Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey

Najmieh Batmanglij

Description

This book is at once an exploration, a celebration, and a little-known tale of unity. It presents 150 delicious vegetarian dishes that together trace a fascinating story of culinary linkage. As renowned cookbook writer and teacher Najmieh Batmanglij explains, all have their origins along the ancient network of trade routes known as the Silk Road, stretching from China in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. On this highway moved not just trade goods but also ideas, customs, tastes and such basics of life as cooking ingredients. The result was the connecting and enrichment of dozens of cuisines. In Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey, Najmieh Batmanglij recounts that process and brings it into the modern kitchen in the form of recipes that are venturesome and yet within reach of any cook. They are intended for vegetarian, partial-vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike – anyone who is looking for balanced, unusual and exceptionally tasty dishes.
The book offers a wealth of information derived from the author’s extensive research and her travels along the Silk Road during the past 30 years. She complements the recipes with stories, pictures, histories of ingredients, and words of wisdom from her favorite poets and writers of the region. The scope of her culinary journey of discovery is vast – from Xian in China, to Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, to Isfahan in Iran, to Istanbul in Turkey, and to the westernmost terminus of the ancient trade routes in Italy. Her recipes – all of them personal favorites – include such exotic yet simple fare as Sichuan Crispy Cucumber Pickles; Afghan Boulani, a savory pastry stuffed with garlic chives; Persian Pomegranate and Walnut Salad; Kermani Pistachio and Saffron Polow with Rose Petals; Chinese Hot and Sour Tofu Noodle Soup; Turkish Almond and Rice Flour Pudding; Uzbek Candied Quince with Walnuts; and Sicilian Sour Cherry Crostata. Fortunately, all the ingredients for these recipes can be obtained at local supermarkets and farmers’ markets. In recent years America has become a kind of modern Silk Road, where wonderful ingredients from all over the world are available to everyone.

Sujets

• Cuisine d'Europe
• Cuisine d'Europe
• La cuisine et son histoire
• National
• History
• General
• Asian
• Chinese
• Cooking
• Chinese cuisine
• Middle East
• Vegetarianism
• Silk Road
• General officer
• Middle Eastern
• Vegetarian
• Cuisine d'Asie
• Cuisine d'Asie

Informations

• Publié par: Mage Publishers Inc.
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781949445145
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 37 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2000, 2020 Mage Publishers,
Designed by Najmieh Batmanglij
Full credits on page 329
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any manner whatsoever, except in the form of a review, without the written permission of the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Batmanglij, Najmieh
Silk road cooking: a vegetarian journey / Najmieh Batmanglij. p. cm. ISBN 0-934211-63-9 (alk. paper)
1. Vegetarian cookery. 2. Silk Road. I. Title.
TX837. B3385 2002
641.5’636--dc21
FIRST FIXED LAYOUT EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-949445-143 ePUB ISBN: 978-1-949445-14-5 Mobi ISBN: 978-1-949445-18-3
Visit Mage online at www.mage.com

An Uzbek woman offers fresh figs in the Tashkent market. This black variety has been cultivated since at least the fourth millennium bce in Egypt; by 800 bce the tree was domesticated throughout the Middle East and Greece. From there, it spread north and east.
CONTENTS

Introduction
A Traveler’s Tale
The Era of Caravans
New Foods—East & West
Toward a Silk Road Cuisine
Salads
Soups
Eggs
Rice

Fruit & Vegetable Braises
Pasta, Pizza & Bread

Pastries, Desserts & Candies
Teas, Coffee & Sherbets
Preserves, Pickles & Spices
Silk Road Glossary & Resources
Credits & Acknowledgments
Index

9
59
95
119
135
173
197
239
273
293
306
329
331







To my mother, who was a natural herbalist


Our guest’s the sun that rises in the east—tonight,
That glowing heavenly disk will share our feast—tonight!
Play us, sweet singers, songs that tell love’s secrets, till
Our souls rise up, enraptured and released—tonight.
Jalal al-Din Rumi / Dick Davis
















Come join me on a voyage of culinary discovery, along a path that stretches through the ages and across half the world, from China in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. The path is the ancient network of trading routes known today as the Silk Road.
Cooking traditions are often defined in geographic terms; a cuisine may be associated with a particular province, for instance, or a country or perhaps a wider region such as the Mediterranean. To speak of Silk Road cooking is to invoke spaces and distances far greater, continental in scope. But while the unity is more elusive, it is very real, created by exchanges so slow and subtle as to be almost imperceptible. For centuries—along with the silk, ivory, incense and other trade goods flowing over the vast network—vegetables, fruits, grains and cooking techniques passed from one civilization to another, to be absorbed and transformed into local specialties. This process of mutual enrichment shaped the cuisines of far-flung cultures in profound ways, especially their vegetarian dishes. It is one of the great stories of cooking— yet one of the least known.
I was born in Iran, a country positioned at the center of the ancient trading nexus, looking both east and west. Some of my happiest childhood memories are linked to Silk Road cooking, although of course I had no notion of such a thing at the time. On certain school half-days, when I arrived home early in the afternoon, I would hear distant echoes of a setar and my mother singing verses by the thirteenth-century poet Rumi, a great favorite of hers:
Oh listen to the flute as it complains
The sweet, sad tones drew me to the brightest room in our house, where, sitting on the Persian carpet striped with light and color from the sunshine that seeped through bamboo shades, I found my mother and four or five old



Opposite: A farmer in southwest China embraces rice, the “Golden Harvest.” The staff of life for half of humanity, rice is sacred throughout Asia.
This page: The Western staff of life is wheat, here being winnowed by an Afghan farmer (top). In a sixteenth- century Persian miniature (bottom), a woman is shown rolling wheat dough for noodles using a technique handed down through the generations.


