Treat yourself to bastani — gorgeously perfumed Persian saffron-and-rosewater ice cream

By Leslie Brenner

Last time I made bastani — the saffron and rosewater ice cream that’s one of Iran’s most famous and beloved desserts — my friend Greg closed his eyes, seeming to drift away to a faraway land, and said: “This may be the best ice cream I’ve ever had.”

After having tweaked my recipe a couple times, I knew I’d gotten it right.

There are several different ways to approach bastani. Traditionally, it includes salep (also transliterated as sahlab), a flour made from orchid tubers, which gives it a distinctive sticky-chewy texture. Sometimes bastani also includes nuggets of frozen clotted cream, or chopped pistachios folded in.

Egg yolks are another variable: Some versions use a lot of them, maybe six yolks for a quart of ice cream; others do without eggs entirely.

Whatever direction you take, chances are excellent that your bastani will be dreamy. How could it not? Rosewater and saffron are such an enchanting combination.

To make a custardy bastani, which is probably most common, combine and heat cream, milk, sugar and saffron, whisk the hot mixture into whisked egg yolks, slowly cook, stirring, until it coats a spoon, strain and stir in rosewater and vanilla. Chill it down and freeze in your ice cream maker.

I like bastani rich, but not heart-stoppingly so: Three yolks tastes just right.

And I keep it simpler — going for a smooth and velvety vibe; mine skips the salep and clotted cream. Chopped pistachios go on top as a final flourish, if I use them, along with dried rose petals. If you want to lean more into the pistachio vibe, go ahead and stir some in before you freeze it. Or skip the nuts, if you’re so inclined — it’s also delightful without them.

Want to try something really fun? Consider making the ice cream sandwiches known as bastani-e nooni or bastani-e nuni — a scoop of bastani between two round ice-cream wafers. Or you could plop a scoop into a waffle cone, for a pointy spin on that traditional treat.

If your goal, on the other hand, is to impress Greg, just serve a scoop or two in small dishes, and scatter those dried rose petals and crushed pistachios on top.

RECIPE: Bastani (Persian Saffron & Rosewater Ice Cream)

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Hope for a “new day” for Iran’s women by cooking these dishes for Nowruz, the festival marking the start of spring

Fresh Herb Kuku, from a recipe in ‘Food of Life’ by Najmieh Batmanglij

By Leslie Brenner

How delightful to be turning to spring, which begins Monday. Celebrated by people in and from Iran, Nowruz — a two-week festival with Zorastrian roots, marking the season’s return — begins on the vernal equinox. Nowruz (also spelled Norooz), which means “new day,” is also celebrated by people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other cultures in the region.

Traditionally, it’s a time of feasting and rejoicing. This year, however, is bound to be a difficult one in Iran, due to the severe repression of and violence against women and the resulting protests. One can only imagine the battered population there wishing for a true new day.

Here, stateside, Iranian families will be cooking traditional foods or enjoying them in restaurants. Persian eateries in Los Angeles are offering solace to Iranians living there; L.A. holds the largest Iranian population outside of Tehran. Should you choose to cook to mark the holiday — whether you’re Iranian or cooking in solidarity with the women of Iran — we’re here to help.

There’s a wonderful primer about the Nowruz festival in Food of Life, Najmieh Batmanglij’s encyclopedic book subtitled “Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies.”

In every household, Batmanglij explains, a special cover is spread on a carpet or table — the sofreh-ye haft-sinn, or “seven dishes” setting. Each dish served begins with the Persian letter sinn, and they represent, respectively, rebirth, health, happiness, prosperity, joy, patience and beauty. Now that’s a lot to celebrate!

“The traditional menu for the Nowruz gathering on the day of the equinox usually includes fish and noodles,” Batmanglij writes. “It is believed they bring good luck, fertility and prosperity in the year that lies ahead.”

Batmanglij’s Menu:

• Noodle Soup (osh-e reshteh or ash-e-reshteh). Noodles, she writes, “represent the Gordian knots of life. Eating them symbolically unravels life’s knotty problems in the coming year.”

