A Little Background Info on Children of Heaven
'Children of Heaven' is one of the most endearing films I've ever seen. Rene rented it from our local video store a couple of years ago. He is an avid film lover and often arrives with a video for us to curl up and watch after hours, when we've both finished our tasks for the day. His tastes run the gamut, from animation, (his favorite), to action, romantic comedy, mystery thriller, and even the occasional indie or foreign title. I never know what he will bring next.

Written and directed by Majid Majidi, this Oscar-nominated bijou captured the hearts of audiences at film-festivals all over the world. Known in the Persian language as Bacheha-Ye Asemanas, the story centers around two Iranian children, Ali and Zahra, a brother and sister from a financially struggling family. When the boy loses his sister's only pair of shoes, they must secretly share his until he finds a way to get a new pair for her. Amid the plight and pathos of their predicament, Children of Heaven offers a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of a culture that many perceive as mysterious or forbidden, yet still conveys the message that the travails and triumphs of children and families from any culture are often more alike than different.

I've seen Children of Heaven twice... Can't wait to watch it again.
11:40 AM PST Permalink |

Designing a Table Setting
Middle Eastern culture is both mysterious and exotic, and the mention of Persia conjures up images of rich tapestries and carpets, colorful tile mosaics, arabesque motifs, and polished brass. For this month's 'Children of Heaven' Dinner & a Movie, I'm hoping to capture that same feeling with my table setting. I already have several pieces that I think will suit the occasion, but I'm definitely going to go snooping about in our local thrift and antique shops for a few more items to achieve the full effect.
12:10 AM PST Permalink |

About the Fresh Ingredients
The ingredients for my 'Children of Heaven' Iranian dinner include lamb steaks or filets, ground beef, chicken breasts, yogurt, spinach, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, scallions, cherries, parsley, and dill. So, because of the delicacy of these herbs and the fresh vegetables, and meats, I will once again be shopping as near to the day of the dinner as possible. I just hope I don't run into a jam at the supermarket as hundreds of frenzied shoppers gather ingredients for their Thanksgiving dinners.

With my limited knowledge of Iranian cuisine, I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by the seemingly endless variety of dishes that can be made with a basic suite of ingredients. They all seem to call for the same basic things, which are then combined and assembled in different ways to produce each unique dish. So, I looked over my recipes once more before heading to the market for my fresh ingredients. I'm sure that once I get started preparing each dish, It will all fall into place and I'll be right at home in my kitchen as usual.
12:04 AM PST Permalink |

Beverages to Go With My 'Children of Heaven' Iranian Dinner
I always like to serve a good wine or beer with special dinners, and my 'Children of Heaven' Iranian dinner is no exception. Although all alcoholic beverages have been banned in Iran since the revolution of 1979, in which the Shah was deposed and the Ayatollah rose to power. However, some of the earliest historical records of wine production and consumption, dating back as far a 6000 B.C, were found around the Caspian Sea and in Mesopotamia, near present-day Iran.

An ancient legend tells the tale of a Persian princess who inadvertantly discovered wine. In a state of anguish over a dispute with her father, the king, she attempted to poison herself with grapes she believed had spoiled while stored in an earthenware jar. Instead, she became intoxicated and soon fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke the next morning, she remembered the euphoria she'd experienced the night before, and returned to the jar for a second helping of this newfound elixir. Thereafter, her disposition improved so dramatically that the dispute with the king was forgiven and the gift of wine was introduced to his royal court.

With my Iranian dinner, I will probably serve a full-bodied Chardonnay, and perhaps a red wine such as Cabernet, Merlot, or my favorite... a nice rosy Pinot Noir.
12:28 AM PST Permalink |

Tracking Down Exotic Ingredients
Finding Middle Eastern ingredients is definitely a challenge in a small town like Napa, California. There are plenty of ethnic grocers in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it would require at least an hour's drive to get to any of them. I've researched online sources and found a couple of possibilities, such as IranStore.com and ParthenonFoods.com, I've also deliberately chosen some alternative recipes that don't call for too many esoteric ingredients.

