Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Leila Heller’s mother was an excellent cook. When she lived in Tehran, Empress Farah Pahlavi – one of the many family friends who tried her cooking – suggested that she write a cookbook. Then the revolution happened. Nahid Taghinia-Milani, known as Nahid Joon, left Iran in 1979 and ended up in New York with her husband and children. There, her cooking took on greater importance: it became a means of preserving her heritage and bringing family and friends together. It also made her a star in the New York art world, thanks to a series of dinners she helped organize for her daughter’s gallery that became famous as the tastiest treat in town.
“My mother’s legacy was her cooking,” Heller writes in Persian Holidays: Recipes and Stories from a Family Table (Phaidon), a new cookbook filled with her mother’s dishes. Among them are her Persian chicken salad, herb frittata, stuffed grape leaves, fesenjan (a stew of walnuts, eggplant and pomegranates), braised lamb shanks and rice with barberries. The founder of a homonymous galleryHeller has been a fixture on the New York art scene since the early 1980s, when he exhibited works by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A dealer of Middle Eastern and Asian art, he opened a second gallery in Dubai in 2015.[My mother] “She was a true artist,” he writes. “The abundant spices, fresh herbs and myriad ingredients were her paints; her sense of smell and taste were her brushes.”
Nahid Joon lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. His kitchen was designed by his cousin, the famous architect Nasser Ahari. The cabinets were inspired by the walnut hardware in his kitchen in Iran, and Nasser designed special brass hardware for the pulls, brass floral elements for the glass doors, and brass hooks with floral designs above the stove so Nahid Joon could hang his utensils.
Over the years, this room held many precious memories. Like the marathon cooking sessions that preceded Nahid Joon’s dinners for up to 120 people, when he would plug in his six large rice cookers on the floor throughout the house and play classical music, Persian songs or his favorite singer, Julio Iglesias, while he cooked. Or Thanksgiving dinner, when the whole family would gather in that kitchen to cook and Nahid Joon would serve him Persian-style turkey with cloves and rice with sour cherries.
Even the simplest of meals became a feast. Heller recalls that one night her son Philip came to dinner and ordered his favorite burgers, only to discover that she had made 12. “I can only cook for 12.” Her generosity was such that nothing was wasted. “She wouldn’t make a chicken leg for herself, she would make a whole chicken and give the rest to the doormen,” Heller says. “She also made a bottle of wine. When the building’s board told her not to give them alcohol, she started hiding the wine in Perrier bottles.”
Dinners at her daughter’s gallery became popular in 2008, when Heller hosted an event to coincide with a Chelsea Art Museum show on Iranian art. “It was a last-minute event. I couldn’t hire the caterer,” Heller says. “My mother suggested we cook ourselves. She made six dishes: some rice dishes and stews. I made six, including my famous shrimp salad. We brought them to the gallery.” Gallery dinners were rare at the time. Heller’s have since become a regular occurrence, attended by renowned collectors, curators and critics, as well as figures such as CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, a childhood friend. “My mother would call me the next day and say, ‘You’re going to kill me. I can’t do this again. ’ But when push came to shove, she always helped. She loved feeding people.”
Not only did she cook with her daughter, she also cooked with her daughter’s friends. “My mother’s friendships were multigenerational,” Heller says. “People came to ask her advice and stayed to eat.”
In 2018, Nahid Joon died after being hit by a car on the sidewalk. She was 84. “She left us very suddenly,” Heller says. Nine hundred people attended her funeral, including doormen. She left behind 150 recipes, all organized, now finally turned into a book. “It’s very bittersweet,” Heller says. “I wish she was here. When they sent me the first copy, I said, ‘Mom, it should be you. It’s your book. You made this happen. ’ She would have been so emotional.”
Persian Feasts: Recipes and Stories from a Family Table by Leila Heller, with Lila Charif, Laya Khadjavi, and Bahar Tavakolian is published by Phaidon£34.95