Parvaneh Ashktorab can show how it's done. Known informally as "Pari," the Saratoga nutritionist and teacher has combined her professions and love of creative shapes to teach a course in food design that will start next week, Sept. 14, at the Saratoga Community Center. Space is limited to 15 students.

Part of the city's Recreation Department Culinary Arts program, the four-week course will cover the creation of a vegetable basket, a pineapple fruit dish, potato salad design, the creation of an onion hyacinth flower and a watermelon basket. It also is the place where Pari can share her avocation.

"I've always loved interior design and used to look through catalogs for ideas," she says. "Then I got ideas about the design of food and table décor." As a result, she earned a degree in nutrition at Sacramento State University. She then was able to teach wherever the civil engineering career of her husband Ali Oskoorouchi took them. All the while, Pari taught, usually serving as a high school substitute teacher. "While I find that adults are very mature and want to help, high school students are so naughty!" she says, laughing.

There probably won't be time for mischief in the two-hour classes Pari has outlined for food design. On the first day, students will learn how to cut a radish. Using a very sharp paring knife, she slices deeply into the vegetable, making a series of V-shapes, thus creating two halves with saw-tooth edges. "It's very important to put the freshly cut vegetable into ice or cold water," she notes. This causes the cut parts to absorb water and "open," or blossom out. The white end of a green onion can be sliced several times toward the stem, and when placed in ice for an hour, the white strips curl back like the petals of a flower. Fifty of them speared on toothpicks into a long cucumber to completely cover it will result in the hyacinth.

The same technique applies to a carrot, a tomato or a celery stalk. Depending on how the slice is made—straight, curved or saw-toothed—the result can be a startling flower look-alike. Arranged on toothpicks stuck into florist foam and covered with plastic wrap, the creations can last up to a week. "It's so easy," Pari enthuses as she gestures to a picture of a magnificent peacock, complete with spinach-leaf tail feathers, carrot curls and cucumber spirals.

Following her food-design class, Pari will be offering another class in Persian cooking on Oct. 19. Reveling in the tastes of her homeland, she will teach the preparation of a complete dinner, including appetizers, salad, rice, two stews, kebabs and a dessert. At a recent party for her 23-year-old son, Iman, who graduated from UC Davis, Pari spent two days with the help of two friends preparing the same kinds of foods she prepares in her classes.

Food Design with Pari will be held at 19655 Allendale Ave. in the Saratoga Community Center. Registration for classes beginning Sept. 14 may be made by calling 408.868.1248 or visiting www.saratoga.ca.us/register.htm. Cost is $49 plus $15 for food.