Archive for the ‘Lifestyle’ Category

By JOHN ANDERSON

Bravo

Tarz and Tina in ‘Newlyweds: The First Year.’

Newlyweds: The First Year

Begins Monday, 10 p.m., on Bravo

Here’s the premise of “Newlyweds: The First Year”: Four couples allow a production team inside their minty-fresh marriages to chronicle all the trials and tears over sex and fabric patterns that are sure to ensue during the next 12 months. The obvious question is why: Why would people just easing into married life submit to home-invasion-by-camera-crew?

To answer that, one would have to probe the very essence of reality television, which seems to be entering its Baroque period, ornamentation and excess having caused the sideshow to outgrow the circus. In the case of “Newlyweds,” it may well be that Bravo paid for the very expensive-looking weddings that conclude the introductory episode, which serves as the overture to an eight-episode series. It may also be that the relationships under scrutiny are as pseudo as they seem.

But watching “Newlyweds” is like being Superman on Bizarro World: Everything is the opposite of what it’s supposed to be. Spontaneity is scripted; hopes and dreams are meant to be crushed; the woeful are exalted; characters are unsympathetic. One of the couples, Tina and Tarz—short for Tarzan (“My real name is Dave”)—even have a “couple name”: Tarzina. She is tiny, loud and trashy; he seems to have just met her. Another couple, celebrity stylist Kim and record-company exec Alaska (“We are absolutely a power couple,” he says. “We are 100% ambitious”), are also 100% Christian, which means for them that Kim will submit to Alaskan rule once they wed. In the first episode, at least, he’s a fairly benign despot, insisting only that they buy his personal choice in bed linen.

John and Kathryn, who live on Long Island in New York, are the most likable, as they’re the least pretentious. The Los Angeles couple, Blair and Jeff—a former pop star and a Homeland Security investigator—are separated by 16 years and a temperamental abyss.

The 90-minute opener is a four-pronged prelude to “I do,” which in the gay Blair and Jeff’s case means a California-approved civil union, and for Tarz and Tina a Hindu wedding processional down their Columbia, S.C., driveway. “Newlyweds” is, if nothing else, diverse, but how much is “real” (everything takes quotation marks in reality TV) is up in the air. The implied contract between the producers of such shows and their audience says that what’s shown won’t be reality at all. It will be slick, emotionally engineered, served up in bite-size chunks, and cast with people with little connection to “normal” life who will recite what’s expected of them because they want to be on TV. There is always the promise that something excitingly candid is about to occur, but it almost never does.

The human freak show, historically, has fed off people’s natural curiosity, as well as a certain schadenfreude: Ladies and gentlemen, you may be toothless and miserable, but aren’t you glad you’re not the two-headed boy? We’re still curious. The troubling thing is, more and more of us want to be the two-headed boy.

Dance Moms

Tuesday, 8 p.m., on Lifetime

That there is an Abby Lee Miller Bobblehips Doll on Lifetime’s merchandise page is testament to the popularity of “Dance Moms,” which recounts the anxious adventures of a Pittsburgh, Pa., dance teacher, her tweenish female charges and the coven of stage mothers who provide the show’s snarky Greek chorus. Virtually no attention is paid to the interaction among the young girls who perform the often wonderful dancing, which is merciful and strategic: It’s all about Ms. Miller, who is overbearing and imperious, and the “mom-agers,” some of whom look like they cry themselves to sleep at night. With the stakes so low, the hissing becomes hilarious.

But what’s right about the show is its well-defined characters, consistent structure and level of pure cattiness, almost all of which is certainly orchestrated. But who cares? In last week’s two-hour midseason finale, the Abby Lee Dance Company was in New York, appearing on “The View” and competing in something called “Masters of Dance.” Ms. Miller’s rivalry with the even more bilious Cathy Nesbitt-Stein hit a flash point when Ms. Nesbitt-Stein’s Candy Apples troupe bested the ALDC, and Ms. Miller, in a cliff-hanger worthy of “Dallas,” announced she was looking at building a new studio in Los Angeles. This week’s “Tell All, Part One” promises more revelations, and fewer resolutions.

