Press & Food Writing

Food Writing

See Louisa’s recipes and media highlights — from magazine spotlights to press features — celebrating Persian flavors, cooking traditions, and modern recipes.

18 Autumnal Appetizers to Put on the Menu All Season

Buttery Castelvetrano olives, meaty walnuts, and tangy pomegranate arils pack this Persian dip from cookbook author Louisa Shafia with varying flavors and textures.

October 2025

Louisa Shafia: Persian Chef - Next Door Neighbors

Chef Louisa Shafia makes Persian cuisine deliciously accessible for everyone. From the indelible bite of crunchy rice to the pungent flavors of garden-fresh herbs, Chef Louisa Shafia's Persian cuisine is deliciously accessible for everyone. The daughter of an Iranian immigrant, she grew up in an American home where her cultural heritage often felt distant. She discovered the true flavor of her Iranian roots through the food of her forebears.

June 2025

'Night-Grazing' Is the Persian Tradition That Keeps Food Lovers Up All Night Long

For Yalda Night, a Persian celebration of the winter solstice, sumptuous snacks and dips are in order.

December 2024

Grilled Fish Kebabs

A quick marinade of grated onion, lime, and turmeric lends bright savory flavor to these grilled white fish kebabs.

July 2024

Turmeric Lamb Kebabs

These spiced kebabs made with ground lamb are crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, and ideal for a family-style feast.

July 2024

Saffron Chicken Kebabs

A simple yogurt marinade with saffron, garlic, and lemon juice lends lots of sweet, earthy flavor and moisture to these grilled skewers.

July 2024

What the 3,500-year-old holiday of Nowruz can teach us in 2024

Rather than fading from relevance, the values of this ancient festival – from taking a yearly reset to connecting with nature in a precarious time – are now more important than ever.

March 2024

Heritage Cooking Column: Smoked Fish & Herb Omelet

Kyukyusu (also spelled kuku) is a baked omelet that’s enjoyed throughout countries that were historically part of the Persian empire, often as an appetizer during the spring celebration of Nowruz.

March 2024

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Dried Lime Pound Cake with Saffron Glaze

Often used to season soups and stews in Persian cuisine, dried limes bring an intense, concentrated citrus flavor that’s simultaneously sweet, zingy, bitter, and deep. In this recipe, dried limes are ground up and incorporated into cake batter to make the lime-iest lime pound cake of all. Two other essential Persian ingredients — rose water and saffron — add to the cake’s bright, fruity fragrance, and almond flour enhances the rich denseness of its golden interior.

February 2024

Persimmon, Whipped Goat Cheese, and Hazelnut Parfait

These eye-catching parfaits are layered with chopped ripe persimmons, fluffy goat cheese, and coconut-oil-and-cardamom-glazed hazelnuts.

July 2023

Khagineh (Stuffed Persian Sugar Omelet)

Stuffed with a spiced walnut and date filling, this sweet omelet is drizzled with saffron syrup and served with whipped cream.

July 2023

On Shab-e Yalda, Red Fruit & Fortune-Telling Rule the Night

How one author’s family celebrates the ancient winter solstice tradition.

December 2021

Ice Cream Can Tell Centuries of Black Stories,

Louisa shares a story about Lokelani Alabanza, the small-business owner, vintage cookbook collector, and Tennessean shares about the recipes and memories that inspire her.

June 2021

The Dish All Your Dinner Guests Will Be Fighting Over

Kilt greens, the Appalachian salad doused with delicious bacon fat, makes a generous meal and lends itself to endless improvisation.

September 2019

InterNASHional Food Crawl

Curated food tours of South Nashville reveal a world of flavors from immigrant-run businesses.

May 2019

Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Vegetable Garden

May 2018

Beautiful Bites: A Trio of Recipes for Persian Tea Sweets,

Think past the usual Passover macaroons and present a tray of pretty, palate-stirring Persian tea sweets. Recipes for saffron brittle, marzipan mulberries and almond tea cookies make a gracious holiday spread.

March 2018

How to Whip Up the Summer’s Most Interesting Drinks

Keep intensely tasty sharbat syrups in the refrigerator all summer long to make refreshing drinks on demand. Here, recipes for sour-cherry, cantaloupe-cardamom, rose water-turmeric and mint variations.

June 2017

6 Iranian-Americans You May Know + What Norooz Means to Them

2 journalists, 3 authors, and 1 comedian on the Persian holiday's significance.

March 2017

Meet the Persian Woman Who Runs 3 of Birmingham’s Best Restaurants,

Her husband is the chef, but she's the soul.

March 2017

Why the Art of Hospitality Means the World to the Middle East

An Iraqi, Syrian, and Iranian on the bedrock of their cultures.

February 2017

Next Time You're in Nashville, Don't Miss This Middle Eastern Market in Little Kurdistan

Did you know Music City is home to 15,000 Kurdish immigrants?