Some of the recipes my friend Ali Rafiee recommended call for things like dried limes, pomegranate paste, reshteh noodles, and kashk, a thick whey, which is a dairy product that I assumed would have to be purchased fairly close to the day of the dinner. And since my 'Children of Heaven' Dinner & a Movie will happen so close to the busy Thanksgiving holiday, I didn't see myself driving into the city in search of exotic ingredients. Besides, the recipes with readily available ingredients sound just as tasty. As with any ethnic cuisine, it's always the way in which the ingredients are combined and prepared that give a dish its unique qualities.

I can buy saffron at Cost Plus here in Napa, and Chick Pea Flour should be available at our local heath food store. Tumeric and cardamom I already have, leftover from my Indian curry dinner last August. For the Aash-e Reshteh soup and the Gormeh Sabzi, on his visit to his favorite Persian market next week, Ali has generously offered to pick up a package of Reshteh noodles and some Kashk, which he says comes in a jar like mayonnaise and will keep until time to use it. In the event that he is unable to do so, I have chosen an alternative soup called Aash-e Gojeh Farangi, which calls for simple ingredients that I can buy locally.

12:01 AM PST Permalink |

A List of Ingredients for My 'Children of Heaven' Iranian Dinner

Specialty Ingredients:

Basmati Rice, Cinnamon, Dill, Pita Bread

Fresh Ingredients:

Lamb, Ground Beef, Chicken Breasts, Cucumber, Spinach, Lemons, Yogurt, Garlic, Parsley, Dill, Scallions, Lentils, Tomato Sauce, Onions, Green Pepper, Cherries

Basics:

Cooking Oil, Salt, Pepper, Eggs, Butter

11:16 AM PST Permalink |

Deciding on the Dishes for My 'Children of Heaven' Iranian Dinner

Appetizer: Koofteh Sabzi and Pita Bread
Salad: Maast-o-Khiar
Main Course: Shish Kebabs, Albaloo Polow, and Borani Esfanaaj
Dessert: Baagh-lava

12:20 AM PST Permalink |

Designing the Menu
I've done all the recipe research for my 'Children of Heaven' Iranian dinner and have decided upon a couple of finger food appetizers, a hearty meat and tomato soup, a yogurt salad, shish kebabs, a savory chicken mushroom stew, a spinach side dish, spiced lentils, a crispy rice casserole, pita bread and baagh-lava.
12:52 AM PST Permalink |

Planning My 'Children of Heaven' Iranian Dinner
In looking over the recipes I've found on the Internet, I've discovered that all of the dishes I discussed with Ali last week are among them. So, whether I use the cookbook A Taste of Persia, or make the dishes using the Internet recipes, I am now familiar with Iranian cuisine and have a basic game plan for what I want to make. I'm going to follow the standard format of Appetizer, Soup, Salad, Main Course with vegetable and starch side dishes, and a dessert, which I will serve in sequential courses.
12:07 AM PST Permalink |

Getting Acquainted with Iranian Cuisine
Iranian food features a rich variety of ingredients and spices. The primary ingredients include lamb, chicken, fish, eggs, yogurt, goat cheese, lentils, beans, chickpeas, potatoes, rice, peppers, eggplants, spinach, grape leaves, tomatoes, okra, carrots, onions, lemons, limes, oranges, apples, cherries, rose water, raisins, dates, pomegranates, almonds, walnuts, and pistachios. Herbs include parsley, coriander, mint, dill, garlic stalks, black pepper, turmeric, fenugreek, saffron, sumac, cardamom, and cinnamon.

Preparation techniques include Kababs and other grilled meats, stuffed vegetables called Dolmeh, Khoresht stews served with various rice dishes called Polow, pickled vegetables called Torshi, and a tempting variety of pastries and other sweets.

ThingsAsian writer Habeeb Salloum has contributed an article with an excellent overview of Iranian cuisine: The Tasty Foods of Iran - Enshrined in the Aura of History.

