RSS
Home
The Silk Road Gourmet
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Get out the maps because Laura Kelley’s book The Silk Road Gourmet covers western and southern Asia, including the Republic of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. Each country is broken down into subcategories to include meat dishes, vegetable dishes and salads, rice and grain dishes, breads; desserts and beverages; appetizers and condiments; and sauces and spice mixtures. At the end is a Glossary of Unusual Ingredients that western cooks may not use on a regular basis.
Kelley studied anthropology as a young woman and discovered interconnections between food and cultures and communities. “All around the world people love their food and express their nationalism or ethnicity through the preparation of specific dishes that they identify as belonging to them,’ she stated in the Introduction.
For those who love to learn about history and the origin of foods and how it intertwines with the culture, The Silk Road Gourmet is an excellent resource.It is a cross between an anthropology textbook and a cookbook.
Some recipes might require the skills of an adventurous shopper and cook who considers finding unusual ingredients and learning to cook them a challenge, such as jonjoli. Other recipes will make global creations with the staples already available in most western pantries. The following two recipes use ingredients that should be available at a local farmer’s market. Zucchini-Egg Pie is from Armenia, and the Shiraz Tomato Salad is from Iran.
Zucchini-Egg Pie
This is an example of the egg-vegetable or egg- meat combinations eaten hroughout the Caucasus and Caspian, called “kuku,” after the Persian word for egg. Sometimes kukus contain meat and cheese and sometimes they just contain nuts and spices, so a wide variety of flavors are offered in these baked omelets. Enjoy them at any meal, not just breakfast!
- 2-3 medium zucchini, very thinly sliced crosswise
- 1 medium onion, very finely diced
- ¾ cup sharp cheese, grated (feta, cheddar, or gruyere)
- 5 eggs, beaten
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried basil
Preheat oven to 350. After slicing zucchini, arrange in a round buttered casserole in a circular fashion, with each slice slightly overlapping the one befoe it. Then add onion and cheese, sprinklying them liberally over the zucchini. Beat eggs and add salt, pepper, and basil to them. Beat again. Pour over zucchini and cheese. Bake casserole in a preheated oven 30-45 minutes or until done.
Shiraz Tomato Salad
A wonderful, simple, and quick-to-make salad, with the mint and lime juice offering a real Persian twist to the usual tomato-based salad. This salad has to be served immediately after making to get the full spectrum of flavor of the dish. If allowed to sit, the mint dominates the lime and the vegetables give off too much liquid. But it is really delicious served cold, so I recommend refrigerating all of the ingredients for a few hours before preparation.
- 4 medium onions, chopped
- 1 medium onion, peeled, sliced, and separated into crescents
- ¼ cup fresh lime juice (about 1-2 limes)
- 2 tablespoons almond or other nut oil
- 2 tablespoons fresh mint, diced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 2 small Asian cucumbers or ½ of a large Western one, peeled and seeded (optional)
- In a mixing bowl, combine chilled chopped tomatoes and onions with the fresh mint, salt, and pepper and mix well. If using cucumbers, peel and finely chop the chilled cucumber s and add them to the salad and mix well.
- Whisk the lime juice together with the small amount of oil, pour it over the vegetables and spices, mix a few turns, and serve immediately.
For more info: The Silk Road Gourmet website
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
