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Mama's Homesick Pie (2000)

by Donia Bijan(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

review 1: My public library confuses me. This book, by a celebrated chef containing more recipes, was in the biography section. The Art of Soviet Cooking, on the other hand, by a food writer with some recipes, was in the cookery section.But I digress.This was a deeply evocative book about life in pre-revolution Iran, and the complicated life of a family that came to America afterwards.Absolutely worth reading for anyone whose knowledge of the era begins and ends with the simplistic Americanized version of history, and would enjoy some insight into the time and place. Also, the food is amaaaaaaazing.
review 2: I have a number of books about the Iranian Revolution in 1970: Daughter of Persia, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Persepolis. Also a cookbook by------on Farsi cookin... moreg. Donia Bijan looks back at the year when she turned 15, when her parents, a Doctor with his own hospital and his Nurse, leave Tehran for a vacation in Spain, and find that the world changes in Tehran while they are away.Donia is sent on the attend High School in New YOrk with Friends. Although, she had day dreamed about going to school in America, like her two older sisters, for years, she finds this world of being the only foreigner in a suburban high school, from a country had recently became a former ally and become incomprehensible, painful. Meanwhile, her parents returned to Iran only to find their life their destroyed. The only possible action, was to emigrate to the USA, California.Even though her father can not imagine, Donia' choice, she decides to become a cook. She graduates from the Cordon Bleu in Paris and then throws herself completely, into the world of dawn to dusk work, in Michelin three star European Restaurants, before she feels ready to return home to California, and eventually to open her own restaurant.There is much heartbreak and comfort in this book. The heartbreak is that her much respected father never finds peace or even a job in California. Her mother, it being her political work that does not allow them to return, fits in easily, learns to drive and gets a job. The two are bound lovingly and painfully together. The comfort is all in the food. The book begins at the death of Donia's mother, in a car accident, and the Donia works through the shock in packing her mother's kitchen. The book is punctuated by recipes, wonderful, aromatic, dishes. Describing herself in the market, Donia says that most cooks begin the dinner with the meat, I always begin with a fruit or vegetable. I am transported when I think of her Persian Cardamon tea, her Braised Chicken with Persian Plums,her Straw Potato and Muenster Gallette. It makes me in awe of those spices and sweet fruits that mean a place and a time and a way of being that is moveable and borrowable and sustaining. less

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