Lucid Food - Clearly Natural Cooking

Iranian World Cup Team 2014. Photo: Amin Mohammad Jamal, Getty images

 

I wouldn’t call myself an ardent soccer fan, but for the past week I’ve been planning my schedule around Iran’s World Cup matches. When the team known as Team Melli (the National Team, in Farsi) won their World Cup-qualifying match against South Korea last year, I was working furiously to fill orders at Café Nadery, a Persian restaurant in New York’s West Village, where I had designed the menu. As per health department standards, I wore a bandana to keep my hair back, as did the female cook next to me. Every once in a while, the restaurant would erupt in raucous cheers, and we would peer out of the kitchen to glance at the large-screen TV, and at the roomful of (mostly) men who had gathered to watch. Separated from the men, with my head covered, and hearing the shouts in Farsi, I laughed to myself that I had been transported to Iran. My father was born and raised there, but I had never visited. [click to continue…]

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