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千夜一夜物語にちなんだ料理

Colorful Cuisine Survives Cultural Blackout

With Kababs supplanting hot dogs as the street food of the day in Manhattan, homemakers are ready for a comprehensive Persian cookbook with, for extra seasoning, humorous, historical and nostalgic vignettes.

I channel all things Persian, not only fine art and culture but also indelible memories from a thousand and one tales of a storied culture, all the way to the reality of present-day monochrome Iran.

My grandfather, who was an art consultant to the last shah of Iran, celebrated his Persian heritage through a lifetime of researching and collecting antiquities. He imparted his passion for Persia to me. At museums, I often exhibit collections of prehistoric pottery; cut glass bowls and ewers and bronze goblets; carved stones and engraved silverware, and intricate brocaded shawls and tribal carpets.

My mother, Pouri Anavian, a santour (Persian dulcimer and piano precursor) player and recording artist, has performed over 1,500 concerts. We often combine the music with a lecture and/or a fine dining experience of Persian delicacies.

We are a duo committed, with an almost missionary zeal, to sharing Persia with friends and neighbors in our adopted home of Japan.

At cultural centers I offer participatory workshops in Persian cuisine, introducing a wide variety of herbs and spices. At universities I present specific historical lectures with photos and slides. Since I flunked compulsory history in high school, I know there are plenty like myself who fall asleep or doodle in class. However, I’ve been making something delicious of history these days by presenting feasts based on ancient recipes.

The civilization of Iran circa 4000 B.C. started on the high Iranian plateau because of the abundance of melted snow. That enabled bedouins to tend to their flocks to make dairy products, start rice plantations and cultivate many vegetables and varieties of wild fruit.

 By 550 BC tribes had extended their borders to most of the Orient, where they settled and formed the largest empire in the world - Iran, or the Land of the Aryan Tribes, It included Central Asians, Armenians, Afghans, Indians and Pakistanis.  For 2,500 years Iran has always been the official name  of the Achaemenid Empire, with Parsa as its capitol.  The Greeks pronounced it Persia. As most history books at the time were written in Greek, Persia stuck. The first king of Persia/Iran, Cyrus the Great, established a magnificent palace called Persepolis (City of Parsa) a monument of tolerance and respect for all cultures and religions, unmatched anywhere in dynamism. Cyrus’s successor, Darius the Great, was an expansionist who spread the empire west to the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea, north to Central Asia and Russia, south to Egypt and east to India.

So, the cultural and culinary sphere represented here embraces Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Xinjiang of China, once known as East Turkestan of Persia. Greater Iran once comprised twenty-eight states. The empire was virtually the ‘United States of Iran’, as the suffix “stan” means “state”. What Iran stood for in ancient times is what the United States of America stands for today: tolerance for different religions, races, creeds and, by extension, cuisine. The founding philosophy was essentially the same.

Travelers and traders navigated the vast empire on ten-thousand kilometers of paved Royal Road, safe-guarded from bandits. Each region’s foodstuff was imported by all the states, thus enriching the cuisine, as travelers speedily transported edibles and communiques. The father of history, Herodotos said, no mortal thing travels faster than the Persian courier.

Persian cuisine is not limited to the boundaries of present-day Iran. At the hands of one foreign invader after another throughout a long history, the kingdom was whittled away and dissolved into desert dust by the Greeks in 2nd c. BC, Arabs in 7th c., Turks in 10th c., Mongols 12th c., Afghans 17th c. Each invader attempting to capture Iran ended up being captivated by Persian culture and cuisine. The storied civilization of Iran has been belittled, largely forgotten and reduced to becoming one of the most neglected and undervalued empires of all times. Iran, shrunk to its present size forms the shape of a little Persian cat.

However,  the cuisine, in all its diversity, has survived.

 During my cooking classes here in planet Japan, mute curiosity reigns. Historically, the legendary Silk Road linked Persia to Japan, the last station on the trail. I am often asked: Is Persian food Arab or European?

It takes ten minutes of meditative chewing before the students express their delightful surprise: “Hey, this is absolutely delicious. The spices are subtle, not too spicy or hot. The taste of the food is not buried in ketchup, sauce mixes or bottled dressings. The food tastes real”.

 These recipes work with a finicky crowd.

