
Makes enough for 1 double-crust pie
8 ounces (2 sticks) chilled, unsalted butter
3½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup ice water
1. Cut the butter into ½-inch cubes and toss with the flour and salt. Crumble the butter into the flour by rubbing your thumbs and fingertips together until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Slowly add the water, ¼ cup at a time, until the mixture just comes together.
2. Gather the dough to form a smooth ball. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
3. If using a food processor or electric mixer, make the dough in the same order but be careful not to overmix. This dough keeps well for a few days in the refrigerator, and up to 1 month in the freezer.
Cherry Slushy
When my son asked me to make him a slushy, his request hearkened back to a story I had once told him about snow days in Iran. We were cuddled up reading Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, when I remembered waking up to a blanket of snow outside my window and running to the kitchen to tune in to the station that announced school closures. If we heard the name of our school, we screamed in unison, then spent the morning eating breakfast in our pajamas before bundling up to go play. We returned hours later, shivering and soaked through to our underwear. For an afternoon snack, my mother would look for a clean patch of snow to scoop into little bowls and pour sour cherry syrup on top. They’re going to get sick! my father would protest, but nothing can stop a child from putting snow in her mouth and tasting it to understand the miracle of it.
The first time we took my son to see snow, I watched him licking a snowball and stopped myself as I was about to take it away from him. At home in California, I had to improvise to make him something that resembled what my mother had made, and it is in fact a Persian granita made with shredded rice noodles.
Serves 6
3 cups sugar
1¼ cups water
2 lemons, juice and zest
3 tablespoons rose water
5 ounces thin rice noodles, broken up
½ cup cherry preserves in syrup
1 lime
1. Place sugar, water, lemon juice, and zest in a medium saucepan. Stir and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool. Stir in the rose water.
2. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Remove from heat. Immerse the rice noodles in hot water and let stand for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Soak until the noodles are soft but firm. Strain, rinse with cold water, and set aside.
3. Pour the sugar syrup into a 12 × 8-inch Pyrex dish, or any equivalent glass or porcelain dish. Spread the rice noodles evenly in the syrup and place in the freezer. Every hour or so, remove from the freezer and stir the mixture up delicately with the tines of a fork, breaking up the ice crystals that form around the edge of the dish to avoid freezing it into a solid block.
4. Freeze up to 8 hours. It is best served the day it is made. To serve, shave the slushy into chilled bowls and swirl with cherry preserves and a generous squeeze of lime.
Special Thanks
THIS BOOK WOULD not have been written without the unwavering belief and encouragement of my husband, Mitchell Johnson, the sensitive insight and generous guidance of my editor, Andra Miller, and the keen instincts of my agent, Adam Chromy, who embraced and championed this project. Their confidence urged me forward. I cannot thank them enough.
My love and thanks to my sisters, Shabnam Anderson and Sherry Bijan, who were my first teachers and shared many of these memories, and to my brilliant nieces, Sophia and Helene, for their culinary enthusiasm and shared meals.
My immense gratitude to all the great chefs in my life who set the bar very high, and everyone I had the privilege to work with at L’Amie Donia. Warm thanks to Karla Ebrahimi and Jean Mellott for their patient testing and feedback on my recipes, and to the extraordinary team at Algonquin for their support; in particular I am grateful to David Matt, Elisabeth Scharlatt, Anne Winslow, Brunson Hoole, Rachel Careau, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Kelly Bowen, Megan Fishmann, Michael Taeckens, Craig Popelars, and Ina Stern.
You live inside your parents’ lives until, one day, they live inside yours. I’m thankful to the memory of my mother and father, who continue to be my unerring guides. I owe them everything.
And above all, I must thank my beloved son, whose appetite for stories and food lights up our meals and makes us laugh out loud everyday. This book is for you.