November 29 2013
An Iranian-American has just translated a 400-year-old Iranian cookbook into English to give Americans access to Safavid era cuisine.
Entitled “Maddat ul-Hayat” (“The Material for Life”), the book was written by Nurollah Ashpazbashi, a court chef during the reign of Shah Abbas, who reigned from 1587 to 1629.
The translator is Moham-madreza Qanunparvar who taught the Persian language at the University of Texas in the early 2000s and has written several books in English including “In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Contemporary Iranian Fiction” in 1993, “Translating the Garden” in 2002, and “Reading Chubak” in 2005.
Qanunparvar is also author of “Persian Cuisine: Traditional, Regional, and Modern Foods”, which was published by the Mazda Publication in 2006.
Speaking in a phone interview with the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) Sunday, Qanunparvar said that he has followed the modern style used for cookbooks in his translation of “Maddat ul-Hayat,” including the use of modern measurements.
