About the Book

The 40th Anniversary Edition of Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies by Najmieh Batmanglij contains more recipes and more photos. Each recipe has been restructured for more clarity, including tips and suggestions from her fans over the past 40 years.

• Food of Life provides 400+ authentic Iranian recipes as well as an introduction to Persian art, history, and culture. The book’s hundreds of full color photographs are intertwined with descriptions of ancient and modern Persian ceremonies, poetry, folktales, travelogue excerpts and anecdotes. This book is a labour of love that began in exile, after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, as a love letter to Najmieh’s children. It is the result of 40 years of collecting, testing and adapting Persian recipes for today’s kitchen. All the ingredients for cooking Persian food are now readily available throughout the U.S. enabling anyone from a master chef to a novice to reproduce the refined tastes, textures, and beauty of Persian cuisine. Food-related pieces from the 10th century Book of Kings, and 1,001 Nights to the classics of Persian poetry, the humor of Mulla Nasruddin, as well as Persian miniatures are all included.
• Each recipe is presented with steps that are logical and easy to follow. Readers learn how to simply yet deliciously cook rice with its golden crust tahdig, the jewel of Persian cooking, which, when combined with a little meat, fowl, or fish, vegetables, fruits, and herbs, provides the perfect balanced diet.
• Najmieh Batmanglij, is an acclaimed chef, best-selling cookbook author, and cooking instructor. She is also the co-founder and executive chef of the award winning Persian restaurant Joon, in Vienna Virginia. Najmieh was hailed as “one of seven immigrant women who changed the way americans eat” by The New York Times, and The Grande Dame of Iranian Cooking by Mayukh Sen in The Washington Post. Her latest book Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes & Kitchen Secrets, was the culmination of tens of thousands of miles of travel through Iran. It was chosen as one of the best cookbooks of 2018, and called “magisterial” by The New York Times.
• Batmanglij views preparing a meal not only as a culinary experience, but also as a means to bring family and friends together. She encourages her readers to use her books as she was taught in Iran, to cook, to laugh, to tell jokes and stories, to recite poetry, and to enjoy the meal. Over the past 40 years, Batmanglij’s books have acted as a both a beacon and a bible to Iranian-American and mixed-ethnicity families in the English-speaking world. Her life and her work meet at the vortex of feminism, tradition, ceremony, and the nourishment of body and mind, proving that none of these concepts need be foreign to one another.

About the Author

NAJMIEH BATMANGLIJ, has spent the past 40 years cooking, traveling, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. She has been hailed as “The guru of Persian cuisine” by The Washington Post. Her book Food of Life was called “the definitive book on Iranian cooking” by the Los Angeles Times. Her Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as “One of the 10 best vegetarian cookbooks of the year” by the New York Times; and her From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table won the Gourmand Cookbook Award for the world’s best wine history book of 2007. Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year is a guide to customs thousands of years old yet as vital as ever – enjoyable for families no matter where they live or what their beliefs. Najmieh’s Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets, was selected as one of the best cookbooks of Fall 2018 by The New York Times. Her most recent book is Persian Cooking for Dummies. In a November 2021 review of Mayukh Sen’s Taste Makers, the New York Times declared that Najmieh is one of “seven immigrant women who changed the way Americans eat.” Najmieh is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and lives in the Washington, DC area, where in she is the co-founder and executive chef of the Persian restaurant Joon, which opened in May 2023 in Vienna, Virginia.