Bitter & Sweet | Omid Roustaei
Suzy Chase : When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, Cookery by the Book and Decorating by the Book. Around here we're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and homecook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Omid Roustaei : My name is Omid Roustaei and I am the author of the new cookbook called Bitter & Sweet: Global Flavors from an Iranian American kitchen.
Suzy Chase : Your story feels like a beautiful recipe layered, soulful, and rooted in both tradition and exploration. So could you tell us a bit about your personal story to kick things off?
Omid Roustaei : Sure, absolutely. So a long ago I was born in Iran. I left Iran as a teenager a few years after the revolution, and ultimately I ended up here in the US and where I went to high school and college and so forth and so on. What's probably true for a lot of immigrants, you come to this country to become a doctor, an engineer, an attorney, and the so forth. And so my path took me to study science and I studied microbiology and I worked in cancer research for a while before I started going through some personal transformation myself in terms of my relationship with food and how I changed my diet. And I became a vegan and then a vegetarian for a number of years. And I thought, what would it be like to be potentially on the preventative side of treatment and cancer? I was working in cancer research, and so that path took me down to my culinary school days.
I attended a plant-based culinary school and I came back to Seattle where I live and started working as a private chef and I started teaching plant-based cuisines and did that for a number of years before life. Life hands you a different direction and dabbled into becoming a yoga teacher. And ultimately I thought there's something about how we think, how we process and how we make decisions in our lives. And having gone through therapy myself, I became really inspired to shift directions and go to therapy school and essentially that's what I do these days. I'm a therapist and dabble in food and cooking and teaching and writing as a side gig.
Suzy Chase : Wow. Do you play an instrument? What don't you do?
Omid Roustaei : I really wish. I mean, I really wish
Suzy Chase : I play classical piano. That's what I was waiting for next.
Omid Roustaei : Oh, wouldn't that be something, right? No, I can't play and worse yet I cannot sing, so I'll spare anyone having to listen.
Suzy Chase : So two things you can't do.
Omid Roustaei : Right. Well, there are plenty more, but yeah,
Suzy Chase : You wrote, leaving meant bidding, farewell to more than just a physical place. It presented the notion of never knowing when or even whether I would return. That's so deep. So have you returned?
Omid Roustaei : I have not. So sadly, I have not. And the answer is never straightforward. I think that you might face that with a lot of immigrant stories. It's never straightforward. Could I go back? Sure. Have I gone back? No. The history is rather complicated and the politics are even more complex. And so I left initially with fully anticipating that I might return. But as the days and weeks and months and years and decades went by, it became rather clear that as I distant myself from the culture, as I distant myself from my own heritage, the need, the desire to return just diminished. And after decades have gone by, when the need and the desire returned in wanting to rejoice and re-embrace with where I come from, then the complexity of that trip, the complexity of the politics and all that is involved around it, made it such it became preventative. I have too much life happening here to put it on pause and in some way risk things. So I have not returned
Suzy Chase : That saying, they say you can never go home. That just might be it in a nutshell.
Omid Roustaei : Very true. Many of people that I'm surrounded with other immigrants, other people from other cultures talk about what it's like for them returning home when you return home frequently. I think that's a very different experience. But when there is, in my case, a 45 year gap in returning that Iran does not exist, that image of my childhood, that school, that street, that kid that the end of the street where I used to play with, it just doesn't exist. So the idea of I would be, and this is how I often describe it, I would be just as much of a foreigner returning to Iran today as I was the day I arrived in the us.
Suzy Chase : So do you feel like you're keeping that feeling of home alive in your cooking?
Omid Roustaei : Brilliant. I think that was a significant shift for me when I realized Iran is here. Iran is in my heart, my heritage, my background, my appreciation for many facets of this ancient and traditional culture exists within me even if I don't exist within its borders. So I keep that culture alive in me by celebrating the holidays, by cooking more traditional foods around holidays as means of anchoring myself to something that I have a membership in. But my membership is, I don't want to say expired, but
Suzy Chase : Paused.
