Laura 
Many chefs and cookbook authors spend their careers touting the unique aspects of the cuisines they cook and write about. I’m different from most. I look around and see nothing but commonalities and connections between the major Asian cuisines. In The Silk Road Gourmet Cookbook, I write a lot about how ingredients and dishes swirl in patterns across Asia and tell us a lot about … Read more
Salt . . . the only rock we eat. The natural salts of the sea – both past and present – vary a great deal in taste. Some are “salty” and dissolve quickly in the mouth – like Murray River salt from Australia; others are comparatively mild like the sea salts from France and El Salvador. Still others take a long time to dissolve … Read more
I said we were going to do it in the original post on garum. And so we have. Our attempt to make garum the traditional, slow way has officially begun. Fifteen pounds of fresh, whole Norwegian mackerel, and 12 pounds of sea salt have been combined in a clean, sturdy, sealable, 5-gallon painter’s bucket. And now we wait, and let the heat and humidity turn … Read more
Salt – our oldest flavoring. Integral to plant and animal physiology, we need it to live. Vast empires have been built on its tax or on its trade. Protests have been lodged, wars have been fought over the means of its production, and men have died for the control of salt sources. In addition, we have many ritual uses for salt. Many religions use it … Read more
Chef Miles Collins has just cooked and reviewed one of the recipes – Lamb and Rhubarb Stew – from The Silk Road Gourmet Volume One over on his site. Miles is a talented professional chef, and a brilliant photographer who focuses on subjects from life and work in gourmet kitchens to the nature and wildlife of his native Lincolnshire, England. All in all – a … Read more
Throughout its history, Uzbekistan has been one of the world’s great commercial and cultural crossroads. Across its length ran the Northern Silk Road, the lifeline that the caravans and traders travelled exchanging gems, spices, and other rare items from the orient to the West and back again. Evidence of episodic trade in semi-precious gems (jade and lapis lazuli) between China and Afghanistan along the Silk … Read more
It’s almost durian season again, so a post both extolling and denouncing the flavorful, pungent fruit seemed like a great idea. The British Naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace noted in describing the sight, smell and taste of a durian: “The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, … Read more
The Voyages of Sinbad tell of giant, magical creatures: whales the size of islands, snakes so large that they could swallow elephants, and rukh (roc) birds so large that they could carry a caravan of men on their backs. Tales of these creatures repeated across cultures and through the ages has made most readers assume that they were simply pigments of a colorful imagination – … Read more
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river . . . And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China . . . I grew up hearing Leonard Cohen croon these words over and over. Telling perhaps about my age and background, but important as an introduction to the history of tea as well. As a global drink, … Read more
Sasha Martin has just completed a week of cooking some of my favorite Georgian standards adapted from The Silk Road Gourmet Volume One. For a look at her meal review, beautiful photos of the preparation and recipes check out her Global Table Adventure Website. Its a great project: 195 countries, 195 meals, 195 weeks. The site is informative, interesting and full of personal insight and … Read more
I’m at it again – questioning the assumptions and conclusions Jean Bottero made when examining the Old Babylonian culinary tablets from Yale University. Is it some manic spirit that grabs me each Spring and forces me back into the ancient Near East or is it just that it is an activity that grabs my attention from time to time? Whatever the cause, those of you … Read more
You heard it here first folks: Over the course of the next six months or so, the kitchens of Chez Kelley are going to make fish sauce or Roman garum. More accurately, we are going to compare easy or quick methods with traditional outdoor fermentation. If we haven’t been run out of the neighborhood, we will report our results in an end of summer post. … Read more
The University of Pennsylvania Museum displays artifacts from Caucasian travelers on the Silk Road. In a desolate, eastern world of salt and sand, where blinding windstorms were common and potable water was rare, the mummified remains of people from the west have been found. Why they died, where they came from and where they were traveling to is unclear, but for a short time, they … Read more
Once again, its time to look at some of the health benefits of Asian ingredients. Like the previous post that extolled the medicinal virtues of turmeric, marigold, coriander, black onion seed and bay leaves, this post will look at the uses of cumin, black cumin, cardamom, black cardamon and fenugreek both in the kitchen and in the armamentarium of treatments used by doctors and pharmacists … Read more
My husband thinks I’ve gone completely mad. He’s not saying much, but I can see the look in his eyes when I start to talk about my latest discovery – food haiku. That sort of squinty-eyed attempt to discern if I’m serious or just goofing around. But food haiku is for real. Celebrating food and our experiences with it or how it makes us feel in measured … Read more
For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make. It’s all Chaucer’s fault! He was the first major writer to begin associating Valentine’s Day with romantic love as seen in the passage above from The Parlement of Foules, written in 1382 to honor the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia. His seasonal reference … Read more