• Rice with Fresh Herbs and Fish (Sabzi polow ba mahi). Herb rice represents rebirth and fish represents Anahita, an angel of water and fertility.

• Herb Kuku. The eggs and loads of fresh herbs in this frittata-like dish represent fertility and rebirth.

• Sabzi Khordan with Bread. Iran’s ubiquitous herb platter with cheese and nan-e barbari (flatbread) represents prosperity.

• Wheat Sprout Pudding. For fertility and rebirth.

• Sprout Cookies. Prosperity and fertility.

• Seven Desserts. Representing nourishment, light, love, sweetness and prosperity.

Three great dishes to make

Sabzi Khordan — an Iranian herb platter — is a must at Nowruz celebrations (and every other Persian meal!).

Sabzi Khordan with Cheese and Nan-e Barbari

We’re leading off with the herb platter known as sabzi khordan, as it’s such an essential part of the Iranian table – not just during festivals, but every other day, as well. “It’s essential to any meal we have, always,” says Nilou Motamed. The food-world celeb — a permanent judge for Netfix’s “Iron Chef” revival and my editor long ago at Travel + Leisure — is a native of Iran.

Putting together the platter itself requires no cooking, just collecting, washing, trimming and assembling herbs, scallions, cukes and radishes, and sourcing the best feta you can find (Bulgarian, if possible). Toasted walnuts are optional. Nibble all of it to your heart’s delight before, during, and in-between everything else.

With it you’ll want the flatbread known as nan-e barbari. Making one is easier than you might think, thanks to a hack Nilou gave us when I interviewed her a few years ago for a story about sabzi khordan: Her mom uses frozen pizza dough. It’s super fun and easy to make. Flatbread in hand, you can create the perfect bite — what Nilou calls a loghme. “You put some feta cheese in the bread, and then whatever your perfect complement of herbs is — whether you’re a dill or a tarragon person, or you like both, maybe the little tail of a scallion.”

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan and Nan-e Barbari

New Year’s Bean Soup (Ash-e-Reshteh)

This vegetarian bean soup, chock full of herbs and other greens, stars those long soup noodles (known as “reshteh”) that will untangle life’s problems You can make them by hand; Naomi Duguid gives instructions for doing so in her gorgeous book, Taste of Persia, from which our recipe is adapted. You can also buy them in Middle Eastern groceries carrying Iranian ingredients, buy them online, or substitute dried linguine — which many recipes, including Duguid’s suggest. Another Iranian ingredient, kashk — a fermented milk product made from whey — may also be found in Middle Eastern groceries; it’s optional in Duguid’s version, and the soup is delicious even without it.

We featured the recipe a few years ago in a short piece about Persian New Year’s bean soup.

RECIPE: ‘Taste of Persia’ Ash-e-Reshteh (New Year’s Bean Soup)

Fresh Herb Kuku

Finally, there’s the glorious frittata-like egg-and-herb kuku (shown at the top of the story). To make it, season beaten eggs with turmeric and advieh — a fragrant mix of ground dried rose petals, cinnamon, cumin and cardamom. (Cooking Iranian food is always a delightful to the senses.) Add a ton of finely of herbs (parsley, cilantro, dill and fenugreek) and lettuce, plus garlic, scallion, chopped walnuts and sautéed chopped onion. Pour the batter into a skillet in which you’ve heated oil, butter or ghee, cook it slowly until it has set in the center, then finish it quickly under the broiler. Top it with caramelized barberries.

RECIPE: Najmieh Batmanglij’s Fresh Herb Kuku

Here’s hoping for that true new day.

Author Najmieh Batmanglij is the revered ‘goddess of Iranian cooking'

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

The Washington Post called her “the grande dame of Iranian cooking.” Yotam Ottolenghi called her its “goddess.” Super-chef José Andrés has called her “a wonderful guide to the Persian kitchen.”

We’re talking, of course, about Najmieh Batmanglij — the author of seven books, including Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies; Joon: Persian Cooking Made Simple; Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets and other titles.

I’m embarrassed to say that Batmanglij’s wisdom only came into my life last year, when I started exploring Persian cooking in earnest. Food of Life — the magnum opus that she first published in 1986, revised for a 2020 25th-anniversary edition and is once again updating — is a great place to begin, if you want to explore this magnificent cuisine.

