Azita Mehran's Turmeric & Saffron: A New Yorker's 17-Year Letter to Her Mother's Kitchen
Azita Mehran
Turmeric & Saffron Authentic Persian home cooking, rooted in memory and tradition turmericsaffron.blogspot.com
In December 2008, six months after losing her mother, Azita Mehran sat down and began writing recipes on the internet. She wasn't planning to become a food blogger. She was grieving, and the kitchen was the place where her mother's voice still lived. What started as a small memorial project on Blogspot became one of the most authentic and enduring archives of Persian home cooking online: Turmeric & Saffron.
Azita was born in Iran and came to the United States in 1977 at eighteen, just before the revolution changed everything. As a student, she lived on yogurt, bread, and fruit. Her mother sent letters filled with recipes and called to ask what she'd cooked for lunch. "I'm working, I don't have time!" was the usual reply. It would take years, and eventually her mother's death, before Azita understood what those letters were really offering.
Her mother's guiding philosophy echoes through the blog: "Do good. Do something beneficial. And just leave it out there." With over 170 recipes spanning stews, rice dishes, soups, sweets, and seasonal celebrations, Azita has done exactly that.
Seventeen Years of Saffron and Memory
What makes Turmeric & Saffron remarkable isn't just the recipes. It's the way each post opens a window into Persian life, past and present. A recipe for gheymeh rizeh nokhodchi (Isfahani chickpea meatballs) begins with an afternoon spent sipping tea in a historic courtyard with her sister-in-law. Jeweled rice arrives with a story about Halimeh, her childhood nanny, who was abandoned at ten years old and found her way to Azita's grandmother's home. A post about Nowruz traditions weaves together Zoroastrian teachings, family photos spanning years, and the Haft-Seen table she sets each spring in New York.
Azita is fiercely committed to authenticity. "People like to modernize, and I understand that and I do it at home, but I don't write about it," she has said. "I want to be as true to what's Persian as possible." The blog covers regional diversity that most Persian food resources overlook: the fiery, tamarind-inflected dishes of southern Iran, the sour pomegranate-laced stews of the Caspian north, the refined elegance of Isfahani cooking. Like Maryam Jillani's work documenting Pakistani cuisine at Pakistan Eats, Azita's project is both personal and preservationist, building the record that a cuisine this rich deserves.
Two Recipes Worth Exploring
Kookoo Sabzi: Persian Herb Frittata for Nowruz
Azita Mehran
Kookoo Sabzi The essential Nowruz dish: fresh herbs, barberries, walnuts, and just enough egg to hold it together turmericsaffron.blogspot.com
Kookoo sabzi is the dish Iranians make for the new year. Azita's version packs parsley, scallions, dill, and cilantro into a single pan, studded with tart barberries and chopped walnuts. She offers both a stovetop and oven-baked method, noting that baking keeps it lighter. The recipe reads like a letter home, and the comments section, spanning more than a decade, is filled with readers from Germany to India to Australia writing to say they've made it for their own families. With Nowruz falling on March 20 this year, it's the perfect time to try it.
Fesenjoon: Pomegranate Walnut and Chicken Stew
Azita Mehran
Fesenjoon The iconic Persian stew of ground walnuts, pomegranate molasses, and chicken turmericsaffron.blogspot.com
Fesenjoon is the Persian dish that people remember for decades after tasting it once. Azita's version, one of the blog's most visited posts, walks through the slow process of building the sauce from ground walnuts and pomegranate molasses until it reaches that distinctive dark, tangy richness. It's a dish that connects to Salima Benkhalti's exploration of Moroccan-Puerto Rican flavors in its use of fruit and nut combinations that define a cuisine. Where other recipes rush to the finish, Azita takes her time, explaining the patience that Persian cooking demands and rewards.
Why It Matters
Persian cuisine remains, as the Huffington Post once put it, "criminally underrepresented" in mainstream food media. Azita has been quietly countering that for nearly two decades. Her blog isn't optimized for search engines or styled for Instagram. It lives on Blogspot, where she started it in 2008, and it hasn't moved. The recipes are there because her mother told her to do something good and leave it out there.
In 2018, after many years away, Azita finally returned to Iran with her two daughters. They visited Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tehran, reconnecting with family and tasting dishes she'd dreamed about from her kitchen in New York. She came back with new recipes, new stories, and the same steady commitment to the project her grief set in motion. Like Shaunda Necole preserving African American culinary heritage at The Soul Food Pot, Azita's work reminds us that the most important food writing often begins as an act of remembrance.
Explore Turmeric & Saffron: https://turmericsaffron.blogspot.com/
Sources:
- Yahoo Food — 8 Things to Know About Azita Mehran of Turmeric & Saffron
- Yahoo Food — Turmeric & Saffron on Persian Food and Mexican Cuisine Mishaps
- Laurie Constantino — Blog of the Week: Iranian food from Turmeric & Saffron
- Turmeric & Saffron — About
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