01:16 AM PST Permalink |

My Cookbooks
Even with all my many cookbooks, I have no Iranian recipes in my repertoire. Nothing on my shelf, none at the library, and only a couple of Persian cookbooks on Amazon.com, which I wouldn't want to buy sight-unseen. However, I've found a pretty good source of Iranian recipes on the Internet. It's a website hosted by a couple in England who are both natives of Iran, and it appears that, as a labor of love, they have listed recipes for many traditional dishes. Here's a link to their Iranian Recipe Collection.

I also met with Michael Alimusa at Small World Restaurant. He asked our mutual friend Ali Rafiee, an Iranian native, to join us. Ali brought along his 8-year-old son Alexander, as well as a cookbook called A Taste of Persia. Over a late lunch of Lamb Gyros and Grilled Chicken Salad with Tahini Dressing, we looked at all the recipes and bookmarked their favorites. Alexander especially likes a dish called Ghormeh Sabzi, made with herbs, lamb, beans and potatoes. Ali also recommended a meatball appetizer called Koofteh Berenji, made with rice, ground meat, onions, walnuts and herbs; a soup called Aash-e Reshteh, made with noodles, whey and herbs; a yogurt-cucumber salad called Maast-o-Khiar; a variety of stuffed vegetables such as peppers and eggplants called Dolmeh; Shish Kababs, the traditional grilled skewers of meats and vegetables; a couple of Khoresht dishes to be eaten with Basmati Rice; and a variation of Baklava made with pistachio nuts for dessert.

The cookbook Ali brought was one he had borrowed from a friend, so I couldn't take it home with me. But he has promised to bring me a copy of my very own when he returns from a trip to his favorite Persian restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday. Can't hardly wait!
04:25 PM PST Permalink |

The Duchess Bakes a Cake
Writing this weblog every day has given me cause to think back over the role that food and cooking have played throughout my life. I used to think that my love of both stemmed from my Mom being such a good cook, and all those years I spent working in the restaurant business. But upon reflection, as more and more ancient memories are stirred by my daily musing, I've come to believe it runs much deeper than that. It's in my blood and my bones, and maybe even in my DNA.

In recent days, I've recalled memories of making mud pies in the back yard after a summer rain; of hosting tea parties, replete with a beautiful porcelain tea set, for my best friend Jane and cousin Janet on the back porch of the house where I grew up in Mobile; and of my very favorite children's book, The Duchess Bakes a Cake.

In rhymed couplets, The Duchess Bakes a Cake tells the story of a bored duchess, who whimsically decides to bake "a lovely light luscious delectable cake." But things go awry when the duchess discovers that she has put in too much yeast and the cake overflows the pan... and the oven... and the kitchen, with the duchess frantically bouncing atop the rising dough, trying to squash it back down. Despite her best efforts, the cake rises all the way up to the clouds, and when all attempts fail by the king and his men to bring it down with catapults and arrows, it appears the duchess is stranded, until her little daughter Gunhilde cries out that she's hungry. All's well that ends well, as the cake is devoured by all the people of the kingdom, and the duchess is brought back fat and happy to terra firma.

Written and Illustrated by Virginia Kahl, this now-classic children's book was published the year before I was born, so it was still quite new by the time I became captivated by it. Over the years, I must have checked that book out of the library a hundred times, and by the time I'd outgrown it, I knew every word of it by heart. Oddly enough however, I'd never owned a copy of it until last year, when I discovered that it was still in print and available on Amazon.com. And even after all these years, just the thought of it brings a smile to my face, and an abiding sense of sweet nostalgia to my heart.
02:50 AM PST Permalink |

A Timely Gift
A most unusual and timely gift arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was a letter from my sister-in-law, Jane Derick, a lovely Canadian woman who is married to my older brother Steven. They live in Ottawa, and, being the genteel lady that she is, she still practices the rapidly-vanishing art of handwritten correspondence. She writes the most fascinating letters, filled with news of their artistic and musical activities, often accompanied by unexpected enclosures such as snippets of fabric, magazine clippings, and small handicrafts. I never know what trifles and delights I will find inside an envelope with Jane's handwriting on it.

