The Route to Parsi Cooking: From Pars to India and Beyond (Niloufer Mavalvala)

This most recent of Niloufer Mavalvala’s award-winning books on Parsi food focuses on the evolution of Parsi cuisine from its roots in ancient Persia to its long history in what is now India and Pakistan, and its further adaptation through the worldwide Parsi diaspora.

The 60-something recipes are each handsomely photographed. Mavalvala’s historical sources range from her great-great-grandmother’s recipes for a spiced egg halva to folklore to nineteenth-century cookbooks. Also relevant is the Parsi’s Zoroastrian faith, which places an emphasis on communal meals and eschews wastefulness.

Among the recipes in the book are: grilled vegetable salad with pomegranate vinaigrette, fish roe and pumpkin stews, offal jumble tumble, featuring liver and gizzards but adaptable to other offal, and morasa palau, the jeweled rice dish featured on the book’s cover, flavored with saffron and barberries and garnished with candied orange peel, pistachios, and almonds.