[CultureBeat] The Art of Iranian Food
by Marybeth Tamborra
In honor of Persian New Year …
Even as a child in a photograph taken 58 years ago she still has those same careful, pensive and protective eyes. In the black and white image, the textured field in which she and two other girls lie is grey. She wears a white, chiffon dress that has a softness to contrast the stark, sharp blades of dry grasses and flowers. What stands out in the picture is the three girls, their white dresses and smooth faces, and Suad’s strong, dark eyes.
She was born in 1944 in Basra, Iraq, the hometown of her mother, but spent the majority of her childhood in the family’s home in Tehran, Iran. Suad’s family was one of the many families that fled Iran at the dawn of the 1979 revolution. Her family moved to London initially with the hopes of waiting out the tensions in Iran.
“How I came to know crispy rice is from childhood,” she said.
As she speaks now her eyes are questioning. The quality of her glance is reproduced in her movements; as she cooks she moves imperceptibly and with exactness, keeping her food close to her. She cuts Bulgarian Feta into a salad: an amount, you’d estimate is too much; but after you take each bite you’re left with a plate that has traces of creamy liquid, perhaps a shred of lettuce and nothing more than the satisfaction of entirely well-balanced forkfuls. You learn not to question her.
To Suad, crispy rice, as she calls it, or tahdig in Farsi, is standard rice that accompanies stews. “I grew up in Iran and that’s what they do with rice,” she said.
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