Sabzi polow — rice with fresh herbs — prepared from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

Some of my happiest memories of annus horribilus 2020 involved Food for Life. For my late-September birthday, a masked celebration in the backyard of dear friends, my son Wylie and his girlfriend Nathalie prepared (at my request) an elaborate, insanely delicious rice dish from the book: Sabzi Polow,* Rice with Fresh Herbs. There are a full seven cups of fresh chopped herbs in the dish: dill, chives, parsley and cilantro, and it sports a crisp tah-dig crust. (Once I prepare it myself — soon! I’ll be sure to write about it.)

A couple months later, I spent a luxurious afternoon preparing abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi — Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs. The aromas of dried rose petals, cardamom, saffron and fresh herbs lifted my spirits and transported me to another time and place.

The book has been on my mind lately because Nowruz — Persian New Year — begins this coming Saturday, the first day of spring. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with Batmanglij’s Fresh Herb Kuku, which is traditional for the holiday. It’s like a Persian frittata packed with dill, parsley, cilantro and spring onions, beautifully spiced (more rose petals!) and garnished with quick-confited barberries.

[If you’re cooking with kids this weekend, consider quick-ordering Batmanglij’s Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year.]

Najmieh’s other six books are all on my wish-list(Joon is at the top.)

Still if I had to choose only one cookbook to cook from for the rest of my life, I would seriously consider Food of Life. The 330-recipe volume has enough delicious culture in its 640 pages to keep me delighted cooking and discovering Iran for a long time.

RECIPE: Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

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*The dish is the vegetarian variation of Sabzi Polow Ba Mahi — Rice with Fresh Herbs and Fish. We dropped the fish as the dish was meant to accompany delicious lamb kebabs my friends grilled outside on the Weber.

Rose petals, saffron and tender lamb meatballs: Now that's a chicken soup!

This is the fourth story in our series, Around the World in Chicken Soup.

The Great Confinement has been for me, as much as anything, a year of cooking. My time in the kitchen — chopping, simmering, marinating, braising, baking, slicing, stirring, researching dishes, poring over recipes — has kept me sane, kept me focused, provided escape, resulted in joy and kept my family well fed. We are extremely lucky that we can afford to eat and that we have access to food — facts that have not escaped my consciousness for a single moment, and for which I’m continually grateful.

During these 11 months, if there’s one dish that took me out of myself and away from that narrow physical and mental place that the pandemic has wedged us into, it would be the Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi.

The obvious and immediate miracle of the dish is its incredible flavor and aromas: the perfume of saffron, the gorgeousness of mint leaves and rose petals strewn on top, the tender lusciousness of the lamb meatballs, the soothing comfort of the rich and aromatic chicken broth. I still have a hard time conceiving that we ate something so delicious, so unusual, in our own home. Honestly, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve eaten ever, anywhere.

But equally (if not even more) transporting was the experience of cooking this soup. The afternoon I spent discovering its mysteries was one of the most pleasurable I’ve spent all year long.

Consider the premise: You stuff a whole chicken with rice, spices and dried rose petals. (Rose petals!) Wrap it in cheesecloth, submerge it in a broth scented with cardamom, rosewater, saffron and more, and simmer it gently for an hour and a half. Remove the chicken and debone it. Then drop in meatballs you’ve made from ground lamb, aromatic spices, onion and chickpea flour. Chickpeas go in the broth as well, along with the chicken meat and stuffing, and all that wonderful stuff cooks some more. 

Your home now smells heavenly, and for a grand finale, here comes a whopper of a flourish: Chopped mint or cilantro, plus garlic and more dried rose petals. You’ll pass that in a bowl around the table for everyone to add on top just before eating. 

The meatballs are spectacular. The scents of rose and saffron and cardamom and cumin and herbs are intoxicating. The garnish sends it into a transcendent dimension. 

