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Family and feasting at Persian New Year BY TARA AUSTEN WEAVER Growing up in Seattle, Nazila Merati always knew when it getting close to Persian New Year. “All of a sudden there would be plates covered in muslin left in the sunny spots around the house,” she said. “That’s how I knew things were beginning.” The plates held wheat, mung beans, and lentils, which were being sprouted for the traditional New Year’s altar, the Haft Sin. The sprouted grains and beans, as well as the thorough spring-cleaning her mother undertook, were the first signs of the approaching holiday. The next sign was the baking. “My mother made rice flour cookies, chickpea flour cookies, baklava, almond and walnut macarons,” Nazila remembers. “She would start making them a week or two early and just squirrel them away.” The cookies would be served at the family New Year’s feast, and offered to the guests who came to visit during the two-week holiday. Persian New Year is a very big deal. “Most families take two weeks off,” Nazila explains. “It’s like Christmas and New Year’s.” While most of the world keeps time by the Gregorian calendar, Persian New Year marks the beginning of the year according to the Solar Hijri calendar. Instead of celebrating in the midst of a dark winter, Persian New Year falls on the Vernal Equinox. This means the first day of the new year is also the first day of spring. The holiday is called Nowruz, or “new day,” and traces its history back 3,000 years to the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia. Today Nowruz is celebrated throughout Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and by those of Persian descent living around the world. The food of Persian New Year is a celebration of spring flavors. The rice is flecked with green herbs. There are crunchy radishes and bunches of basil, tarragon, and cilantro. The warming stew that is served is earthy with lentils, caramelized onions, and mint. A baked frittata features greens and eggs, another symbol of spring and fertility. Everything is fresh, everything tastes new. There’s an inherent challenge in celebrating such a spring feast in March in the Northwest. In other regions where Nowruz is observed—most notably present day Iran—spring comes earlier. By March fresh herbs are up already, growing in gardens. Not so in Seattle, where early spring can be wet, muddy, and cold. Sourcing ingredients for Persian New Year is difficult in this climate. “I know some people who fly down to San Francisco to do their shopping for Nowruz,” says Nazila. There you can find green garlic in March. In Seattle, it’s still a month or two off. The challenge of sourcing ingredients is not a new one to Nazila’s family. Her parents, Adele and Jay, emigrated from Iran in the mid-1960s, when her doctor father was recruited—along with number of other foreign doctors—to fill a shortage of medical personnel in the U.S. The family found themselves in Chicago, in 1965, where Persian food ingredients were hard to find or non-existent. “When my mother was pregnant with my younger brother, my father searched all over Chicago to find her pomegranates,” Nazila remembers. The fruits that had been ubiquitous in their homeland were almost unheard of in this new and unfamiliar city. He finally came home with two, small, shriveled specimen, the best he could do in Midwestern winter. As a young wife and new mother, Adele Merati was tasked with setting up a house and kitchen far from her own family and culture. “My mom had to be resilient, “ says Nazila. “She had to figure things out on her own. She couldn’t just call her mom or ask the other women in the building.” Even when the family settled in Seattle, in the early 1970s, it was hard to find the ingredients that tasted of home. “Things were not available like they are now,” Adele explains. “You could find cilantro—but it was three sprigs in a plastic bag. It was not in the amounts we like to use.” Particularly difficult to find was the spice sumac and senjed, a dried fruit also sometimes called Russian olive. Both items are important parts of the New Year’s altar. These days it’s much easier to find the ingredients needed for Nowruz, or for everyday Persian cooking. In local markets or online you can buy deep magenta barberries called zereshk, the dried fruit that provides a tangy sour bite to frittatas and pilafs. Seattle’s World Spice Merchants sells advieh, a blend of cardamom, ginger, cloves, rose petals, cumin, and cinnamon. The lavash bread that is served with feta, radishes, walnuts, and mounds of fresh herbs is widely available. The meal served at Persian New Year is traditional, with little variation. There is a warming stew made of lentils, three types of beans, and thin noodles called ash reshteh. Mounds of sabzi polow, slightly salted rice steamed with a spring-like combination of dill, cilantro, parsley, and green onion accompanies smoked or fried whitefish. The Persian kuku, or frittata, that is served features greens and herbs, barberries and walnuts. “I like the kuku best,” says Nazila, “because you can heat it up the next day—or make a kuku sandwich.” On the exact time of the vernal equinox, families gather around their Half Sin altar, a collection of special items—spring flowers, a mirror, garlic, sumac, candles, vinegar, sprouted wheat, mung beans, and lentils, coins for good fortune, eggs for fertility, and goldfish, which are said to stop their swimming movement right at the equinox. “In traditional Iranian homes,” says Nazila, “they would take two weeks off, everyone would get new clothes and go to visit their family. Growing up we never did that. But there was always a big feast with family, and usually a party, and everyone got new money.” “I wanted my children to know what their culture is,” explains Nazila’s mother Adele. “We didn’t impose it on them, but when they were young I went to their classroom to talk about Nowruz, I brought the cookies I make for the children.” Today she is doing the same for her grandchildren. These days Nazila hosts her own Nowruz feast for friends, in addition to the meal she shares with her family. There are spring flowers on the table, and sprouted wheat. She makes the dishes from her childhood, her heritage—lively with the flavors of spring. She forgoes the traditional whitefish for salmon, served with a tangy sorrel sauce. It’s a Northwest touch to an otherwise traditional menu. The meal ends with her mother’s cookies, the baking that starts the holiday season. At the end of the evening she sends guests home with a single clean, new dollar bill, a symbol of luck for the year ahead. “I really think spring is the new year,” Nazila says. “There’s hope. The cherry blossoms are blooming and the daffodils are up.” It’s time to begin anew. Tara Austen Weaver is author of The Butcher & The Vegetarian, Tales from High Mountain, and the forthcoming memoir Orchard House, a story of growing food and family. Recipes included: Kuku Sabzi, Persian herb frittata |