Maron

Begins Friday, 10 p.m., on IFC

Sometimes it feels as if American comedy survives solely on hapless male wanderers in the desert of adulthood who can’t quite get a grip on anything—except, it seems, American comedy. The latest entry, “Maron,” stars Marc Maron, comedian and host of the podcast “WTF With Marc Maron.” This becomes a running gag: Why is a 49-year-old hosting a podcast? Because other than being an embittered divorcé, taking care of a houseful of cats and interviewing knockabout celebrities (Denis Leary, Dave Foley, Jeff Gardiner) in his studio/garage, he has little else to do but nurse the grudges that accumulate around a guy with not enough to think about.

Much like Larry David’s character in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Mr. Maron’s knows that he shouldn’t be doing certain things, but his pride simply won’t allow him to act in a way that won’t, in the end, add to his general sense of discomfort. In the first episode, he makes an awkward pass at his veterinarian, assails his pregnant ex-wife and her new husband in a coffee shop, and then, goaded by the tweets of a gamer who says he’s not funny, tracks the guy down to a game of Dungeons & Dragons, where a roomful of even nerdier characters abuse him—while warmly welcoming Mr. Foley.

“Maron” is short, funny and coherent—Mr. Maron has had years to develop himself as a character. The show also has one of the best opening bits of recent times, Maron opening the sliding door over his garage where the podcast originates, through which he enters a sun-flooded world and another encounter with life: Next week, the central escapade involves him removing a dead possum from under his house. If “Maron” finds its audience, it could be going through quite a few garage doors, if not possums.

—Mr. Anderson is a critic in New York. Dorothy Rabinowitz is away.

A version of this article appeared May 3, 2013, on page D6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Bizarro World of Reality-Show Marriage.

By Cammy Brothers

Boston

Michelangelo knew what drawings could do. He used them for a wider array of purposes than almost anyone, from the banal to the sublime, and in genres ranging from comic to religious. Despite their centrality to everything he did, he treated them roughly, writing drafts of letters and poems on them, folding them, and in some cases reworking the sheets so intensely that they almost come apart. Most shockingly, he burned great numbers of them, and casually instructed his assistants to do the same.

Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Organized by Muscarelle Museum of Art

‘Madonna and Child’ (c. 1525).

His own callousness is at odds with the preciousness conferred by time and by reputation, but it is worth keeping in mind the irony of viewing under glass what were sometimes everyday lists and accounts. He did lavish attention on particular sheets, both those on which he worked out his most complex ideas and those he gave as presents to beloved friends. The range of functions to which he put them is so great that any exhibition can only hope to provide a window into his aims. The selection currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, “Michelangelo, Sacred and Profane: Masterpiece Drawings From the Casa Buonarroti,” curated by John Spike, does just that.

The exhibit showcases the technical range of Michelangelo’s work, and how the labels of “finished” and “unfinished” are misplaced with regard to his drawings. He incessantly reworked sheets, and moved on when his interest was sated.

The most stunning illustration is his study for a Madonna and Child (c. 1524) in which he applies an astonishing level of finish to the body of the Child, which in a twisting pose echoing that of the Sistine Ceiling nudes seems to rise in three dimensions from the otherwise flat page. In striking parallel to Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptural works, there is a high degree of contrast between different parts of the sheet—the body of the Child, which is so highly finished that it is impossible to even detect the artist’s hand—and the face and body of the Madonna, which is roughed out in the barest form of a sketch. Seeing the drawing in person, one is confronted with its fragility and physicality: The sheet comprises two pieces of paper, glued together with a strip that runs right through the center. Understanding the physical fragility of the sheets—and the sheer miracle of their survival—is one of the most compelling reasons to see an exhibition like this. These are not images but artifacts: Reproduction flattens them, and tends to erase the archaeology of the page, how it was constructed through crevices (the stylus marks) and relief (the build-up of ink and white heightening).