After I made the soup and recovered from my saffron-and-rose-petal high, I wanted to learn more about the recipe, so I called Najmieh Batmanglij — the Washington, D.C.-based author of Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, in which I found it. The 1986 cookbook is widely considered to be the definitive tome of the genre; Yotam Ottolenghi called Batmanglij “The goddess of Iranian cooking.” 

She and her husband fled Iran in 1979 during the revolution, relocating to Vence, in the south of France, where she wrote her first cookbook, Ma Cuisine d’Iran. Recently Batmanglij spent three years researching her latest book, Cooking in Iran, published in 2019. “I traveled all over Iran,” she said, “and I noticed they love meatballs.” 

Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs — abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi. The Iranian dish is served with sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter ubiquitous on Iranian tables.

Talking with the author was nearly as much fun as making the soup. I knew from her headnote that it’s traditionally served by Jews in Kashan and Hamedan for sabbath dinner (those two cities are south and southeast respectively from Tehran), that it should be served with “saffron flavored rice, pickles and a platter of herbs,” and that it was inspired by one Professor Abbas Amanat, who had gotten the recipe from his mother. Batmanglij told me that Professor Amanat teaches history at Yale University. 

She also revealed that she brought a couple of her own thoughtful touches to the dish — among them, deboning the chicken.  “Traditionally,” she told me, “they use the whole chicken, and when they serve it, the whole thing is in the soup. Wrapping it in the cheesecloth, that’s my French background.”

Diluting the saffron in rose water rather than plain water was her innovation as well, inspired by a technique she’d seen in a medieval Persian cookbook. The two ingredients together do something truly magical.

I made a couple of slight modifications of my own, including adding an option to use canned chick peas rather than soaking overnight and pre-cooking dried ones. More significantly, I also suggest passing of the rose-petal-and-herb garnish at the table. Batmanglij’s recipe calls for stirring it all before in serving it. 

Nan-e-barbari — Persian Bread. We fashioned ours from store-bought pizza dough.

Of course the author’s way is culturally correct. A soup like this, Batmanglij told me, is usually eaten “by people from humble backgrounds. They put the garnish on top, and they put the pot in the middle of the table, with plenty of bread. Serving individual things means more labor.” 

While at our house, we skipped the saffron-flavored rice accompaniment, I did serve the soup with nan-e-barbari, Persian flatbread, and a sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter Batmanglij suggested, and which is ubiquitous on Iranian tables. (Here’s a hack for making home-made nan-e-barbari from store-bought pizza dough, courtesy of Nilou Motamed, former editor of Food & Wine.)

The herbs of the sabzi khordan brought beautiful freshness to each bite.

Obviously, building this marvelous soup is a project, something to take slowly and enjoy, not something to be rushed through on a busy weeknight. But should you find yourself wondering how to fill a long and lazy Sunday or Saturday afternoon, I can’t think of a more delicious undertaking.

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan

RECIPE: Nan-e-Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

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For 'Top Chef' judge Nilou Motamed, the Iranian herb platter sabzi khordan is a way of life

Ever since the pandemic cooped us up back in March, beautiful, generous flurries of fresh, soft, fragrant herbs have felt like an antidote to everything awful. My kitchen windowsill has become a garden; next to the pots, lemongrass sprouts and flourishes in a vase. When I can make it to my favorite Middle Eastern grocery, I come back with armfuls of dill and tarragon; at the Asian supermarket, I bring back ridiculous volumes of shiso, Thai basil, mint. Because I’ve developed an acute fear of running out, I just installed an LED-powered hydroponic AeroGarden outfitted with dill, spearmint, thyme, parsley and two kinds of basil. 

Toss a handful of fresh herbs on the plainest dish — potato salad, hummus, grilled zucchini — and it instantly becomes gorgeous, alluring, uplifting and even life-affirming. 

Nilou Motamed on the stoop of her brownstone in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn | photo by Peter Jon Lindberg

So why not just eat herbs? That’s the idea behind sabzi khordan, the platter of herbs and accouterments that anchors every Iranian table. “It’s essential to any meal we have, always” says Nilou Motamed. Like just about everyone I know who cooks, the former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, current “Top Chef” judge, global food and travel guru and co-founder of Story Collective has been planting herbs profusely. 

