Persian New Year, AKA Nowruz, falls on the spring equinox and fittingly, the holiday menu is all about rebirth and good fortune in the new year.

Join MOFAD President Nazli Parvizi, Iranian journalist Jason Rezaian, and chef Louisa Shafia, author of The New Persian Kitchen, as they discuss the rituals and culinary traditions of Nowruz, such as sprouting wheatgrass and setting the New Year table with seven symbolic foods that begin with the letter “s.”

Chef Louisa will be teaching us how to prepare two simple and traditional Iranian New Year dishes:

Ash-e Reshteh: Noodle soup with herbs, beans, fried onion and mint topping

Mahi Sorkh Kardeh: Fried fish with turmeric and green herbs

Please note this event will take place over zoom at 7pm EST. The zoom link will be sent with your ticket confirmation. Recipes will be emailed to ticket holders in advance of the program.

LOUISA SHAFIA

Louisa Shafia is the author of The New Persian Kitchen, winner of Food52’s Piglet award. She has spoken about Persian food at Harvard, Google, and New York’s 92nd Street Y, and her recipes have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Bon Appétit, and on National Public Radio.

In addition to her extensive writing on Iranian cuisine, Louisa also writes about the diversity of American food, including such topics as the mother daughter team behind the gourmet Chinese import company the Mala Market, the ice cream artisan Lokelani Alabanza who uses Black history and culture as inspiration for her flavors, and Nashville’s remarkable immigrant food corridor of Nolensville Pike.

Louisa cooks Persian guest chef dinners at restaurants around the country, including Maydan in Washington, DC, Zahav in Philadelphia, and Kismet in LA. Currently a resident of Nashville, she serves as Culinary Liaison for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, both cooking for and organizing events that feature chefs from Nashville’s diverse immigrant community.

Feast by Louisa is her online store where she sells Persian culinary goods. Both her pomegranate aprons and fabric rice bonnets––damkoni in Farsi––for cooking Iranian rice, are sewn by graduates of the nonprofit Sew For Hope, which provides training to refugee women in professional sewing business skills.

JASON REZAIAN

Jason Rezaian writes for The Washington Post’s “Global Opinions” section. He served as Tehran bureau chief for the Post from 2012 to 2016. During the years he lived in Iran, Jason’s lifelong passion for Iranian food only grew. He served as a local guide in the Iran episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and frequently wrote about the local food traditions. While he was developing culinary tours of Iran in July 2014, he was arrested by Iranian authorities and imprisoned. An integral part of his life, food is a surprising element of Rezaian’s memoir, Prisoner: ​ My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison, which was published by Bourdain Books in 2019.