Recipes for the end of a regime

The war between Israel and Iran has us all holding our breath. Israel’s stated goal in attacking Iran was to destroy its ability to produce nuclear weapons and take out the missiles that Iran launched against Israel in April. The unstated but hoped-for goal is regime change.

When I interviewed my Israeli brother-in-law David Levy for my Forward column this week, he said regime change would be nice, but that didn’t exactly work out so well in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

You know who agrees with him? Iranian dissidents.

“I know that war won’t bring democracy,” Sepideh Gholian, a 30-year-old Iranian labor activist and author, told The Atlantic’s Arash Azizi.

She’s probably right: Armies have a poor track record of bombing people into free and fair elections. Ultimately the Iranian people will have to deal with their leaders.

But no one in the West should have any illusions how poisonous those leaders have been for their neighbors — including Israel — for the world, and mostly for their own people.

To understand, just read Gholian’s 2025 book, The Evin Prison Bakers Club: Surviving Iran's Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes. It is one of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever read — a harrowing, imaginative, rebellious book of recipes.

Gholian spent two years in Tehran's Evin Prison for supporting a sugarcane worker’s union, then was thrown back in prison when she publicly took off her hijab and called for the regime’s demise. The memoir opens with the story of a woman who gives herself a secret abortion to prevent a far more horrific fate for herself and her family if she gives birth. She tells of women who are tortured, stripped naked, “disgraced” — a euphemism that appears with unnerving frequency — and yet who cling to defiant humanity by cooking, either in reality or in their, or her, imagination.

“When you’re ready for lunch, eat it seasoned with ground pepper and a bunch of herbs,” she writes after giving the recipe for gheliya, a fish stewed with herbs and tamarind. “Mix some drinks to go with it, then take a pleasing nap.”

The recipe belongs to Dey Henga, a 60 year-old woman sentenced to six years for a $1000 debt, whom guards beat for not putting on a bra after her breast developed a fissure and her arm became paralyzed.

“The letter I’m writing to you now is going to be censored by several people, from soldiers to agents of the State,” she writes to a fellow prisoner, Sepideh Kashani, who with her husband Houman Jokar was sentenced to six years for the crime of being environmental activists. “But I learned from you that love cannot be censored or made to end.”

For them she cooks peanut butter cookies — which I was moved to make as well.

It’s impossible to cook Gholian’s recipes and read her memoir — written when she was 28 years-old — and not hope against hope that the end of this sick, regressive regime is a bit closer.

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1. F- ICE with fresh cherry hand pies with a rugelach crust

The ICE raids that are raining cruelty on L.A.’s immigrant population are also provoking an outpouring of goodness. Nonprofits and businesses have come together to buy out the inventory of street vendors who have been afraid to show up for work, but need the daily income to survive.

“We've seen the videos from all over Los Angeles, Bell, Lynwood, Southgate, South Central, of fruit vendors, car washers, flower vendors being taken off the side of the road,” Andreina Kniss of K-Town For All, told KNBC4. “LA is an immigrant town and we're gonna protect them as best as we can.”

Want to do your part? It’s cherry season in L.A. — the fruit vendors have plastic quart containers of the fruit stacked up next to their mangos and pineapples. Earlier this week, I pulled over and bought extra cherries and used them to create hand pies, like those flaky half-moon treats I remember buying as a kid at the market.

For my far less industrial-grade version, I decided to use rugelach dough, enriched with cream cheese and butter. I rolled the dough into circles, folded each circle over some dark, jammy cherries, and baked them until golden. Sure, it takes some work — but not as much as trying to sell Angelenos some nice fresh fruit while navigating Stephen Miller’s lifelong obsession to rid America of anybody who came to America after his own Jewish immigrant ancestors did.

2. King’s Roost is a dream come true

Monday morning I drove to Glassell Park to buy my bread flours at King’s Roost. When I arrived the large space, part kitchen, part store, was swarming with young children, all in aprons, rolling out dough for calzones.