“Our entire fire escape is an herb garden,” she says, “something we’ve never done before.” 

Nilou also shows up early to line up for herbs from Lani’s Farm at her local farmer’s market in Brooklyn; she describes them as phenomenal. “Our farmers market has gotten really competitive, and she has cilantro I’m trying to sprout, with incredible, deep, almost anise flavor. It has a purple stem.” 

Nilou, who was born in Iran, grew up eating Persian food at home even after she moved with her family to New York when she was 13. Because of that, fresh herbs have always played an outsized, aromatic role in her life. (I’m calling her Nilou because I’ve known her more than 25 years, and referring to her by her last name just feels too weird.)

Herbs from Nilou Motamed’s fire-escape garden | photo by Nilou Motamed

She fondly remembers spending time back in Iran at her father’s family house in an orchard (“bagh” in Farsi) in the town of Hamedan, amid groves of sour cherry, apricot, plum, almond and walnut trees. They’d lay down a Persian carpet outside under a big shade tree and picnic on kababs made from a just-slaughtered lamb. 

“Coming from the mountains, there were these qanat that run through all the countryside — mini mini mini streams — and all these herbs, the mints and watercresses would grow there,” says Nilou. “We’d pick the herbs and put our bottles of Coca-Cola in the ice cold water and drink it with the kabab. There’s something about herbs that makes you feel like you’re connected to your environment.” 

Maybe that’s why herbs are speaking to us so sweetly just now — we need them to connect to the natural world. 

They’re celebrated lushly on the sabzi khordan platter, which generally includes tarragon, dill, parsley, mint, cilantro and reyhan (a family of basils that includes Thai basil), along with scallions, radishes and/or Persian cucumbers, feta cheese, and sometimes walnuts, is there to nibble on throughout any Iranian meal — including kabab, of course.

“On Friday, every family does kabab,” says Nilou. “It’s very basic; we don’t use a ton of spices. It’s beautiful grilled meat, very plain rice, the meat basted in butter and saffron, a great cut char-grilled on aromatic wood, and then with the sabzhi khordan, you can do whatever you want to create the flavors.”

But serve it with freshly baked nan-e barbari (Persian flatbread), and sabzi khordan can also be a meal in itself. 

I know what you’re thinking: Where are we going to get nan-e barbari, especially during a pandemic? 

“I cheat and make it with pizza dough,” says Nilou. “If you use a pizza stone, it’s amazing, and it’s so easy to make.” Five minutes to pull and stretch the dough onto the pizza stone or baking sheet, press in some grooves, brush with a yogurt wash and sprinkle on nigella and/or sesame seeds, then 20 to 25 minutes in the oven and you’ve got barbari.

We tested her recipe using a couple different brands, including Trader Joe’s, and it turned out stunningly well. 

Nan-e Barbari made from store-bought pizza dough. Really!

Once you’re at the table — with your splendid sabzi khordan and your golden, crisp barbari bread — the idea is to create the perfect bite for yourself or a tablemate. There’s even a word for that bite: loghme. “You put some feta cheese in the bread, and then whatever your perfect complement of herbs is — whether you’re a dill or a tarragon person, or you like both, maybe the little tail of a scallion.”

Treat yourself to one sabzi khordan fest, and you may find yourself hooked. The herb habit is truly addictive; if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself scattering herbs over all kinds of dishes with abandon. Untreated, you may even turn into someone like Nilou, who will “literally buy bushels of herbs, and spend way too much time stemming and freezing. If you dry everything really well, and freeze them in Tupperware containers, they stay fresh. I’m like my own Jolly Green Giant.”

Go ahead. Treat yourself. Live a little. I’m pretty sure that even if the fix is fleeting, it’ll make you feel better.

Would you like a window on Nilou’s Persian cooking adventures? Follow her on Instagram @niloumotamed.

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan (Persian Herb Platter)

RECIPE: Nan-e Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

Cool as a cuke: Four cucumber-happy salads to refresh you through a hot and heavy summer

Blimey, we all need a chill pill! In the absence of an effective one, we’ve been turning to the coolest of vegetables, the cucumber.