We often host parties the way our family did in our halcyon days in Tehran. My mother ornately designs the table using fruit, vegetables, flowers, leaves, branches, strings of pearls and candles, improvising the table setting so it is uniquely different every time. It is pastoral, lush, like her evocative santour melodies. To complement the recipes, we have recreated these tableaux in photos to capture their splendor for “1001 Magical Bites”.


I’d like to dish out some credit : to my mother for the food design; to Grandma Malka for her recipes and to my friends for their enthusiasm and open-mindedness.


「千夜一夜物語」で描写されているフルーツとナッツのピラフ、ピスタチオで太らせた鶏、ザクロ料理、薔薇のデザートは、シェへラザード(ペルシャ語で都会っ子)が何十夜に亘って命懸けで語り続け、今もペルシャの家庭の食卓を彩っています。


来客が大好きなイラン人は、お金を借りてきてでも食事に招待します。魔法のように数え切れない種類の食事を次々に出してくる場面は、度々千夜一夜物語にも登場します。シンドバットが「開け胡麻」の魔法の言葉を唱えると宝石が積まれた洞穴の扉が開くように、イランの家庭を訪れると、山積みの季節の果物で迎えられます。会話が始まるとホストは果物を剥き、食べ切れないほどの量をお皿に盛って次々と進めます。シェへラザードのように饒舌で、会話は終わることがありません。


ペルシャの食卓のデザイン:プーリー・アナビアン
文:ダリア・アナビアン(母娘)


お喋りとお料理が大好きなペルシャ人。家庭に招待されと、今度は歓待を受けた人が、その家の人を招待します。そして、お礼にはまたお返しと、千夜一夜のおもてなしが続きます。


 ペルシャ料理は豪華さが大切です。


なんでも、山あのアルブルズ山脈のように盛って、出さなければなりません。たくさん、出すことが礼儀です。来客にお腹が痛くなるまで持て成すことが礼儀。
痛くなれー、痛くなれー。 腹がよじれるまで、どうぞどうぞと勧める。


 これは、富士山かな?いえいえ、イラン北部に聳え立つ標高5671メーターのダマバンド山です。この北側にカスピ海があり、沿岸が米の宝庫です。イランは、砂漠をイメージされるかもしれませんが、国土は日本の4.5倍あって、その半分は緑豊かです。


イラン北部では雪溶水が豊富にとれ、たくさんの種類の野菜や果物が恐ろしく暑い太陽の下で育ち、牧草も豊で、このような自然界がペルシャの食文化を育んできました。


野 菜、果物、豆、香辛料、香草、肉の組み合わせで何百種類もの煮込み料理が出来上がってきました。トマトの器から顔出している煮込み料理 を「開け胡麻(ご ま)の煮込み料理」と名付けました。蓋を開くと宝石のような野菜が詰まった料理にゴマがふってあるからです。千夜一夜物語に登場するアリババと40人の盗 賊は、これに近いものを食べていたはずです。だから「胡麻」と言ったら、宝石いっぱいの盗掘の岩の扉が開いたのです。


ま た、千夜一夜物語では、柘榴料理が上手は王子さまが誘拐されてしまいます。遠い町の商店街の出店のキッチンで7年間ザクロ料理を作っていました。彼を探し 求めにきたお母さんがたまたまその料理を食べて、この味を出せるのは息子しかいないと気づき、王子様がキッチンに隠されていたことが発覚されます。この料 理は、イランでは有名で「フェセンジューン」と言います。ご飯にかけて食べます。


カリンの煮込み料理には驚くでしょう?日本では、お酒に漬けて喉がいたいときに呑みます。最近は、あまり見なくなりました。使い道がないと思われているからかしら?


カリンがない場合、林檎を代用してもよいです。


プルーンと人参と鶏肉の煮込み料理。
こちらのレシピは「千夜一夜のおもてなし①」の料理本に載っています。




2 件のコメント:

  1. ダリアさん プーリーさん 昨日は素晴らしい演奏を有難う御座います。初めて見にする、耳にするサントウールの音色に感動しました。又お目にかかる日を楽しみにしております。FBの友達申請もよろしくお願いします。Yoshiko Nishioka

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  2. 素敵なエッセイですね。
    プーリーさん、ダリアさんが日本でこんな素敵な活動を
    しておられることを知り、嬉しくなりました。

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