Introduction / 9


INTRODUCTION





ladies, all distant relatives. From the crisply ironed white cotton cloths being spread over the carpet and the captivating aroma of fresh dough, I knew it was noodle-making day. “Come on in,” said the old ladies, tearing off a piece of dough for me to play with.
They were kneading dough and rolling it into rectangles on large wooden boards. When they had rolled it thin, they folded each sheet twice; then, with one hand as a guide and working with fast, confident strokes, they used sharp knives to cut their dough sheets into quarter- inch strips. The room would fall silent as they concentrated on the task, joyfully competing to see who could cut the most even strips in the shortest time.
Every so often, as if reminded by something, my mother would stop cutting, put down her knife and continue to sing her poem from where she had left off:
In anguished tales of separation’s pains;
Since they have torn me from the reedbed I
Make men and women heartsick with my sigh . . .
Everyone would stop working, some still kneading the dough, some with finished strips in hand. All would lean back from their work and join in the refrain:
Oh listen to the flute as it complains
Just as quickly as it had started, the singing would stop. Tea would appear, and there would be some gossip, a few new jokes, lots of laughing. Then, as if on cue, everyone would go back to work. One of the old ladies would give me some strands of the fresh noodles to arrange, carefully separated for drying, on the floured cotton sheets.
I found myself as delighted by the cheerful ceremony of preparation as by the reward for the work. The next day, convivial crowds of relatives would come to our house for a glorious lunch of noodle soup garnished with fried garlic, onion, mint and sun-dried yogurt.


Introduction / 10



This page: The hand that cut them holds fresh Persian noodles in a bunch; they are destined for a soup garnished with garlic, onion, mint and sun-dried yogurt (opposite), a favorite Nowruz or New Year’s dish. Eating the noodles signifies unravelling the strands of the year ahead.






Such pleasurable memories inspired me years later, when I turned to a more serious study of cookery. I began with Persian foods and dishes, and the traditions behind them. Later, in France and America, I learned techniques from other cuisines. Later still, I traveled to such countries as China, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, India, Turkey and Italy, growing ever more intrigued by commonalities and connections in their cooking.
One universal rule seems to be something I first noticed in Iran: The food in restaurants—the food that visitors see as characteristic of a culture—often is only a small sampling of the dishes people eat at home. When contemplating the cookery of Iran or of the Middle East, for example, most Westerners think of meat kabobs, which certainly are popular fare, especially as street food and for celebrations. But Persians eat meat sparingly at home and, as in every other culture, save extravagant meat dishes for special occasions and grand festivities. On the other hand, they prepare a wide range of grain, vegetable and fruit dishes, delicious creations barely known outside of the country. I found the same contrast between restaurant and home cooking in every place I visited.
In Iranian home cooking, a meal always begins with bread, cheese, and whatever vegetables and herbs are freshest in the garden or market that day. They are spread out for the family or any guests who may appear, and to them may be added salads and various yogurt-based dips for the bread. Then there are stuffed vegetables; fragrant kukus, or vegetable omelets; and soups.
Vegetable markets and vegetarian dishes in all the countries once traversed by the Silk Road offer the same painterly displays, varied fragrances and intense tastes. In markets in Uzbekistan, I found huge melons of surpassing sweetness and vibrant orange carrots unlike any others. I saw nan, the familiar flat bread of Iran, cooked in a tandoor (clay oven) or on a saaj or taveh (a convex cast iron plate placed over a fire). Sold from wooden carts, the flat loaves—known as nan there, too, as well as in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, much of central Asia and western China—are scented with onion, garlic and sesame, cumin or nigella seeds. Across the world in Xian I reveled in the vast outdoor market, its stalls groaning under bright persimmons, pomegranates, big red jujubes, aromatic ginger, onions and leeks. Such cornucopias are also to be found in Istanbul, Genoa— indeed, almost everywhere—and the wonderful produce, fresh from the earth, stalk, vine or branch, has come to the markets of America, too.
The foods made from this bounty appear in infinite variety. Consider only meze, that tempting assembly of little dishes found throughout the Middle East and into Spain (where they are called tapas). Appealing arrays of this kind are also spread out in the unpretentious cafés, or


Introduction / 12


Bread, fresh cheese, onions, herbs, and fruit welcome guests to Iranian homes. To these will be added a variety of little dishes, ancestors of Turkish meze, Greek mezedes, and Spanish tapas.





lokantas (from the Italian locanda, meaning “inn”), that one finds in every Turkish town. In the warm weather people sit outside, helping themselves to dolmas (stuffed vine leaves), vegetable tempuras, the marvelous pastries called borek