Examples such as the Madonna and Child provide insight into how Michelangelo’s drawings became so famous in his own day that such literary figures as Pietro Aretino repeatedly beseeched him to send any piece of paper from his hand. This is a key moment in the history of art, when the artist’s mark trumps subject matter—it was mastery itself that was desired. (Michelangelo never accommodated, prompting an angry reprisal on Aretino’s part: He wrote an acid commentary on “The Last Judgement,” calling it fit for a “public bathhouse, not a sacred chapel.”) Our own cult of the celebrity artist grows out of this phenomenon.

Aretino may have been rebuffed, but as he claimed, certain “Gherardos and Tommasos” were showered with gifts. The Tommaso in question was Tommaso de’ Cavlieri, a handsome young Roman nobleman to whom Michelangelo addressed several love poems and drawings. The exhibition includes one of these gifts, the head of a woman identified as Cleopatra (c. 1532-33), which like the Madonna and Child has passages so finely worked that any sign of the artist’s hand has disappeared. The refinement and beauty of the Cleopatra becomes a foil for the swiftly drawn, almost grotesque head on its verso—perhaps an allegory of contrasts or an inside joke. Despite five centuries of scholarly attention, the precise meaning of sheets such as this remains opaque. What is clear is that although Michelangelo is sometimes mocked for his muscular female nudes, he often focused on the nobility and strength of women.

The least expected facet of the exhibition is the inclusion of architectural drawings, which constitute half the show. The choice reflects the strengths of the Casa Buonarroti, which holds the world’s largest collection of Michelangelo’s architectural drawings. By virtue of their abstraction and the somewhat abstruse quality of representational conventions, architectural drawings are by nature less accessible, but if ever there were examples for the nonexpert public to appreciate, these are they. The exhibition balances a contextual presentation of one or two projects with a sense of the range of Michelangelo’s architectural work.

Michelangelo the painter is ever present in his architectural drawings, both in his choice of materials such as red chalk, typical of painters, and in his ready use of brushwork to lay down the basic composition and the patterns of light and shade. The inclusion of several studies pertaining to Michelangelo’s work at the church of San Lorenzo in Florence makes it possible to chart, in outline, his education as an architect. Through his unexecuted project for the facade, a little known study for the tombs of Medici popes Clement VII and Leo X, and studies for the Laurentian Library, Michelangelo transformed himself from a painter and sculptor into an architect. Unfortunately, the physical division of architectural and figurative studies in the exhibition space obscures the way in which these pursuits were in constant dialogue throughout Michelangelo’s career.

Among the most striking of the architectural drawings on display is the study for the plan of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (1559-60), a sheet in which one can read the layers of overdrawing and erasure through which Michelangelo refined his design, transforming the sheet into a palimpsest of rejected ideas. Like his biomorphic fortification studies, also in the exhibition, his design for San Giovanni anticipates spatial and geometric ideas that would not be fully explored for centuries.

A few photographs are included on the labels, but still more might have provided a context for viewers unfamiliar with the original sites. The challenge for curators is not insubstantial: The works themselves are subtle, often faint, and require the utmost attention on the part of viewers. The dark walls and single room in which the works are shown contribute to a hushed, meditative atmosphere, which supplementary material such as digital displays might easily disrupt. Yet one wishes for more, and the impressive exhibition of Henri Labrouste now up at the Museum of Modern Art points the way. There the curator Barry Bergdoll has discreetly integrated small display screens among the drawings, so that they supplement without competing. It is an example worth emulating for curators of architecture exhibitions and of drawings alike: The combination of a difficult medium and subject makes such contextual materials doubly necessary.

That said, the Michelangelo show is beautifully hung and intimate but not crowded. Drawn from the Casa Buonarroti and originating at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Va., it is a collaboration between two small museums and a big one that serves all institutions well.

Ms. Brothers, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, is the author of “Michelangelo, Drawing and the Invention of Architecture” (Yale).

A version of this article appeared May 15, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Masterpieces on a Shopping List.

By LETTIE TEAGUE

Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal

Yannick Benjamin, left, and Jean-Luc Le Du at Le Du’s Wines.

Much has been said about the power of adversity (often by people who have suffered very little), but if it is true that the character of a man can be seen more clearly through a prism of hardship, then Yannick Benjamin’s is impressive indeed.

