Iran’s Top Lady Chef, Takes her Cuisine with Her to Frankfurt
Samira
Janatdoust, Iran’s top lady chef, goes to Frankfurt International Book Fair
with her three books about Iranian traditional food culture.
Samira
Janatdoust, manager of Paniz Mehr Iranian Institute, has received a golden
statue award of the Exquisite Art Books Festival from the minister of the
Islamic Culture and Guidance in 2012 for her Paniz Traditional and Modern
Cookies book.
She
has published four titles of her 16 volume cooking book series so far:
- Paniz Traditional and Modern Desserts
- Paniz Traditional Cooking, her first bilingual book which
has been edited by Jody Bilyeu, professor of Cambridge University, and has been
known as the Iranian traditional cooking encyclopedia.
- Paniz Traditional and Modern Cookies, which is the most
comprehensive cookie book in Iran.
- Paniz Table Layout, Food Art, and Garnishing, which take
a look at Iranian traditions and rituals such as Yalda, Norouz, wedding spread,
etc. beside its simple and beautiful designs.
Hundreds of Iranian have been benefitted from her cooking
classes and received a culinary degree.
She is working as a cooking coach for about 20 years and
has received the Golden Chef degree from the Technical and Vocational Education
Organization. Likewise, she has earned 17 other accredited degrees in various
fields of food industry.
The main objective of Paniz Institute is preserving the
cultural heritage of Persian food and introducing these foods to the other
nations of the world.
She says:
“As it’s a right for my children to get acquainted with
foods of different nations through internet and TV and various forms of these
foods, such as pasta, pizza, Indian food, Chinese food, etc. is found on
Persian spreads, it’s a right for children of other nations to be familiar with
Persian food culture, since there is a thousand years of scientific support
behind Iranian food culture.”
She then continues:
“It’s about a year that I am working on properties of the
seasonings, vegetables, and legumes for reissuing my Traditional Cooking book.
When we carefully put these studies together, we realize that Avicenna’s
science has affected Persian traditional foods a lot. For instance, turmeric,
this beneficial seasoning, keeps its properties more favorably with some
vegetables and various legumes need a specific seasoning or vegetable in
cooking for keeping their properties and their absorption in body at most and
these entire hints can be seen in different Persian Aashes.
Now unfortunately Iran TV channels has not paid too much
attention to introducing Persian traditional cuisine, nor other networks. Most
importantly, book always comes first in preserving the culture of a country and
unfortunately there was no good illustrated book of Persian cuisine which has
been translated to international languages; and if there was any, they had
worked on international cuisine and that will be no good to introducing Persian
food.”
Teaching Iranian food in
the most simple way with innovations has made the Iranian Technical and
Vocational Education Organization to introduce her as the top lady chef of
Iran.
Reported
by IBNA
August
14, 2013
Paniz