The Oxford Companion to Food tells us that the cucumber is “one of the oldest cultivated vegetables,” that it has been grown for some 4,000 years, that it may have originated in South India and that Christopher Columbus introduced it to Haiti in 1494. Jessica B. Harris points out, however, in The Africa Cookbook, that the some scholars feel that the cucumber may have come from Central Africa.

But wait — isn’t “one of the oldest cultivated vegetables” technically a fruit?

“It is a fruit,” says my friend Tim Simmonds, a Dallas botanist — and so are squashes, both summer and winter, including pumpkins. “Same big happy family.”

The curcurbit family, that is: the vine-y plant group that also includes watermelons, chayotes, gourds, cassabananas (a.k.a. melocotón) and the kiwano (a.k.a. African horned cucumber or jelly melon).

Given the cucumber’s origin story, it’s not surprising that it is popular in India — especially in the form of raita.

The cooling cucumber salad accompanies just about any kind of Indian meal, of course. But I’ve been known to enjoy a bowl of it on its own for a soothing lunch (particularly in a pandemic!).

Ours features grated cucumber, toasted cumin and a touch of lemon juice.

A Cucumber Sunomono was literally the first recipe we test-drove for our recent review of Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking, since the cucumber salad is a frequent starter of Japanese meals. This one, which weaves wakame seaweed in with the cukes, sports a jaunty grated-ginger garnish. We fell in love, not surprisingly. Maybe you will, too (let us know in a comment!).

Cucumbers also make appearances in Sakai’s recipe for Potato Salada and Dallas chef Justin Holt’s Salaryman Potato Salad.

But we’re not counting those in our four, so wait, there’s more!

This pretty Cucumber, Radish and Feta Salad came together as we riffed on a Levantine dish called khiar bel na’na, starring thin-sliced cukes, dried mint and orange-blossom water. We added radishes, scallions, feta and fresh mint (which layers beautifully with the dried). Lately it has become a house favorite.

And finally, this Scandanavian Cucumber-Dill Salad — which is wonderful with poached salmon, Cold Poached Arctic Char or even Swedish meatballs.

A happy development, at least in my neck of the woods, is that organic Persian cucumbers have become more readily available, even during the pandemic. They have lovely texture (as long as they’re nice and fresh), they’re less watery than English cukes but more flavorful than most hothouse cukes, and they don’t require peeling — a win win win. Though sizes for all kinds vary, generally speaking you can figure two Persian cucumbers for one medium English cucumber, or three for a large English cuke.

As you’ll see from the above recipes, many cultures salt cucumbers and let them sit to draw out the water and ensure great texture; sometimes gentle squeezing is called for as well. Hope you enjoy these refreshing treats.

Stay cool. Think cuke. Wear a mask. Stay healthy.

[RECIPE: Cucumber Raita]

[RECIPE: Cucumber Sunomono]

[RECIPE: Cucumber, Radish & Feta Salad]

[RECIPE: Cucumber-Dill Salad]

Anissa Helou's 'Feast' delivers delicious inspiration from around the Islamic world

Life can get in the way, during normal times, of plumbing the depths of the cookbooks on our shelves or coffee tables.

The Great Confinement of 2020 has changed all that: So many of us are seeking deeply immersive cooking projects to delight us, distract us and give us strength. The most far-reaching of them can also transport us somewhere far away from the confines of our kitchens.

Coming up on its two-year publication anniversary, Annisa Helou’s Feast: Food of the Islamic World has been my nearly constant companion since about a month before quarantine locked us in. Within its 530 pages there are so many beguiling flavors to discover, so much culture to soak in and so much to learn that honestly, I don’t feel cooped up at all.

The book, which won the James Beard Foundation Award last year for best International Cookbook, takes us on a journey around the Muslim world in more than 300 recipes — from Helou’s native Lebanon to Senegal to the west, Turkey to the north, Tanzania to the south and Indonesia to the east, with stops in Morocco, Egypt, India, Iran, Xinjiang and much more along the way. The sweep and scope and depth of the project is just incredible; it’s an awesome achievement.