February 2017

The Surprising Middle Eastern Origin of A Very American Dessert

A brief history of Persian ice cream, from sharbat to faludeh.

February 2017

How Writing My Cookbook Brought Me Closer to My Iranian Heritage

What's more universal than family and food?

February 2017

Persian Recipes that Deliver Classic Christmas Flavors

Sumptuous and full of warming spice, these Persian recipes hit all the right notes for a festive holiday meal.

December 2016

Five Spice Oven Roasted Nuts

These crunchy nuts are seasoned with warming five spice powder, a mix of cinnamon, fennel, cloves, star anise, and white pepper that’s essential to Chinese cooking. Salty, pungent, and sweet, these nuts are a perfect foil for holiday cocktails.

November 2016

Kofte: The Iranian Dish You’ll Want to Master

And how you'll find it made across the country.

August 2016

This Persian-Inspired Passover will Amaze You

Sweet-sour pomegranate. Fresh green herbs. Warm golden spices. What could be bad?

April 2016

What to Make for Nowruz, the Persian New Year

Eggs loaded with herbs, whole fish, and a chance to celebrate renewal in spring.

March 2016

The Art of Persian Rice

Spring 2016

The Piglet 2015: Olives, Lemons & Za’atar vs. Green Kitchen Travels

February 2015

Persian Food Primer: 10 Essential Iranian Dishes

A visit to Iran yields a stunning variety of culinary delights. Between the familiar kebab and the decidedly outré grilled lamb's testicles, there's a vast spectrum of foods: caviar, pickle, and smoked fish in the north; samosas, falafel and hot and sour shrimp in the south; noodles, flatbread and rosewater-scented ice cream across the country.

October 2014

Recipes That Take Tahini in New Directions

Tahini’s not just for Middle Eastern cooking. The versatile sesame paste is showing up in all kinds of unexpected places. Try it in recipes for oven-roasted sea bass with green tahini and pomegranate, Japanese eggplant with tahini crema and milk chocolate tahini bites.

October 2014

Iran, at Last: A Williamsburg Chef Finds Persian Family Ties–And Feasts–Are Long Lasting

Two truths became evident after I visited Iran for the first time last spring: As a guest in the country, you will always be well fed; and you will never do anything quickly.

September 2014

A Persian Hanukkah Meal, from Lamb Meatballs to Cheesecake

The Jews of Iran celebrate Hanukkah with lamb and fish, persimmons and pomegranates, and—of course—more than enough latkes and olive oil to go round.

November 2013

Finding Mrs. D

1980. The Iranian hostage crisis was well under way, and the US military’s rescue attempt had failed, leaving eight American servicemen dead. My father, an Iranian-born doctor who had immigrated to the US 20 years earlier, was deeply ashamed, and let our family know that being Iranian was no source of pride. What’s more, the religious tensions between my father, a non-practicing Muslim, and my observant Ashkenazi Jewish mother, had reached a peak, filling our suburban Philadelphia home with the constant bickering of their personal holy war. It was also the year that I lost Mrs. DuGan.

November 2013

A Good Nut to Crack

Once dismissed as high-fat, coconut's got a new, healthier reputation—and we've got 5 different ways to use it in your cooking.

October 2013

Persian Latke

I come from what you might call a colorful background. My mom is an American Jew with Ashkenazi heritage, and my dad is an Iranian immigrant who grew up in a Muslim family. My childhood caretaker and de facto grandmother was a practicing Catholic who made me Easter baskets—and I went to a Quaker school, where we practiced silent meditation on a weekly basis.

Autumn 2013

Robabeh’s Eggplant Stew

A lighter take on a traditional Persian stew that's perfect for the season's remaining vegetables.

September 2013

A Journey to Iran, by Way of the Kitchen

In the mysterious depths of fesenjan, a crimson-colored stew, a cook finds glimmers of her Persian heritage.

May 2013

Favorite Cookbooks

An inspiring list of favorite cookbooks by Louisa Shafia, author of the forthcoming The New Persian Kitchen.

March 2013

Savoring the Miracle: Hanukkah Side Salads

The miracle of Hanukkah was not, alas, brought about by a latke. The eternal flame, it seems, was kept alive not by everyone’s favorite fried Jewish food, but by olive oil. According to historians, there can be little doubt that the oil used to light the menorah 2,200 years ago was olive oil. In ancient times it was used for everything from lighting to food to cosmetics.

December 2011

Queen Esther’s Cuisine: A New Persian Cookbook

f the many unusual ingredients in Persian cuisine, rose water, which tastes like flower petals, may be the most exotic. Persians, according to Reyna Simnegar, the Jewish, Venezuelan-born author of the new cookbook “Persian Food From the Non-Persian Bride, and other Kosher Sephardic Recipes You will Love!,” consume rose water in order to carry on “the enchantment and mystery, the passion and romance that are characteristic of their people and their culture.”

March 2011