Home At Last

When I recently went home to the US for a week, I had the immense pleasure of eating 3 different Persian dishes, all of which, in the hopes of an eventual return, my father had saved for me. Two were made by an aunt and one by my grandmother. The dishes -- ghormeh sabzi, khoresh-e-garcht, and fessenjon -- were doled out into plastic freezer bags and tightly sealed. As we cooked rice in my mother's kitchen, the perfumed smell of basmati filled the apartment mingling with simmering pomegranate, mushroom, onion, saffron, and parsley to name just a few. They were smells I missed. Until last night, I had avoided making Persian food for nearly a year and a half when I used to make it quite regularly. I grew up on this food. Apparently, when my grandmother babysat me for a year (just after she immigrated to the US during the Iranian Revolution of 79'), she would make these amazing dishes and blend a portion so that her toothless granddaughter could savor the flavors of her country without choking on a cube of beef. Years later, when we moved to the east coast to be closer to the rest of the Iranian family, there were big, family get-togethers nearly every weekend, smaller ones during the week, so that Persian food was a part of my regular diet; I ate rice the way most other Americans ate Kraft singles; I celebrated Nowruz, the Persian New Year, that stems from a pagan, Zoroastrian tradition; I said "merci" instead of "thank you." After the meals, we'd crank up the stereo and dance to the sitar or to Iranian pop music, my 5 aunts teaching me how to move like an Iranian woman, our soiled dinner napkins now moving sensually above our heads. It's all in the wrists, they'd say. Move your hips more, my grandmother would shout, snapping her fingers to the beat. And then we'd collapse, the food heavy in our bellies, to talk over tea and sweets. I have fond memories of those days. By the time I married, my husband had already acquired a taste for Persian food and I decided, somewhat nervously for Persian food isn't an easy cuisine, to learn how to cook it. Fast forward about 3 years and many dishes later. I'm in France. My kitchen is small and my stove top even smaller. I can't find good basmati rice (on one occasion, I pick up a burlap bag and several roaches scurry out from underneath!). The smallest range on the stove gives off too much heat so I worry the rice will burn. There are no Persian food stores...and so on and so forth. They're not so much excuses as evidence that my world has changed and I, for a while, am choosing not to face the changes that I can get away with not facing. In other words, what I realized was that I hadn't made Persian food in France because France was not yet home. But perhaps, in that inadvertent delay, I had caused that feeling to stick around longer. I had to make France my home. My sudden desire to cook Persian food could also be due to having returned from home and feeling homesick, the need to recreate what I no longer have, but whatever the reason, I think it's a good sign I'm beginning to cook Persian food again...

Dream On

Americans will never surpass the French when it comes to certain things, like wine for example. It's just a fact one has to face. We may have some good wines, even great wines, but nothing like those that come from family-run vignobles that have existed for decades, perhaps centuries. Ever ready to proclaim how we do things better because it's new, different, or even more multi-cultural (see article link), the most recent claim is that American sommeliers are, in a nutshell, more friendly and therefore, by virtue of their openness, making a world that was once reserved for the upper classes more accessible. This may be true, but also true is that Americans don't like to be reminded of the class distinctions they prescribe to even though class in the States is just as important and omnipresent as it is in France. Whereas the French might make the distinction between class and cultural tradition, Americans, at least in this case, seem to confuse the two. Although I can understand how a sommelier's openness might make one feel more comfortable, garner interest, promote the pleasure of drinking wine, etc., I also understand the pleasure one can derive from ritual -- and the formality of ritual. There are established rules and those rules are meant to be followed, executed to perfection; everyone from the vignoble, wine-producer and bottler to the cellar manager, sommelier, and client plays his or her own role. The sommelier isn't there to make the client feel good about himself (that's the job of the wine!) but to ensure and to deliver. To perform. I'm reminded of eating out back home, when servers crouch down so that their chin is almost resting on the table and cheerfully say their name and act as though they're your best friend. This never happens in France. Servers don't want to be reminded that they're serving and to have to do so would be a personal insult as well as an embarrassment. I'm diverging, I know, but the point is that it's not about being more laidback, chatty, or better. It's about two countries who see wine, and the culture of wine, very differently. To know why I wrote this piece check out the somewhat maddening but revealing article "A Turn of the Corkscrew: How American Sommeliers Put Their French Counterparts to Shame" http://www.slate.com/id/2180456

The Hump Continues...

I just happened to mention to a friend about my entry on the word "hump" and its French equivalent. Shockingly, she had heard the expression before! (And to my dismay she had not grown up on a camel farm in North Dakota but in the English countryside.) In fact, when someone's "got the hump" it means they're sulking. Apparently it's reserved for adults who take on behavior worthy of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. I don't think I could ever use this expression seriously but I do think I can begin to trust my dictionary once again.