Happy Nowruz
Cooking With Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year
193382316X
$40.00
2008
In
Stock
Nowruz – the Persian New Year – is one of the world’s great festivals, a full month of activities celebrating the earth, the arrival of spring, and the rebirth of nature. Most of all, it is a festival for families. Children and adults alike can share in preparing special meals, decorating the house, and performing the many ceremonies that welcome the New Year. This book 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.
Happy Nowruz offers twenty-five fun, easy, and innovative Nowruz recipes, with lots of photos to show you what to do. This is an ideal guide for parents, teachers, and kids – age six and older – to know more about the origins of Nowruz and to get everyone involved in preparing for the arrival of spring by:
• baking Haji Firuz cookies
• germinating seeds in eggshells
• coloring eggs
• making a Nowruz garland
• jumping over fires
• setting the Haft-sinn (seven-s) holiday table
• planting narcissus and hyacinth bulbs
• selecting and buying goldfish
• banging spoons for trick-or-treating
• cooking the Nowruz dinner
• enjoying the Outdoor Thirteen picnic
Najmieh Batmanglij is the leading authority on Persian cooking and the bestselling author of the award-winning New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, which the Los Angles Times called “The definitive book on Iranian cooking.” In Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year, Najmieh Batmanglij shares her childhood memories of Nowruz in Iran as well as the many inventive ways she has celebrated Nowruz with her own children as they grew up in America. This book also includes detailed descriptions of the Nowruz ceremonies as well as 25 recipes for cooking Nowruz dishes and pastries with children.
"Combining a cookbook format with straightforward,
informational text, this amply illustrated title offers a detailed introduction
to the history and customs surrounding Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Beginning
spreads cover the holiday’s historical roots and traditional preparations,
outlined in clear explanations and activities broken down into highlighted
steps. Later pages focus on recipes, starting with safety cautions for both
adults and children. From flatbreads to fish strips to Popsicle desserts, the
featured dishes adhere to international kid tastes. The covered spiral binding
allows pages to remain open while cooking, and the uncluttered, attractive
format, featuring color photos of kids in the kitchen and whimsical illustrations,
will attract interested browsers. Much more than just a recipe collection,
this compendium of customs and cookery about a holiday rarely covered in books
for youth will be of great value."
--
Booklist, Gillian Engberg
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Living in America, my family and I welcome every
holiday and joyful occasion, and we get more pleasure than ever from
celebrating Nowruz – the Persian
New Year.
Through the years I have found myself going out
of my way to be more creative and inventive when celebrating the traditional
New Year ceremonies with my children outside of Iran. Nowruz is a spiritual
holiday, not a religious one – it
is a celebration of the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature.
Everyone can enjoy Nowruz, no matter where they live.
In writing this book, I was inspired by my childhood experiences of Nowruz
in Iran in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as by more than twenty-five years of
celebrating Nowruz with my own children outside of Iran. I hope that families
and children everywhere can benefit from our experience.
This book is suitable for all ages and can be
used at various levels – parents
and teachers could read it out loud to children under seven years of age, while
older children can do everything in the book, including preparing the various
dishes and cookies with the help of parents or teachers. Ideally, I would like
to inspire the whole family to get together and have fun with the various activities
involved in preparing for the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature.
It can be a joyful experience for everyone in the family to cook their favorite
foods together. I have created simple recipes so that children as well as adults
who don’t normally cook can participate in the preparation of the meal.
Most of the recipes in this book are traditionally
made during the Nowruz holidays, but I have also added a few of my and
my children’s favorites,
such as making flatbreads and topping them to make a wonderful pizza.
I hope you will enjoy reading this book and cooking from it as much as
I have enjoyed working on it.
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Introducing people to the
pleasures of Persian cuisine has been a lifelong mission for Najmieh Batmanglij. Her New
Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Cerimonies was called "The definitive book of Persian cooking" by the Los Angeles
Times, and her Silk Road
Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as one of the Vegetarian Cookbooks
of 2004 by the New York Times. She has spent the past 25 years traveling,
teaching cooking, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques
in the West. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and has taught
and lectured throughout the United States. She currently lives in Washington,
DC, where she is teaching master classes in Persian cooking and is working
on a new book for children to cook with the family.
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