“It’s Baking Camp!” a store employee told me.

Baking Camp looked like my childhood idea of a perfect summer. Actually it’s my adult idea of a perfect summer. But I was there for flour. King’s Roost, which recently moved from a much smaller store in Silverlake, is a schlep for me, but one of my favorite schleps. It has an abundant selection of flours, grains and baking supplies, all curated by its founder Roe Sie.

I first met Roe a decade ago when he showed up at a food festival run by Devorah Brous in a church parking lot. He was at a folding table, making a small round loaf of sourdough bread using grain he ground himself in a home food mill.

“Does it make a difference?” I asked.

“Does grinding your own coffee beans make a difference?” he asked back.

I went home, bought a grain mill attachment for my Kitchenaid, and became a convert.

Roe went on to create King’s Roost, realizing his dream of a one-stop shop for sourdough DIYs. The business grew slowly and then… COVID-19. Sourdough united an otherwise divided country. King’s Roost boomed. Roe moved to larger locations, added classes, and also caught the grow-your-own-mushroom craze, selling the whole grains on which funghi thrive.

No more parking lot folding tables. The new store is a warehouse-like space. I picked up a couple 25 pound bags of Central Milling’s organic bread flour (one for a friend); rice flour (for dusting); a bag of Eck Farms Joaquin Oro hard spring wheat, which Roe uses in his bread; a book, Existential Bread by Jim Franks and, what the hell, a bar of homemade soap scented with tobacco, mahogany and bay leaves. (They had me at bay leaves).

You can also order online, but it’s worth a visit. Bonus is that the new King’s Roost is exactly four minutes from Bub and Grandma’s, a reimagined deli/bakery, where you can pick up a great sandwich or, yes, a really good loaf of bread.

3. At King’s Roost I bought a copy of Existential Bread by Jim Franks

I’d never heard of it, or him. It’s a poem, it’s an instruction book, it’s playful, it has recipes, sort of — it fits no category. And I couldn’t put it down.

Learn to do
and to keep doing
when all is lost
Learn how to pick up the pieces when everything falls apart
and you will never know failure again
Failure is an illusion
Your concept of perfection is the issue here.

– Jim Franks

4. What else is worth reading and eating?

🍋 The vast media echo chamber devoted to trashing California must have missed the L.A. Times’ 101 Best California Restaurants. It’s a list that reflects California’s bounty, creativity, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Pictured: The organic Yukon gnocchi with brown butter, sage, Bloomsdale spinach, and ricotta I ate at Sacramento’s Magpie Cafe, which made the list.

🍋 Congrats to Tejal Rao, who was just selected, along with Ligaya Mishan, as one of The New York Times’ new chief restaurant critics. Take a moment to read a typical Rao piece, “The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York)” which displays her sharp, original writing, and, like all her pieces, gets to the heart of why food really matters.

5. Lemon verbena stops time

When pass the lemon verbena leafing out along my garden border, I take a deep inhale, the same way I would for the spices we pass around at havdalah. The fragrance stuns, stops me on the busiest day. How did Nature pack that sweet, citron and basil scent into one delicate leaf? And there are so many leaves now — from May through August the plant grows like a monster. I mow it down, turn it into verbena sorbet, give away stalks for house gifts, and steep the leaves with a little sugar for tea — and still it grows.

When you join Foodaism monthly, I’ll send you my freshly-picked verbena leaves or fresh California bay leaves from my garden. And when you join for the year, I’ll send you a bottle of my incredible hot sauce. The verbena leaves will be slightly dried but perfect for steeping. Fresh bay leaves will improve your cooking, period. Each week, I’ll send you recipes, stories, videos, restaurant reviews and ideas that connect you to food, tradition, nature, you know, Life. I think you’ll find Foodaism useful, inspiring and thought-provoking. Before you leave, take a second to join Foodaism — and enjoy!