Persian Feasts: Leila Heller’s new book on the importance of food as cultural preservation

Each time gallerist Leila Heller opens one of her art exhibitions in either her New York or Dubai gallery she stages an elaborate dinner party very often with a delicious, enticing banquet of Persian food. Guests invited include art collectors, dear friends and art world personalities. In both New York and Dubai, where she opened her second gallery in 2015, the celebrations have become revered across town. What many may not know is that they have been inspired by Heller’s late mother, Nahid Taghinia-Milani, who loved to cook and host.

Since Heller opened her eponymous gallery in New York City in 1982 she has become well known for combining a variety of genres, including decorative objects, sculpture, photography and more recently, design objects. Her experimental approach and ability to merge a variety of cultures inside her gallery spaces has earned her a rich legendary—one that perhaps was inspired partly by growing up in her mother’s kitchen where Nahid Joon, as she calls her mother, took an innovative approach to Persian dishes, reinventing them and experimenting while always retaining their Persian heritage and rich ingredients.

A new book titled Persian Feasts: Recipes & Stories from a Family Table written by Heller alongside Lila Charif, Laya Khadjavi and Bahar Tavakolian, published by Phaidon this year, serves to commemorate her mother’s legacy and connect with her homeland of Iran.

“I have been cooking alongside my mother since I was five years old,” recalls Heller. “I had my own pots and pans and whatever she did, I copied. When I went to Brown University and they asked me to cook a Persian meal for International Day, and so I did. Those days you couldn't call home and say, what's the recipe?”

The more Heller cooked for her classmates following her mother’s recipes, the more people came. Her love for cooking Persian food continued when she opened her first gallery in New York City.

“Even before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when my mother lived in Tehran, the Empress Farah Pahlavi suggested she write a cookbook,” recalls Heller. “But then the Revolution took place, and my mother left in Iran in 1979 and ended up in New York with her husband and children. She kept writing ideas for a cookbook in her notebook.”

In New York she was asked by numerous Persian friends how to teach their newly wed daughters for their husbands. Her cooking took on greater and greater significance to her new community in America. It was a means of preserving her heritage and bringing her loved ones and new friends together.

Since the 1980s Heller has been a prominent fixture on the New York art scene, showing work by the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside prominent names from Iran. In so doing, she became a pioneer in fostering a creative dialogue between Western and Middle Eastern artists, introducing the New York art scene to a roster of artists they otherwise would most likely have never known.

Taghinia-Milani also became a star cook through her daughter’s gallery and would cook a series of dinners every time there was an art opening. In 2008 when Heller threw an event to coincide with a Chelsea Art Museum show on Iranian art and her mother once again worked her magic and cooked for the event. Heller’s gallery then became known not just for the art she exhibited, but also for her mother’s excellent Persian cooking and warm hospitality.

Heller recalls her mother’s cooking as if it were a painting. “She used so many delicious spices and fresh herbs to create her Persian dishes that everyone loved.”

Nahid Joon lived in a two-storey bedroom apartment on New York’s Upper East Side. The kitchen, says Heller, was designed by her mother’s cousin, revered architect Nasser Ahari keeping in mind Taghinia-Milani’s great love for cooking.

The book’s concept began to take form during the coronavirus pandemic. All of Heller’s three co-authors—Lila Charif, Laya Khadjavi and Bahar Tavakolian—have cooked with her mother.

When Taghinia-Milani unexpectedly passed away at the age of 84 after a car crash in 2018, Heller vowed to finish her mother’s desire to publish her cookbook.

“The four of us got together and said, we need to do this,” recalls Heller. “Covid, however, made it difficult to proceed until the owner of Phaidon contacted me saying he had enjoyed my mother’s cooking so much and that we needed to do a cookbook.”

It was a sign, and the four women got to work.

The book is divided into sections surveying regional cuisines from Iran, the heritage of Persian cuisine, Heller’s family history in Iran, unique recipes categorized into appetizers and side dishes; meat, poultry and fish; stews and braises; rice dishes; chutneys and jams and drinks and dessert. There are also in-depth essays on “Food and Hospitality in Safavid Iran,” by Dr Massumeh Farhad and “Culinary Dabbles in Modern Iranian Art,” by Dr. Talinn Girgor.

When Heller’s mother travelled, she loved visiting local markets after which she would return with an assortment of spices that she would incorporate into her dishes, reinventing and innovating long-established Persian recipes. The fusion dishes were then passed down to a new generation of women, to her daughter and other women and are now encapsulated for all in this stunning tome with its handsome turquoise cover.

Taghinia-Milani used food to foster cross-cultural dialogue and preserve her Persian during the last several decades of great upheaval for the country.

“I wish she could see the book today because the book is hers,” says Heller. “Working on this cookbook healed me from my mother’s loss. Through her cooking she brought so many people from so many cultures together. Through delicious food people’s lives were touched forever.” Taghinia-Milani’s culinary traditions are now continued forever through this book where they will undoubtedly excite more palates and touch more lives.

The book is available on phaidon.com