Omid Roustaei : It is paused, right? It's challenging.
Suzy Chase : So now you call the vibrant emerald city of Seattle home, and you said this book felt like a natural step, but it took time to figure out what you wanted to say. So what was that process like?
Omid Roustaei : That's a complicated one. So I think you might see
Develop, you may see a theme here, having had the kind of life experiences that I had, I think sometimes what's true with a lot of immigrants, you become focused in fitting in. And that was truly my story. I wanted to fit in. Once I realized I may not return, I have to call this place my home. So how do you make a home? A home? You try to belong, you try to fit in, you try to integrate and assimilate. Sometimes that's a very conscious process and sometimes it's rather unconscious. So as the time went by, I found that I really just got further disconnected from where I came from and who I was because my primary goal was to just fit in. And as time went by and I returned to exploring this idea of what would it be like if I actually could acknowledge my other hyphenated identity, I am Iranian American, what would it be like if I was more involved and engaged in that Iranian part?
And for me, that was through food. When I started doing, so all of a sudden I started a blog. I got some social media activities going on, and it just felt like I needed to present myself as if I had a lot of catching up to do. I had to present myself as, oh, I know what I'm talking about. And had feelings of an imposter syndrome essentially. And fast forward, when it came time to write the book, initially it felt like I needed to produce a well-researched, a historically accurate, a detailed, traditional, authentic exploration of Iranian cuisine to have merits and validity to my work. And ironically, that's when I realized that will be the most inauthentic book for me to write because that really wasn't me. What is me and who I am is Iranian-American when it comes to Persian food. I left home as a teenager alone, and so I didn't immigrate with a family.
I was integrated into schools and dormitories and dining halls, and there were no Persian food served at my university. So when it came to Persian food, I had to teach myself. So I wanted to write the book that focused on my experience of Iranian cuisine and how my personal experiences as well as my culinary training and traditions that taught me about improvisational and intuitive cooking, how do I integrate that into Iranian cuisine? And so therefore, this book came to fruition that is about the stories that I share as well as how I approach Iranian cuisine rather than how my mother or grandmother or aunties would have
Suzy Chase : You offer us a window into Persian culture and a deep belief in the power of food to bring people together, which you've talked about. You also weave stories of childhood migration and creativity into every dish. So can you share a childhood memory tied to a specific dish?
Omid Roustaei : There's one dish that I included in the book, and that one was quite, there's quite a process around that one dish. It's a stuffed fish that is from the Caspian Sea region of Iran. That one I particularly remember. Well, we didn't have Thanksgiving in Iran, but we had a lot of dinner events and parties. And I remember it was a bit of a showstopper. Mom would get this giant fish and she would stuff it such that it needed to be sewn shut, as filled with herbs and nuts and dried fruits. And I remember those parties partly because they reminded me of when I was part of a family system. There were aunties, there were uncles, there were cousins, oh my god, lots of cousins that would be participating in these events. So I wanted to include that recipe in the book. And the story that I write about that is I have this image in my head.
There's one snapshot of this dish at our dining table in our home in Tehran, and I was convinced I have a photo of it, and I started digging into old photo albums and boxes and extracting things, trying to find this image. And it turns out it's an image in my head. There is no physical copy of it. And so when I wanted to include that in the book, I actually started cooking based on memory. I wonder what mom would've used, what dried fruits she would've had access to or what she would've chosen to put in there. And so I try to construct this dish purely from memory, and when I did serve it to her, I came close. And that was such a affirming, delightful experience and what it evoked in me and the fact that the power of memory became a way that I wrote that recipe.