Well...this time, it was a recipe for fatoosh, and a tiny packet of a powdered spice called sumac, which is widely used in Middle Eastern food. It's almost as if she'd tapped into my psyche. At the time she mailed the letter, she couldn't possibly have known that this month's menu would be Middle Eastern. I hadn't announced it yet. And after the Middle Eastern dinner I had at Pasha for Rene's birthday, I was most curious to investigate this newly-discovered spice called 'sumac'.

As a child growing up in Alabama, I was deathly allergic to a wild plant called sumac, which grew in the woods that bordered our yard. It produces a rash, similar to that of poison ivy or poison oak, and I was forbidden to play in the woods, because every time I did, it meant a trip to the doctor for a pricey bottle of special lotion to soothe the itching. But despite my compliance with the edict set forth by my mother, we also discovered that I didn't even have to touch the sumac to have an allergic reaction to it. On my eighth birthday, I awoke with my face swollen up like a cherry pie because one of our neighbors had burned sumac clippings on their trash pile, and I had breathed the smoke from it. Yikes!

So when I saw 'sumac' listed as one of the spices on the menu at Pasha, I was naturally leery and didn't order any dishes that contained it. Nonetheless I was still curious, and with a little investigation on the Internet the following day, I learned that the sumac used as a spice in Middle Eastern cuisine is in no way related to the wild variety that I'm so allergic to.

So...with this month's Dinner & a Movie, I will get to try sumac at last. Thank you Jane.
01:06 AM PST Permalink |

A Dinner & a Movie Dilemma
As my friends and family are gradually becoming aware of my monthly Dinner & a Movie project, I've recently had inquiries as to who gets to come and enjoy my feasts and films. This has given me reason to consider when I'm finally going to start inviting guests other than Rene and my son Will to partake. I suppose the curiosity of my friends and family comes mainly from the fact that, in my e-mails and conversations with them, I often allude to the dishes I'm planning to serve, and sometimes I'm guilty of downright bragging once the dinners are done. So it's only a matter of time until I will have to 'put my money where my mouth is' and invite a few extra guests to my Dinner & a Movie.

Last month, in response to an e-mail with an alluring description of my Taiwanese 'Eat Drink Man Woman' dinner menu that I sent to Camie Bianchi, owner of Your Home... Nursing Services, a home health care agency, her reply was, "I'm coming for dinner!" A few days ago, Yvonne Baginski, publisher of a seniors' resources magazine called Born to Age, asked "Who gets to eat all that food?" And just today, my artist friend Michael Knigin e-mailed from the Hamptons to ask, "Why wasn't I invited???"

Although I would love to have had all of them as guests at my table, with all the unfamiliar cuisines I'm learning to prepare, alas...Here is how I answered: "You'll be first on my list when I get confidence enough to invite a few extra guests for Dinner & a Movie. At present, however, when things get cookin' in my kitchen on my Dinner & a Movie night, I'm usually just one bean sprout away from total insanity. Somehow I always manage to pull it off without pulling out my hair and ordering pizza delivery. But I'm not quite ready for anyone but Rene and and my son Will to see me like that. :>) And although the dishes almost always come out tasting as good as they look, and I always make it sound like a Swiss picnic in my weblog, don't believe a word of it. It's more like pandemonium in a pot. But I'm getting a little better at it each month, so... by next Spring, I might be brave enough to invite a couple of extra guests...Although I will probably have to put them to work in my kitchen!"
01:06 AM PST Permalink |

Looking for Recipes
I've got a feeling that finding authentic Iranian dishes is going to be somewhat of a challenge. Although I have a gorgeous cookbook called Mediterranean Cooking With Olive Oil, published by the International Olive Oil Council, with recipes from Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunesia, Turkey and Yugoslavia, none of the recipes are specific to Iran. And although it has served me well in most cases, I don't think the Joy of Cooking will be of much help this time. So, looks like I'm going to have to rely on the Internet, and the guidance of my friend Michael Alimusa, who owns a Middle Eastern restaurant here in Napa called Small World. I also found out that a mutual friend, Ali Rafiee, who is originally from Iran, has agreed to advise me on which dishes to serve.
12:35 PM PST Permalink |