Mr. Benjamin, a 35-year-old wine specialist at Le Du’s Wines in New York, has lived a life marked by great triumph and great tragedy. It was almost 10 years ago that the then-aspiring sommelier at Atelier restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel was involved in a car crash on Manhattan’s West Side. “I was completely sober,” he noted. But he was far from all right: In fact, Mr. Benjamin severed his spinal cord and was paralyzed from the waist down, for life.

During the first few terrible months afterward, Mr. Benjamin thought only about getting back to his job. “The first thing I did was Google

‘wheelchair sommelier,’” he recalled. The only reference to a disabled wine professional that he could find was a sommelier in Paris who had been in a motorcycle accident that had crushed his hand. “There wasn’t really anyone to look up to,” Mr. Benjamin said.

At first, he was determined to go back to his old life; he returned to the Ritz but not to the floor. Instead, he worked in purchasing, in the back of the house. It wasn’t ideal, but “it was good for my confidence,” he said. And as soon as he was strong enough, he began entering sommelier competitions. If he couldn’t actually work as a sommelier, he could at least hone his skills in the company of his peers.

But complications arose: Mr. Benjamin was in and out of the hospital with infections, and his morale was correspondingly low.

“Mentally and physically, I was exhausted. I was trying to keep up with my able-bodied self,” he said. Then he met Dr. Thomas Sterry, who helped him medically (Mr. Benjamin had developed a clot in his thigh) as well as psychically. “Dr. Sterry said to me, ‘You are trying to adapt to everything around you but everything around you has to adapt to you.’”

It was perhaps this realization that brought Mr. Benjamin and Jean-Luc Le Du together in 2006. Mr. Le Du was a former sommelier—he’d been the Head Sommelier at Restaurant Daniel for almost 10 years before opening his eponymous wine shop in late 2005—and though Messrs. Benjamin and Le Du didn’t know one another, they had a friend in common who suggested they should meet.

The friend warned Mr. Le Du that Mr. Benjamin was in a wheelchair. “And I said, ‘What does matter?’” recalled Mr. Le Du. It took some time, however, for the two men to get together. Mr. Le Du called Mr. Benjamin and left a message but never heard back. “I thought maybe he got a better opportunity,” said Mr. Le Du.

Mr. Benjamin was actually back in the hospital. A couple months later, when he was out, he went to see Mr. Le Du. But first he took a careful look at the store. “I was rolling up and down in front to see if it was handicapped-accessible before I went inside,” he said. (It was.)

Mr. Le Du was impressed. “I thought, ‘This guy is really passionate about wine.’ And that’s actually rare in retail,” he said. Mr. Benjamin began working at Le Du’s almost immediately—and seven years later his joy in the job is still practically palpable as he wheels nimbly between the shelves of the store.

“I love to be on the floor with the customers. It takes me back to the restaurant business. Working here is the closest thing to a restaurant,” he said, cradling a bottle of wine in his lap.

Messrs. Le Du and Benjamin have similar palates—they’re both Burgundy drinkers—but they’re also both big fans of other wines of the world, particularly Sicily. (Mr. Benjamin’s recommendation of a Sicilian red, the 2010 Terre Nerre Santo Spirito, was such an inspired choice that I immediately made plans to buy more.)

Mr. Benjamin is currently working three days a week, and he’s also attending Monroe College and will graduate with a degree in business management next month. He participates in marathons (part of his training routine once included a wheelchair ride from the Bronx to the West Village), and also contributes a good deal of time to Wheeling Forward, a foundation he founded with his friend Alex Elegudin in 2011.

Mr. Elegudin was in an accident that left him paralyzed about the same time as Mr. Benjamin; the two men met during rehab at Mount Sinai Hospital.

“We instantly bonded, as we were two of the only young people on the floor and we helped motivate one another to work harder,” Mr. Elegudin wrote in an email.

Mr. Elegudin, now an attorney, recalled earlier conversations about how they could best support other disabled men and women, to help them lead meaningful lives “in the now,” and decided to start their own organization. As Mr. Benjamin said, “There is no mentorship on how to be disabled.”