Suzy Chase : Yeah. I want to ask you about the term authentic and you say, I intentionally refrain from labeling any dish as strictly authentic or traditional. The food I grew up with in Iran was undoubtedly authentic, but leaving as a teenager and learning to cook from the books available to me in the United States led to new interpretations. I'm interested in hearing about how you fuse the flavors of your childhood with global flavors. That recipe you just talked about. Was that a good example of that?
Omid Roustaei : I was less invested in creating the most authentic and traditional cookbook than I was more invested in making this cuisine that is often underrepresented, more accessible and inspiring to people to approach it. So for me, the priority was write it in such a way where Suzy would be inspired to go and make these dishes rather than look at the recipe and think, oh my God, it takes so long. It has so many ingredients that I have to special order or go to different markets to acquire and without any guidance on improvisation. So for me, authenticity and tradition became secondary to I'm more invested in you making this dish with what's accessible and available to you and easier to acquire, to inspire you to learn something about the cuisine and the culture, even if it isn't the way my mother would've made it. And that to me, ironically, I think we can define authenticity to be a bit self-serving here. So that felt to me more authentic. That was matching my intention and my desire behind why I wrote the book. So the recipe's authentic to me, even though that's not how my mother would've made it.
Suzy Chase : We're living through some crazy turbulent times right now in the world, in the whole world. Talk a little bit about how you want this cookbook to foster cultural understanding through food.
Omid Roustaei : This is really a great question and I think a powerful one for all of us to reflect. How are we navigating through these turbulent and crazy times? So I'm not a novelist, but I love telling stories. If I was a novelist, I would've written a novel. My talent is in the kitchen and how I put dishes together and I found through my skillset, I can tell a story. And above all, I want what I put out into the world to be focused around learning about someone's experience. Stories have such a way of transporting us into places, into characters, into emotions that could indeed create a sense of empathy, a sense of compassion, a sense of curiosity in the other. Every story has a beginning, middle, and an end, and there is a way that others can relate and see parts of themselves into that story.
So I wanted through the art of storytelling, bring people literally or metaphorically to my table to learn about my experience as I'm a big Brene Brown fan. And as she would say, it's hard to hate people close up, move in. And so this is what I hope to do in the book. We can learn about the dishes, but above all, I want for you to learn something more than just how to dice and how to saute, and whether you add the turmeric at the beginning or the end, or the saffron or et cetera, I wanted this to be about creating curiosity, learning something about the other person and triggering the empathy nerve.
Suzy Chase : We need the empathy nerve right now more than ever.
Omid Roustaei : Absolutely. Absolutely.
Suzy Chase : So you lived in Tehran, but both of your parents had strong preferences for the traditional dishes of the Caspian Sea. So why was that?
Omid Roustaei : Both my parents were born and raised by the Caspian Sea, and so we have a lot of family there. And so during my childhood, we would make frequent visits from Tehran to what we call Al North, but the Caspian Sea and spend vacations and holidays with family. And when time came in due time, we had a second home by the sea, and so I would spend a lot of time there. So the food of that region is very familiar to me. Obviously it's the food that my parents grew up with, and it is not entirely different than other regions, but there are specific characteristics about it, which they tend to be very herb forward, very plant-based forward. And if there are protein, yes, you can absolutely use other animal protein, but one of the proteins that they use quite a bit are eggs. So hence a lot of dishes, as you may notice in the book, have poached eggs in them. And those are the characteristics of the Caspian seed dishes. Herb forward have some spices, but never spicy. And boy do we use a lot of eggs.
Suzy Chase : And fun fact, it's not a sea, it's a lake.
Omid Roustaei : It's a big lake. Yes, it's a very
Suzy Chase : Big lake. A big lake,
Omid Roustaei : Yes.
Suzy Chase : I'd love to ask you about a couple recipes in the cookbook. Tell me about Kuku. I've never heard of that.
