By the time I turned 21, I had found my sexuality and my career. But there was another part of my identity that took longer to figure out. To explain it, I have to rewind back to grade school, to the morning of September 11, 2001. Watching the news, I had no idea what the consequences of that day were going to be. In the years that followed, I became, for the first time in my life, highly aware of my ethnicity. As an adolescent, I no longer stood out because of my sexuality but instead for my coarse hair, my olive skin, my thick eyebrows, my full beard. I had Iranian painted all over me. The name-calling started again, but this time it wasn’t “he/she,” “gay,” or “girl,” but instead “terrorist,” “sideburns,” “durka.”

I learned early on that since my last name began with a B, I’d be one of the first people on the list during roll call. Well, I guess I should tell you now: My real name is Andisheh, not Andy. Every year, on the first day of school, I could see my teacher hesitate when pronouncing my name: “Ahhnnn...” I’d quickly cut the teacher off and say, “Andy is fine.” From middle school into college: “Andy’s fine.” I’m surprised no one ever called me “Andysfine.”

I began to throw away my lunches; I didn’t want anyone to ask what was in them. No more kuku, my mother’s Persian herb frittata; no more kalbas sandwiches: all-beef mortadella wrapped in lavash bread. I would ask my parents not to drop me off close to school in fear that my peers would see their brown skin or hear their accents. When it came to the beard that appeared on my 12-year-old face, I shaved every day and stole a bit of my mother’s foundation to cover it up. I started telling people I had some Italian in me. My last name Bar-a-gha-nee became Ber-e-ghee-nee. I invested in a T-shirt that read ITALIAN STALLION; it would later become infamous among my best friends. Even when it came to my first love in New York, I initially told him I was only half Iranian, which was a partial truth that freed me from being entirely associated with my heritage.

Around this time I interned in the test kitchen at Saveur. The editor in chief at the time, James Oseland, and the executive food editor, Todd Coleman, told me they were going to do a story on Iran. My first thought was: That is just an awful idea. This was 2010. Tensions were high between the U.S. and Iran, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president at the time. After all that time spent working my way up in restaurants, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be associated with Iranian food. Ever since I was a gutsy 16-year-old working up the courage to ask the staff at Chez Panisse if I could help out on Friday nights, I’d been dedicated to mastering a particular style of cooking. My most recent stints had been at the fine-dining restaurant Corton and a Scandi pop-up called Frej. Iranian food was what I’d grown up on, but I had worked so hard to get away from it.

James and Todd asked me to help develop the recipes for the Iran story. While I had eaten Iranian food nearly every day growing up, I didn’t actually know the processes and traditions. I was familiar with saffron and barberries, but I couldn’t prepare any of the fragrant stews or elaborate rice dishes that serve as the backbone of the cuisine. So for the next three weeks, I called my mom almost every day and talked to her for hours, translating her “handfuls” and “pinches” to cups and teaspoons, re-creating her recipes in the test kitchen. Eventually, about ten of the final recipes that appeared in the issue were adapted from my mother’s. Saveur published a piece titled “Behind the Iran Story”; it was a letter dedicated to my mother and me, in which Todd thanked us for our contributions and said that the story couldn’t have happened without us. When the issue came out, people both in and out of the food industry embraced it and reached out to me, thanking me for shedding some light on the cuisine. My shame began to recede.