So he and Mr. Elegudin stepped in. Their foundation helps the disabled with practical things such as the purchase of wheelchairs, but also by providing the sort of social engagement that they might otherwise not experience. “Most people we find in nursing homes,” said Mr. Benjamin, who has hosted wine-tasting classes for the disabled and is currently planning a fundraiser called Wine on Wheels that will take place at Le Du’s Wines on May 4.

Mr. Le Du is not only a great supporter of Mr. Benjamin’s organization, but is clearly a great fan of Mr. Benjamin, too. “I’ve never seen anyone so courageous in my life,” he said. “If Yannick decides to something, he will find a way to do it.”

Mr. Benjamin, for his part, talks only of his good fortune: “This is my 10th year being in this situation, and in the past two years I feel like I’m in a great place. I’m really very lucky.”

A version of this article appeared March 15, 2013, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Powering Forward.

By JAMIE EWBANK

Christian Mueringer / Alamy

Mont Ventoux’s peak

THE BARREN PEAK of Provence’s Mont Ventoux has a fearsome reputation among professional cyclists, but the Giant of Provence is also proof of the great cycling truism: Anyone with a bike can ride the same mountains as cycling’s heroes.

The Tour de France will return to Ventoux for the 15th time this summer, bringing with it enormous crowds. But even outside of those raucous days, the area remains the perfect place to make your own breakaway, offering everything from medieval architecture to mountain-reared pork and lamb, to be washed down, of course, with robust local wine.

Unlike multi-mountain holidays such as the Raid Pyrénéen—the route across the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean—Mont Ventoux is ideally suited to credit-card touring and has enough off-the-bike diversions to be more than just a cycling holiday. Instead of climbing several mountains over several days, moving from hotel to hotel as you go, here you can stay in one location and choose three routes up one mountain.

Professional cyclists can make the ascent in just over an hour of nonstop cycling. Strong club riders will manage it in about double that time, but anyone who is fit and healthy can attempt the climb as long as you allow yourself several hours for rest stops.

Here’s our guide to an ascendant weekend on Mont Ventoux.

Day One

Friday

7:46 p.m. | Arrive at Avignon TGV and head to the small commune of Crillon le Brave, near the foot of Mont Ventoux. Hardened cyclists may want to ride the 40 kilometer journey, or you can take a taxi for around €80.

8:40 p.m. | As well as being a perfect base camp for all three ascents of Ventoux, the Relais & Châteaux’s Hotel Crillon le Brave is a beautiful place to stay. Its guest rooms are spread across several 17th-century houses linked by courtyards and bridges, and set alongside a pool and restaurant area where you can dine on local specialties, including filet d’agneau, and sip Châteauneuf-du-Pape. If you’re traveling without your bike, you can rent one from the hotel, which also has a Coureurs du Ventoux guest book to record your time. Rooms from €280 per night; place de l’Église, crillonlebrave.com

Day Two

Saturday

10 a.m. | Cyclists looking to record a good time for the ascent tend to set off early in the morning to avoid having to ride in the midday sun, but if you’re planning to bike at an unhurried pace, you can afford to leave later. Take the D974 and D164 toward Sault and enjoy a late breakfast at Le Provençal, a courtyard cafe in one of the town’s venerable buildings, where you can enjoy local pâté and lamb dishes for very reasonable prices. rue Porte des Aires; +33 (0)4 90 64 09 09

12 p.m. | Arrive in Sault, often thought of as the gentlest ascent and the most traditionally picturesque route. The town sits on the tip of the Vaucluse plateau, looking west toward Ventoux. Head to its elevated public boules court, from where you can see farmhouses dotted among the vast, blue fields of lavender the city is known for. Everywhere in town you’ll be greeted by the stylized ceramic cicadas designed by Louis Sicard.

From here, ride up the hill into Sault’s winding medieval streets, where you’ll find well-preserved 16th-century houses and a moving Maquis memorial. Grab lunch at one of the numerous cafes and enjoy the laid-back, Gallic culture, with a good view, a strong drink and not a laptop in sight.