Omid Roustaei : So you say frittata. I say cuckoo, right? It's almost not quite the same, but there is clearly overlap. The overlap is Kuku, is egg-based dish. How I generally describe Kuku and its difference and similarities with frittata is I often describe it as frittata is about the eggs that has other things in it and then talked with some kind of cheese maybe. Whereas Kuku is about the stuff that are bound together with eggs. So one example of Kuku, there are so many, there are probably dozens of varieties of cuckoos out there. My all time favorite, which I also showcase in the book is what we call cuckoo sabzi, sabzi or herbs. It is one that I've been making a lot these days. In every food demo that I'm doing these days, I'm making cuckoo because it's easy to prepare. It's ready in half an hour and it's very satisfying and filling. So Kuku Sabzi is mounds of parsley, cilantro, dill, chives, and a little bit of feni. Greek leaves bound together with eggs and essentially pan fried into a circular patty that then you slice serve with rice, serve with salad, served with bread. My favorite way is wrap in a tortilla and put fixings in it and take it on a hike with me. So that's my favorite hiking food.
Suzy Chase : Well, speaking of rice, it's a staple in Iranian cuisine. So walk me through your recipe for rice with a crispy saffron layer. Now is this the same thing as tahdig?
Omid Roustaei : Yes. When you make rice, inevitably you end up with tahdig in the bottom. So thadig is two Persian waords linked together. Tah is bottom Dig is pot. Tahdig is bottom of the pot. So it's that straightforward. Making rice is quite a process I often describe every time I make rice in my classes. I tell folks I am the only person I know that I can talk about white rice for 45 minutes. So please sit down. I've got a rice story to tell you. I won't spend 45 minutes talking to you about it. I'll go quickly over the process. There are many different ways to cook rice. One way that I showcase in classes and in the book is kind of the more complex version of it. And that is I want to create a rice that is particularly light and fluffy along with a crispy bottom layer that I always put saffron to give it that golden beautiful color and some scent and take flavored tahdig on the bottom.
How you prepare the rice is soak it. You definitely want to soak it for anywhere between one to four, five hours. And soaking allows for some of the natural starches to be released. And starch is the enemy of light and fluffy. So we definitely soak it, rinse it. And the first step of cooking this rice looks like as if you are cooking pasta, you bring a large pot of water, nicely salted, add your soaked rice, and you're going to pour, boil it for about five minutes and to borrow a term from our Italian friends till, and then you strain it, that strain rice, you take a little bit of it, mix it with saffron and water, put some oil in the bottom of a non-stick pot, put a thin layer of that saffron rice on the bottom, and then lightly fluff the power boiled rice on top, drizzle a little water, a little oil on top, put a lid, wrap the lid with a clean kitchen towel to maintain the moisture in the pot and cook it for 45 minutes on a medium low heat. And if you've done everything correctly, you are likely to have a perfect tahdig. But I always say tahdig has a life of its own, and every pot- and every stove is going to act a little differently. So if you're cooking it for the first time, learn from your first time, know where you left the dial, and then make the correction. If your tahdig was extra crispy, burnt, or if your tidd wasn't as crispy, then you can make the correction the next time you prepare it.
Suzy Chase : That must be so nerve wracking because you can't see the bottom. You can't keep an eye on it.
Omid Roustaei : This is one of the most questions that get popped up, but what's going on? Can I lift the lid? Can I turn at the bottom? And those are the exact things you should not do. So this is where we talk about anxiety management.
Suzy Chase : So pop a pill.
Omid Roustaei : Well, no, drink some wine. Oh dear. This is when we practice breathing. This is we practice acceptance.
Suzy Chase : Oh, that,
Omid Roustaei : I mean, oh that, right? But I think it's important to say, don't invite friends over the first time you're making this rice, right? Practice it once, learn from it, and then invite your family over.
Suzy Chase : I just wanted to tell you that there are so many recipes in this book that open me up to new flavor combinations like beef stew with poached eggs. I've never thought of pairing those two together. Fava beans with crispy shallots, cauliflower with tomato sauce, et cetera, et cetera. Talk a little bit about the title, Bitter and Sweet.
