Najmieh Batmanglij
Iranian-American chef and cookbook author.
Najmieh Khalili Batmanglij is an Iranian-American chef and cookbook author. Born in Tehran in 1947, she fled the Iranian Revolution in 1979, moving first to France and then the United States. Her first cookbook, published in French, was followed by eight in English, and she has been called the grande dame of Iranian Cooking.
Quick Facts
- Birth name
- Najmieh Khalili
- Born
- 1947
- Birthplace
- Tehran, Imperial Iran
- Children
- Zal Batmanglij, Rostam Batmanglij
- Style
- Persian cooking
- Occupation
- chef
- cookbook author
- publisher
Facts from the source article.
Biography
Najmieh Khalili was born in 1947 in Tehran, Imperial Iran. She earned undergraduate and master's degrees in education in the United States, then returned to Iran. Forced into exile by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she and her husband fled as refugees to Vence, France, where she studied cooking and translated her mother's recipes into French, producing her first cookbook, Ma Cuisine d'Iran (1984). In the 1980s she relocated permanently to Washington, DC, where she wrote Food of Life (1986).
Facing discrimination after moving to the United States near the time of the Iran hostage crisis, she published her own work and, with her husband, started their own publishing house. She later wrote five more cookbooks, including From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table, which won a Gourmand Cookbook Award, and Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey, which The New York Times compared to reading 'a good novel—once you start, it's hard to put down.'
Batmanglij has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and teaches Persian cooking. She is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier. For many years she has taught at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley during the World of Flavors Conference. A trailblazer in introducing Iranian cuisine to American readers, she had few precursors, aside from Maideh Mazda, who wrote a short cookbook in 1960, and Nesta Ramazani, who wrote in 1982. Her cookbook for children, Happy Nowruz, shares recipes and insights about Nowruz customs and traditions.
Honors and awards
On February 15, 2013, Yotam Ottolenghi included a recipe inspired by Food of Life in his Guardian article, calling it 'one of the most exciting cookbooks I've seen in a while' and recommending it to anyone with an interest in Iran's food culture. On April 6, 2016, Batmanglij was the guest chef at First Lady Michelle Obama's White House Nowruz Celebration and Lunch. Julia Moskin of The New York Times described her cookbook Cooking in Iran (2018) as 'Magisterial ...
An engrossing visual feast of modern Iran' and selected it as one of 'the 19 best cookbooks of Fall 2018.' Publishers Weekly called the cookbook 'a massive and thorough guide to Persian cuisine ... terrific, reverential, and accessible.' On November 5, 2018, The Washington Post published an article by James Beard Award-winning writer Mayukh Sen with the headline 'Najmieh Batmanglij is the grande dame of Iranian cooking. It’s time you knew her name.'
On November 16, 2021, Sen's book Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America featured Batmanglij as one of the seven immigrant women.
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