1 p.m. | Begin your 26-kilometer ride from the boules court, dropping down the short, steep road into the valley and heading toward Ventoux on the narrow D164, making long sweeps left and right across the valley before entering the beech forests and starting the climb. The ascent from Sault is the longest of the three, and consequently the gentlest, with the early roads in the forest taking long, straight tilts.

2:30 p.m. | Two-thirds of the way into your climb, approaching the cafe and ski station at Chalet Reynard, the route is almost flat. The easing gradient comes at just the point where the road starts to lift out of the trees, giving you respite and a view to enjoy with it. The crowds—and applause—that greet your arrival at the chalet can be a shock after 15 kilometers of comparative solitude. Eat at the cafe and refill your water bottles before tackling the last leg. +33 (0)4 90 61 84 55; chalet-reynard.fr

3 p.m. | From here, you enter the iconic “moonscape,” where the peak of the mountain, beginning in the 12th century, was deforested to feed the shipyards in distant Toulon. The roads are steeper, and the mistral can be as difficult as the gradients if you’re unfortunate enough to find a headwind.

3:40 p.m. | After a few kilometers on the limestone slopes, stop at the Tom Simpson memorial for a reflective moment, leaving a bottle or cycling cap in tribute to the World Champion who died here during the 1967 Tour de France. This stop is also a useful respite before the final kilometer up to the last hairpin and the tiny, steep ramp to the Ventoux observatory.

4 p.m. | Spend some time getting your breath back and taking in the spectacular views. Despite being a crowded tourist spot, the summit of Ventoux has little more than a gift shop to offer, where you can buy sweets and souvenirs before starting the descent.

The contrast between the hours of ascending and the minutes of descending is striking. Even if you’re riding cautiously, you will be back in Crillon le Brave and taking a dip in the hotel’s pool within the hour. Take the descent cautiously, watching for oncoming cars that have pulled into your lane to overtake ascending riders.

Day Three

Sunday

10 a.m. | Follow the D138 through four kilometers of fields and flatlands from Crillon le Brave to Bédoin and start your morning with a tour of the town.

For cyclists, Bédoin is both Mecca and the Glastonbury festival, a place of solemn pilgrimage, yet so filled with kindred spirits that it is hard to avoid an atmosphere of communal celebration. You cannot take a photograph without a handlebar, a wheel or a Lycra-clad thigh intruding into it.

Fortify yourself for the journey ahead the way professionals did in less scientific days: with steak tartare at a roadside cafe. For something less visceral, lunch at the Hotel des Pins’s restaurant, L’Esprit Jardin, where you can have another Provençal speciality, côte de porc du Ventoux aux girolles. Mains from €15, hotel-des-pins.fr

1 p.m. | From Bédoin, ride gently through the vineyards of St.-Colombe and St.-Estève, spinning a lower gear than you think you need and saving yourself for the beautiful but unrelenting climb through the forest, where you’ll hit stretches of gradients that average 9% and peak at more than 12% along this 21-kilometer route.

2:40 p.m. | Stop at the signpost for Petit Moutet, about 12 kilometers up the climb, and enjoy the vista between two sections of forest. Few other vantage points include so much of Ventoux’s varied terrain. It can be daunting, but keep in mind that the summit isn’t going anywhere: Measure your efforts, take in the lush woodland and rocky passes and work your way up to Chalet Reynard, where you’ll benefit from familiarity with the final kilometers of the route.

4:30 p.m. | On your downhill leg, stop for a cooling demi-pression at Le Guintrand, a quiet cafe bar in St.-Colombe that offers shady outdoor tables and a view of the route without the bustle of Bédoin itself (+33 (0)4 90 37 10 08; leguintrand.com

). Once refreshed, cross the road for dinner beneath the hanging baskets at La Colombe. +33 (0)4 90 65 61 20

Day Four

Monday

9 a.m. | The route along the D13 and D938 to Malaucène is a short but rolling 16 kilometers—just enough to warm up for the final, third ascent. Begin the journey from Malaucène, which has neither Bédoin’s single-mindedness nor the valley vistas of Sault, yet in many ways is the start of the Ventoux legend. It was from Malaucène that the Renaissance poet Petrarch made one of the first ascents of the mountain, albeit on foot rather than on a carbon-fiber wonderbike. It is said that Petrarch’s account of climbing Ventoux popularized Alpinism, and Malaucène remains popular with rock climbers to this day.

