Feast on 'Sofreh' — a book that celebrates Persian cooking, past and future

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/30/ [login to see] /acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook
The new cookbook Sofreh doesn't open with tempting menus for future dinner parties or ingredient lists, but with a poetic conversation between an unnamed narrator and a grapevine. When asked why it continues to grow despite bearing so much fruit, the vine answers: "why stop now, when there is such immense joy in my reaching for the sun."

"Roots are very important to me," says chef and author Nasim Alikhani. "I literally brought a little stem from my father's grape garden in Iran, which originally he brought to our home from his own village." She planted that vine in the back garden of her small Persian restaurant Sofreh. "That's my roots, but whether the leaves grow, that's up to the sky," she says.