"Donia" is the Persian word for "world," and an apt name it is for Donia Bijan, author of "Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen" (Algonquin Books, $19.95, 250 pages). From Iran to Majorca, from California to France, Bijan was shaped by the kitchens of all of those places.

Of the dozen or more Iranian-American women's memoirs I've read, this is the first I've seen with recipes. Her 30 recipes go far beyond the traditional Persian dishes. That's because Bijan's story is one of a chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, interned at two- and three-star restaurants across France, and ran her own San Francisco Bay Area restaurant, L'Amie Donia.

"Maman's Homesick Pie" doesn't focus on Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the revolution does put in motion Bijan's entry to the United States at age 15. Her mother's political connection to the shah's regime and work as a women's advocate meant that the family could not return safely from a vacation in Majorca after revolutionaries came to power.

A different path

After finishing college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Bijan realized she wanted to be a chef instead of following in her father's footsteps to become a doctor as he had expected her to do.

Her father mocked his daughter's "cookery scheme," noting the resemblance of ratatouille to a common Persian eggplant dip. "So this is what you've learned?" he asked her. "Your grandmother could have taught you this."

As much as she wanted to win her father's approval, Bijan knew that, like the chefs with whom she apprenticed in France, she couldn't choose any other career, and her mother supported her decision.

French recipes such as duck à l'orange and Persian-French creations like stuffed quince follow recipes for a persimmon parfait and a fava bean omelet from Bijan's childhood in Tehran and vacations by the Caspian Sea. The memoir is largely a tribute to her mother, who threw herself into American cooking in order to adjust to U.S. life, thus a recipe for apple pie keeps sync with the story.

When Bijan opened L'Amie Donia, she enhanced its French-American cuisine with ingredients such as pomegranate, saffron, quinces and cardamom. She writes that she drew from her Persian, French and American pantry "not for the sake of novelty, but because I couldn't help being a sum of those cuisines."

"I began to imagine the marriage of French and Persian flavors, conjuring wild menus in my head, like seared duck livers with sour cherries, or cardamom crème caramel with pistachio tuiles," she writes.

By channeling the Iran of her pre-revolution childhood, the California of a family in exile and the France of a budding chef, Bijan builds a bridge of commensality.

Although there is stinging loss and sadness in her story, I closed the book feeling like the author had just been sharing memories and recipes with her many friends of the world, and that I was now one of them.

Catherine Dehdashti, a freelance writer from Eagan, can be reached at cdehdashti@yahoo.com.