New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies

About the Author
NAJMIEH BATMANGLIJ was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She received her Masters degree in the U.S., and has spent the last 25 years traveling through much of the ancient Silk Road region where she has worked with regional chefs and home cooks adapting authentic recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. She is the leading authority of Persian cuisine and the author of five cookbooks, including the best selling New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies described by the Los Angeles Times as the definitive Persian cookbook. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and has given lectures and taught cooking at a number of venues, including: The Culinary Institute of America, The International Association of Culinary Professionals, Harvard University, L’Academie de Cuisine, and The Smithsonian Institution. She lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches master classes in Persian and Silk Road cooking.


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New Food of Life is a treasury of 230 classical and regional Iranian recipes. 120 color photographs of food intertwined with descriptions of ancient and modern ceremonies, poetry, tales, travelogue pieces, and anecdotes make New Food of Life not just a collection of recipes but also an introduction to Persian art and culture. Each recipe is presented in a format that is brilliantly logical and marvelously easy to follow. You will learn how to cook rice, the jewel of Persian cooking, simply yet deliciously. And by combining it with a little meat, fowl, or fish, vegetables, fruits, and herbs, you'll have a balanced diet — colorful, yet healthy, simple yet exotic. Iranian festivals, ceremonies, and celebrations, together with the menus and recipes associated with them are described in detail: from the ancient winter solstice celebration, Yalda, or the "sun's birthday," which is the origin of such Western holidays as Christmas and Halloween, to the rituals and symbolism involved in a modern Iranian marriage. Like a magnificent Persian carpet, 1,000 years of Persian literature and art have been woven into the book. Food-related pieces from such classics as the 10th century Book of Kings, and 1,001 Nights to the miniatures of Mir Mussavar and Aq Mirak, from the poetry of Omar Khayyam to the humor of Mulla Nasruddin are all included. Now with the ingredients for Iranian food available in most US cities, New Food of Life makes accessible one of the world's oldest — yet least known — culinary traditions where the first recipes were written 4,000 years ago in a cuneiform script on clay tablets.


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