نان و نمک
Nan-o-Namak
We've eaten each other's bread and salt.
There's a thing Iranians say when they want to tell you a bond is real.
نان و نمک هم را خوردیم.
We've eaten each other's bread and salt. It means we're bound now. It means neither of us betrays the other.
It isn't really a phrase about food. It's about what happens after you've fed someone.
That's what this is.
A letter every Sunday — Del Neveshteh
Del is heart. Neveshteh is what's written. Heart-writing: the thing you put down when you're not performing.
Some Sundays it's a memory. When I was seven or eight my mother left for work before I woke and got home in the afternoon, so we communicated by note. Most children would use this system to say they loved their mother, or to ask permission for something.
I used it to place an order.
One note, which I believe she has kept purely as evidence, informs her that when I return from school I will be eating two eggs. Not may I have. Not if there's time. Two eggs. She was to be aware. I had checked the schedule, established that she would be home first, and saw no reason to leave the matter to chance.
Some Sundays it's a dish and why it matters. Some Sundays it's just what it feels like to be this far from Iran right now.
It's the writing I don't put anywhere else.
One family recipe a month, filmed
The written version goes out free, as always. Members get me actually cooking it — my mother's method, the corrections, where it goes wrong, the things nobody bothers to write down.
Dore Hami — the gathering
A dorehami is when everyone comes round and sits together, no occasion needed. Once a month you send me your questions and I answer them.
The cooking ones, obviously. Why your tahdig won't release. Why the koobideh keeps falling off the skewer. Which rice is actually worth the money.
But also the other ones. What to bring to an Iranian house. What taarof is, why we do it, and how to get out of a taarof loop before somebody physically fights you over a restaurant bill. Why nobody will let you leave.
The kind of thing you'd shout through to the next room, if there were someone in it.
Maman's Table
The full course, and everything I add to it, included when you join for a year. Annual membership opens on 26 September.
First seat at the table
Members hear about Hami's Miz before anyone else, and pay less.
Maybe you grew up with this food and now you live somewhere it isn't sold.
Maybe your mother made it and never wrote anything down.
Maybe you married into an Iranian family, and you'd like to understand what's happening at that table rather than smiling politely through it.
Maybe you've never been to Iran at all. You ate something once, or read something, and you'd like to know a culture most of the world has never been properly introduced to.
Maybe you were born here, and Iran is somewhere your parents talk about. You'd like it to be yours too.
Maybe you're raising children a long way from Tehran and you'd like them to know what their grandmother's kitchen smelled like.
All of you are welcome. That's rather the point of the name.
Normally £7 a month.
£5 a month, for as long as you stay
And two other doors to the same table, for anyone who'd like to give more.
همسفره
Hamsofreh
£5
at my table
همیار
Hamyār
£15
beside me
حامی
Hāmi
£40
you have my back
Same letters, same recipes, same seat at the table. The only thing that changes is what you'd like to give. Whichever you choose, that price never goes up.
150 places · closes 25 September
I've cooked for charity since I arrived in England, where I spent three years cooking every Monday with friends for people in need. Sometimes we paid for the ingredients ourselves and went from shop to shop looking for things cheap enough to feed everyone.
I still do it. When I do, I take the names of everyone at this table with me — and I tell you about it afterwards.
I'm not a company. There's no team. It's me, my mother's recipes, and a lot of years spent learning to cook them properly.
Food is the way in. What comes with it is everything around the table — how we host, how we celebrate, how we make a fuss of people, and why an Iranian will not let you go home hungry under any circumstances.
If you join, you'll hear from me every Sunday for as long as you'd like to.
خوش آمدیدCome in.
150 places · closes 25 September