11 a.m. | The ascent from Malaucène can be as tough as the climb from Bédoin, but with more shelter from the wind. It will take you three or four hours, depending on how well you have recovered from your previous exertions. While you will spend long spells riding up 9-10% slopes, the steep sections are broken up by gentler pitches of around 3%—and even the odd false-flat. This forces some grueling changes of rhythm, but also allows you some respite.

1:20 p.m. | By the time you reach Mont Serein, you’ve tackled the hardest that the Malaucène ascent has to offer and the final stretch is similar to the Bédoin ascent.

2:20 p.m. | On the descent to Bédoin, stop at Chalet Reynard for one final lunch, before returning to the hotel and departing. Express trains to Paris leave Avignon TGV every hour, and although the distance from Crillon le Brave to Avignon was ridable Friday, no one could fault you for taking a taxi back.

By LOUISA SHAFIA

“I LAHV YOU too mahch,” said the glamorous woman with the clinking bangles. She was my dad’s sister, my Aunt Mansoureh—known to all as Mali—and she beamed as she hugged me for the umpteenth time since she had arrived in Philadelphia from Iran. Because she barely spoke English and I didn’t speak Persian, we communicated with smiles. In the kitchen, the scents of freshly cut dill, caramelized onions and steeping saffron mingled into a spicy perfume. It was the late ’70s, before the 1979 Islamic revolution, and I was getting my first real taste of Persian culture. I was not yet 10 years old.

My dad had come to America in 1961, fresh out of medical school in Tehran, to do his residency at a hospital in Philadelphia. Leaving behind his Muslim upbringing and the Shah’s oppressive monarchy, he cut himself off from his past, legally changing his name to obscure its Islamic origin and never seeing his parents again.

My sense of where my dad came from was murky at best, but when Mali and the rest of the Shafia clan arrived with their burbling language of singsong vowels, their suitcases full of presents and their jovial disregard for punctuality, Iran suddenly burst into Technicolor. Our guests kept us busy sightseeing all day and drinking tea and playing backgammon late into the night. With my dark eyes and Persian afro, I looked just like them; they couldn’t pinch, tease and hug me enough.

The backdrop to our days was Mali’s magnificent cooking, especially her khoresh, or stews—the crowning glory of Persian cuisine. Among the classic variations, there is unctuous bademjan, made with fried eggplant and tomatoes; gheimeh, a pungent blend of split peas cooked with bittersweet dried limes and topped with French fries; and sweet-and-sour fesenjan, perhaps the most beloved of all Persian stews, a heady concoction of tart pomegranate, ground walnuts and rich, flavorful duck or chicken.

“I researched the dish and worked painstakingly in the kitchen to conjure the flavors I recalled from Aunt Mali’s version.”

Fesenjan is believed to have originated in Gilan province, a temperate green swath of land along the Caspian Sea in the north of Iran, where wild ducks are plentiful. Gilanis have a taste for tart, fruity flavors like those in this dish, which has been around in one form or another since the days of the Persian Empire. A cache of inscribed stone tablets unearthed from the ruins of the ancient capital of Persepolis show that as far back as 515 BCE, early Iranian pantry staples included walnuts, poultry and pomegranate conserve. Today, fesenjan is a de rigueur dish for weddings and special occasions.

To make fesenjan, you start by searing duck or chicken pieces until they’re browned on both sides. Next, in the fat rendered out in searing the poultry, you sauté a finely diced onion until it’s golden. To this base, add ground walnuts and fruity pomegranate molasses, and dilute the mixture with stock. When the russet sauce is heated through and the flavors have begun to meld, the poultry is returned to the pan to braise, low and slow, until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender. Depending on the cook’s preference, the walnuts may be coarsely ground for a chunkier texture, or pulverized into a fine powder to make a smooth, silky sauce. The stew may be seasoned with cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, sugar or saffron. A grated red beet, added toward the end of cooking, bestows a beautiful crimson hue.