Author of many other acclaimed cookbooks, including Modern Mezze, Mediterranean Street Food, Savory Baking from the Mediterranean and Lebanese Cuisine, Helou is a gifted cultural guide who tells a great story. (I’ve been following her on Instagram for years; it’s always lovely to see what she’s cooking and eating as she travels around the world.)

Lebanese fatayer, spinach-filled pastries

The most unexpected story in Feast tells of her quest to taste a roasted camel hump, which begins when she’s invited to take part in a feast in the United Arab Emirates in which a roasted hump would be the centerpiece. It doesn’t work out for her as hoped: Separated from the main part of the feast with the other women, Helou is disappointed to be served some “positively nasty” camel meat rather than the hump, which is reserved for the men. The story ends a couple years later, with Helou purchasing her own baby camel in Dubai, having it slaughtered, massaging it with saffron, rose water and the Arabian spice mixture b’zar (cumin, coriander, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, etc.) and roasting it herself.

“The hump looked gorgeous as it came out of the oven,” she writes, “crisp and golden. Both the fat and meat were scrumptious — the baby camel must have been milk-fed. The meat was pale and tender and the fat very soft . . . . Apparently, people also eat the fat from the hump raw. I will have to try that next time around.” She then proceeds to offer advice for buying your own hump to roast, along with instructions to follow her recipe for Baby Goat Roast, subbing the camel hump for the baby goat.

Most of the stories and recipes are, fortunately for those of us who actually want to cook from the book, much more accessible than camel hump.

Among the dishes I’ve made (so far) and loved were a Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons; a classic Tabbouleh, Kafta (lamb skewers) that I served as Helou suggested with a beautiful Onion and Parsley Salad; savory, spinach-filled pastries called Fatayer; the Turkish salted yogurt drink Ayran, an Indian Mango Lassi and Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding. A year ago I bought a rakweh (Turkish coffee pot) and started making Turkish coffee according to the slapdash instructions on the coffee package. Helou’s primer on brewing qahwa (bringing water to a boil, stirring in coffee and sugar, reducing heat, simmering till it foams up, removing from heat and repeating once or twice till no more foam happens), takes it to another level. What a gift!

The Chicken Tagine recipe, which called for four poussin or Cornish hens rather than a generic chicken, required a bit of adjustment. I found Cornish hens, but they weighed nearly two pounds each, and eight pounds would have been far too much for the six to eight people the recipe was meant to serve. I punted and used a chicken instead, cutting it into four (two whole legs and two airline breasts, with wings attached).

Ayran (right), a Turkish salty yogurt drink, and Indian Mango Lassi

The dish was wonderful, and from it I learned so much about Moroccan tagines — the interesting thing about which, writes Helou, “is that instead of browning the meat at the beginning as with most other stews, the browning is done at the end after the meat has cooked and the cooking liquid has evaporated to leave only a silky sauce.”

That silky sauce happens thanks to a lot of finely grated onion and spices that melt over the course of the cooking time into a savory blanket.

I’d had no idea that there were four different types of Moroccan tagines depending on the seasonings used. Nor that many Moroccan home cooks cook the tagine in a regular pot, then transfer it to the beautiful ceramic tagine dish that gives the stew its name to serve at the table. “It is mostly street food vendors and rural folk who cook their tagines in earthenwear tagines,” she writes.

I found myself craving the dish again a few nights ago, when I stared into my (emptying) pantry and spotted a jar each of green Castelvetrano and black Kalamata olives — perfect for the dish. This time I cut the chicken into smaller pieces (leg, thigh, breasts cut in two with wing still attached to one half): even nicer.

Kudos for Helou’s pita bread recipe, which leads off the book. Not that I was able to test it word-for-word: in the time of corona scarcity, I didn’t have and couldn’t get the right kind of yeast. (The book calls for instant yeast everywhere yeast is called for, it seems; I only had active dry yeast.) But Helou’s method — more useful than others I found as I searched far and wide — did serve as seriously useful inspiration when I was developing my own recipe for half-whole-wheat, half-white pita bread.

It’s that kind of authoritativeness that has had me reaching for Helou’s book again and again as I develop any kind of recipe with roots or inspiration in the Muslim world.

