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Toward Asilk Road Cuisine
Appears in
Published 2000
Timeless nomad traditions at the far reaches of the Silk Road: In the piedmont wintering grounds of the Shahsavan tribe, in western Iran (above), women use a tandoor—a buried stone oven—to cook flat bread. At right, smoke from a hearth fire streams from a Mongolian tent (yurt or ger), near Ürümqi in present day China.
This book is a collection of 150 vegetarian recipes from countries touched by Silk Road trade. Among the recipes are dishes from China and Persia, from India and Turkey, Italy, Egypt, the Levant, and from western and central Asia. While the dishes reflect the diversity of regional tastes, they are unified by many shared characteristics, such as the love of flat breads, use of rice, and cooking of noodles and dumplings Because cooks along the Silk Road delighted in new ingredients, I have not hesitated to use New World foods like tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, corn, and wild and brown rice, introduced long after the overland trade had vanished, but now some of the favorite ingredients in the region.