Omid Roustaei : The Bitter and Sweet. So when you get your book contract, initially, it's a very generic title that they slap in there just as a working title, and then you run it past your publishing team, and then we all collectively decide and agree whether that's a good one or not. So we started with a very generic title. We all knew that that wasn't going to be the title, but that's what went on to the book contract. And then as the process began, I became very clear as to what the title should be, and it was based on Eric Kim's cookbook, Korean American. I saw that title and I instantly fell in love with it because I knew exactly what that book was going to be about and who he is and what that book is going to be about. And so I pitched Iranian American as the book title, and so I wrote the book with that title in mind, and it was that title until about five minutes before it went to online publishing listed as for pre-order that then at that point, the publishing team decided that may not be the best title in terms of sales and promotions and so forth and so on.
It's a very long story, but the challenging part of it was for about a year, I settled on that title and it fit, and then I had a week to come up with a new title. And so it's a difficult process because also the new titles that I started thinking about, a lot of these titles brilliant as they are, were taken. So ultimately we ended up on Bitter and Sweet because I liked that of the double meaning it presented, not only it presented the flavors of the recipes in the book, but it so adequately and appropriately captured the stories. They are indeed bitter and sweet stories, and that was part of the whole thought behind writing the book. I didn't want to write a book that was all lopsided toward, this is how we celebrate. This is how a Persian New Year celebration is. This is a picture of a family gather around the table with glasses of wine raised. Those are beautiful, and I love seeing those. I wasn't interested in producing that book. I wanted to produce a book that told both sides of the stories and bitter and sweet after all of this long story of the title. Today, when I hold this book and I look at this and I talk about this book, honestly, I can't imagine it being any different title. I think it is just the perfect title for this book.
Suzy Chase : Now to my segment called The Perfect Bite, where I ask you to describe your perfect bite of a favorite dish out of the cookbook.
Omid Roustaei : Oh, out of the cookbook
Suzy Chase : Or any dish, really,
Omid Roustaei : Any dish out of, okay, this may surprise you or the listener or may not macaroni and cheese. What that is. What came to my mind? So I don't know, 10, 15 years ago I was in a restaurant in San Francisco Bay Area and I had what I qualify to this day, the best macaroni and cheese I have ever had in my life,
Suzy Chase : Really,
Omid Roustaei : And it was utterly delicious. It was just right level of cheese. But for me, what makes a good macaroni and cheese is the crispy top, whether you put breading or panko or whatever else you might put or extra cheese on top, that extra layer, I think in some way it just reminds me of
Suzy Chase : Tig,
Omid Roustaei : Right? Right. It's light fluffy rice and crispy tahdig, and this is kind of like yummy, soft, cheesy noodles, macaroni with crispy bits on top. So that's the one that came to my mind. But to flip it and then go the Iranian version of it, I would say when I don't have to fight everybody else to get enormous serving of tahdig for myself, I love to smother that crispy bit, almost like a vessel to then to put a stew on top of it. One of my favorite stew is the Pomegranate and Walnut Stew Fesenjan, and so grab a piece of saffron crispy tahdig and put some of that luscious rich sauce on top of it. As I'm beginning to salivate, as I describe it to you, that will be also a favorite bite for me.
Suzy Chase : Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Omid Roustaei : So I am as a way of honoring my heritage, as a way of honoring my parents, when it came time to find a social media and an internet web-based identity, I became the Caspian chef. So you can find me on my blog at TheCaspianChef.com or on my Instagram and Facebook and every other social media. I made sure that I secured the Caspian Chef as my identity.
Suzy Chase : Your story is just wonderful, and your recipes are even better. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Omid Roustaei : Thank you so much, Suzy. It was such a joy and to speak with you, and I again, really appreciate it, the thoughtful questions you presented and the lovely conversation I got to have with you today.
Suzy Chase : Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