Anissa Helou’s Onion and Parsley Salad needed no tweaks.

There’s a caveat, though. As often as not, the recipes need tweaks, at best, or a lot of guesswork at worst. For a Hyderabadi Dumpukht Biryani, Helou has you marinate a princely amount of boneless lamb shoulder in a lot of yogurt, along with tenderizing green papaya (smart!) and spices. Are we meant to discard the yogurt when the meat goes into the pot? Who knows? Lots more yogurt goes in, so maybe not? If that’s the case, what a waste. I split the difference, shaking the yogurt marinade off most of the lamb pieces, but wound up with an epic fail anyway: There was way too much liquid, resulting in a drab and sodden mush, rather than the elegant, discreet rice grains that distinguish a well made biryani. I wound up picking the expensive lamb bits out of the inedible dish and making them into a soup the next day.

I came to understand pretty early on that rather than a book to precisely follow recipes from, Feast is a book to be inspired by, to learn from and to be guided by. So that even after the biryani fiasco, when Wylie decided to take on a kafta research project — finding and developing the best possible iteration of the Lebanese ground lamb skewers — I handed him Helou’s book. In the headnote for her recipe, she recalls going to the butcher shop in Beirut with her mother, who would carefully watch the butcher chop the meat for her kafta in order to make certain he used the right cuts (shoulder or leg). That inspired Wylie, after a decent version he had made with packaged pre-ground lamb from someone else’s recipe, to use hers, grinding his own meat from a leg of lamb. It was spectacular.

And when we plated the kafta with fabulous hummus, handmade pita and Helou’s Onion and Parsley salad, it transported us a million miles away from home.

There are so many more recipes and techniques I plan to explore in the book: Turkish meat boreks; scallion pancakes from China; a Saudi eggplant fatteh that’s said to be the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite dish; the Lord of Stuffed Vegetables; Moroccan meatballs with rice, harira and couscous with seven vegetables; Persian tadigh; a crab curry from Indonesia. I’ll soon be making up batches of her harissa and garam masala for my pantry.

And I’m eager to try out many of her desserts, once I can get the right ingredients. For now, here’s her Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding:

Helou even has a couple of recipes involving fresh, green almonds, answering a question I asked in a story last fall when they were in season.

To be sure, Feast is probably more a book for seasoned, confident cooks and armchair culinary travelers than for beginners who need to faithfully follow instructions. As for me, I’d buy it again in a heartbeat. And for friends who are ambitious, intrepid culinary adventurers, I will offer it as a gift.

Feast: Food of the Islamic World, by Anissa Helou, Ecco, 530 pages, $60

RECIPE: Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemon

RECIPE: Kafta (Lebanese Lamb Skewers)

RECIPE: Anissa Helou’s Onion and Parsley Salad

RECIPE: Syrian/Lebanese Rice Pudding

Celebrate Norooz — Persian New Year — with an emerald-green ash-e-reshteh New Year's bean soup

We could all use a little lift, even on the first day of spring, the day Norooz (also known as Nowruz) — Persian New Year — is celebrated.

This gorgeous vegetarian soup, which traditionally celebrates the spring holiday, involves ingredients you might well have on hand; dried spearmint and saffron are about as exotic as the ingredient list gets. Both of those are used to make the garnishes you’ll finish the soup with: mint oil and saffron water.

Most challenging might actually be the ingredient that in normal times would seem the most mundane: dried linguine. If you have just a little — a third of a pound is all the recipe calls for, and you could certainly use just a quarter pound or less, or really use any kind of long noodle — you’ll be good to go.

The recipe starts with a cup of mixed dried beans and lentils, and you could use almost any kind in any combination, so gotta love that, too. Simmer them till they’re nearly tender, then throw in a bunch of greens — spinach, parsley and scallions. If you don’t have fresh spinach, frozen will work just fine. Cook the pasta and drop it in.

That’s basically the soup, which then gets garnishes: sliced onions sautéed with turmeric, the mint oil, a dollop of yogurt and saffron water.

It’s so beautifully green and herbal and perfumed that it seems to promise that everything’s going to be all right. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Happy spring. Happy new year!