National Post (National Edition)
‘This food has travelled with me’
Naz Deravian’s ‘accented’ approach to Persian home cooking is on full display in Bottom of the Pot Laura Brehaut
In Naz Deravian’s recipes, herbs are always added by the bunch or handful. Bright, sour flavours – by way of pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, yogurt and the like – are at the forefront. But equally integral as the hallmark flavours and abundant nature of her Persian home cooking is the spirit of sharing and art of storytelling.
The Los Angeles- based writer and actor grew up in Vancouver (via Rome, Italy) after leaving her native Tehran, Iran at eight years old. In Deravian’s debut cookbook, Bottom of the Pot (Flatiron Books, 2018), she delves into the memories that influenced her “accented” approach to Persian cuisine.
“There is no way that my Persian food is going to taste like how someone in Iran is making it right now. This food has travelled with me,” she says. “I’m using ingredients that are available to me in LA… In Toronto, it’s going to hopefully take on your accent and that’s lovely. I think we pay respect to tradition and pay homage to it.”
Although Persian cooking hasn’t quite made the same inroads into Western kitchens as some other Middle Eastern cuisines, Deravian is hoping this will change. At its heart, she says, it’s home cooking. The only prerequisite is familiarity in its key tastes and ingredients; once you’ve gained it, a wealth of classic soups and stews, egg-based meals, breads and rice dishes are well within reach.
It’s an accommodating cuisine, she adds. “As passionate and opinionated as Iranians are about their food, when it comes to the actual making of it, it’s very forgiving. It’s based on using what you have on hand, making it work for you, not making an extra trip to the store to pick up one little thing.”
T he meaning of the book’s title, which is shared with Deravian’s awardwinning blog, is two-fold. It refers to “precious” tahdig, the rice that forms a crisp, golden crust at the bottom of the pot, which is always the first dish to disappear from the table. “But it’s also all the good stuff that comes out of the bottom of the pot, which is also the stories,” she says.
Intertwining stories with recipes came naturally, Deravian explains. When she first left Vancouver for Los Angeles, she began plying family members for instruction only to learn the path would rarely be a direct one. “These recipes always come with a story,” she says with a laugh. Cooking and storytelling are inextricably linked, she adds, each feeding the other: “food is a catalyst.”