As a kid, I quickly took to fesenjan and all of Mali’s dishes. But after a few weeks, the Persian caravan packed up, leaving behind gifts of toasted Iranian pistachios in the shell, chewy gaz nougat and blue-and-gold tins of caviar lettered in flowing Persian script.

Two decades later, fresh out of culinary school and working in San Francisco, I was doing healthy, produce-driven cooking with a broad range of global influences. My knowledge of Persian food, however, had remained more or less suspended in that long-ago moment when Aunt Mali swept into my world, trailing the scent of spice. Then, at my first restaurant job, I was asked to come up with a new entree, and from the depths of my subconscious came the idea: fesenjan.

I had never tried making it—only eating it every few years in a restaurant. I researched the dish and worked painstakingly in the kitchen to conjure the flavors I recalled from Aunt Mali’s version. I had no idea how to use pomegranate molasses or any other Persian ingredient, but the result was good enough to make it onto the menu. My curiosity about Persian food officially reignited, I did more research, more cooking and more remembering. Eventually, I decided to write a cookbook on the subject.

Unable to make it over to Iran, I conducted my research in Los Angeles, home to the world’s largest community of Iranian expats. Many of my relatives have now emigrated; Mali herself has often spent part of the year there. For a Persian food lover, L.A. is a revelation. There are sprawling Persian supermarkets, pristine Persian pastry shops, even a branch of a Tehran store devoted exclusively to dried fruit and nuts. I quickly fell in love with Wholesome Choice market in Irvine, a wonderland of Persian groceries where the busy food court boasts a full menu of Persian dishes, prepared and served by Iranian cooks. Eating lunch there for the first time, I noticed that most of the neighboring tables were filled with Iranians. They looked like me. The unfamiliar sense of being part of the majority came, surprisingly, as a relief.

During my stay in California, I embarked on wild food adventures with my family. We ate rustic abgoosht lamb stew, scoped out Persian markets, learned to make baghali polo rice with fava beans and dill. At a family gathering, one of my older female relatives shyly offered me a set of molds used to make the fried Persian pastry nan-e panjerei. Another gave me a Tupperware container of saffron- and rosewater-scented rice pudding, or sholezard, to take home. Suddenly, it seemed, I was part of a tribe.

With the book completed, I feel I’ve only just started exploring Persian food. My journey will continue, hopefully all the way to Iran, where perhaps my own identity and my father’s buried past will come into clearer focus. For now, though, something has shifted into place. The gift that Mali left me to discover as an adult is open in front of me, every time I cook up a batch of sweet and fragrant fesenjan. I’m still deciphering its meaning.

—Ms. Shafia’s latest cookbook, “The New Persian Kitchen,” was published by Ten Speed Press.

Fesenjan (Pomegranate Walnut Stew)

Active Time: 1 hour Total Time: 1½ hours Serves: 4

This classic stew is a mainstay of Iranian weddings and other celebrations. It gets its distinctive sweet-sour flavor from pomegranate molasses, which you can purchase at specialty markets or online, at kalamala.com.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

2 pounds skinless chicken legs or breasts

2 teaspoons salt, plus more, to taste

2 yellow onions, finely diced

1 cup walnuts, coarsely ground

½ cup pomegranate molasses

2 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water

1 cup peeled and grated red beets

Pomegranate seeds, for garnish

Fresh mint leaves, for garnish

What To Do

1. Heat a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat and add oil. Lightly season chicken with salt and sear until well browned, 6-7 minutes per side, then transfer to a plate.

2. In the same skillet, sauté onions over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

3. Add walnuts, pomegranate molasses and 2 teaspoons salt. Stir to coat the onions. Add stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and return chicken to stew. Cover and cook 25 minutes. Stir in beets and cook, uncovered, until stew is thick and beets are tender, 15-20 minutes. Salt to taste.

4. Pull out chicken pieces with tongs and cut into halves or thirds, if you like. Put a few pieces of chicken on each plate, along with plenty of sauce. Garnish with pomegranate seeds and mint.

A version of this article appeared May 4, 2013, on page D6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: My Fesenjan, Myself.