Persiana/cooking

Cuisine ...

Iranian American Promotes Persian Cuisine in U.S.

(This report is dated 5 years ago. I find it contains important points.)

Excerpts:
She wants Americans to know that some of the ethnic cuisine popular in the United States today -- especially Mediterranean food -- can trace its origins back to ancient Persia. "Iran was at the center of the Silk Road connecting China and the Mediterranean," she says.

Batmanglij says she is looking forward to giving a presentation about Persian influence on Mediterranean food at a "World of Flavors" international conference at the Culinary Institute of America in California. "I will tell them how noodles were not taken from China to Italy by Marco Polo but rather originated in Persia and traveled both East and West long before Marco Polo," she says. "I will tell them how the names of many ingredients and dishes in Greek, Turkish, and Indian are Persian [in origin] and how the Ottoman Turks brought Persian cooks to their courts and modeled their cuisine on that of the Persian Safavid court. I will show slides of Persian miniatures which show how kababs were cooked more than 500 years ago, much as they are cooked today. I will cook Persian food for the 500 international chefs who will be participating and will make sure they leave with Persian food in their hearts."

Batmanglij thinks that Persian cuisine will continue to gain in popularity among Americans. "Persian food is the food of the future," she states. "It consists mostly of grain and vegetables with a little fowl, fish, or meat, with a delicate mixture of herbs and spices. We seem to recognize these days that this is the healthiest diet. I believe that once the political problems are resolved, Persian food will take off in this country and surpass Chinese and Indian food in popularity.

"Persian food," she adds, "is one of the oldest schools of cooking and yet it is the least known. I want to make sure it does not remain that way."