The plate in front of me has followed a path of 6,183 miles and many millennia before it got here. The first versions of the dish—simple roasted eggplant with garlic, turmeric, and poached eggs—were created thousands of years ago near the Caspian Sea, in what’s now northern Iran. It became a staple across the Persian empire, with many regional and personalized variations.
Ultimately, the dish, mirza ghasemi, found its way onto page 92 of Cooking in Iran, the masterwork of regional Iranian cookery by Najmieh Batmanglij, the grande dame of Persian cuisine, who is credited with single-handedly introducing American cooks to the food of her native land. She spent three years traveling around the country finding authentic local versions of recipes, including this one. And tonight she happens to be sitting across from me at Joon, the Iranian restaurant in Tysons Corner, where she is executive chef, tucking into the eatery’s version of the dish. She wears her crisp chef whites. Her gray hair is neatly arranged, with a perfect curl at the top of her forehead like a small parenthesis. Her eyes are full of smiles.
But the version of mirza ghasemi we’re eating isn’t the exact one you find on page 92. It’s an updated iteration, localized and reimagined by Christopher Morgan, chef-owner of Joon, who collaborates with Batmanglij to create modern interpretations of the traditional recipes. Morgan presents the dish as a whole, split-roasted eggplant sprawled across the plate, draped with a wildly fragrant filling of its own soft flesh, plus tomato, garlic, and turmeric with touches of honey and pepper. His recipe uses two kinds of roasted cherry tomatoes from nearby Moon Valley Farm, tomato paste for “an umami blast,” and a touch of heat, unheard of in northern Iranian cooking, to add “just a bit of je ne sais quoi,” he later
explains in the kitchen. A cured egg yolk is poised like a saffron jewel on top;…