Recipe

Sour Cherries, Gooseberries, and Currants from 18th Century America

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Over the past few months, archaeologists at George Washington’s Mount Vernon have uncovered some 35 bottles of preserved berries from the mansion’s cellar.  The bottles have been buried for approximately 250 years, and several unopened bottles have yielded perfectly preserved fruit, liquid, and other organic residues. The bottles are undergoing cleaning and preservation, and the contents are being scientifically analyzed by the US Department of … Read more

Omani Kofta with Zucchini Sauce

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Pucchini Sauce

After last month’s post about the Harappan jewelry found in a Bronze-age tomb in Oman, I wanted to share a delicious, modern Omani recipe from my collection with you. With summer’s abundance of zucchini and other squash, this is a great recipe for the grill, that will become one of your new favorites. Don’t be wary of the amount of herbs and spices in the … Read more

What to do with Leftovers – Roman Style

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Roman Pork with Apricots

I love dishes that blend meat and fruit. From Kyrgyz Beef with Apples to Bhutanese Fish with Mandarin Oranges, and Iranian Fish with Sour Cherries. As some ancient Mesopotamian archaeological assemblages of fish bones in proximity to crab apple cores suggest, humans have been pairing meat and fish with fruit for millennia. This is a Roman dish from the book credited to Apicius that blends … Read more

Turkish Cevizli ARE Mesopotamian Mersu

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Cevizli Incir

Sometimes, perception can be like a flash of lightning that changes the world forever. Once something is seen and understood, there is no unseeing or unknowing. A few years back, I had such a food-related epiphany. I was in Istanbul and went into one of the many great food and spice shops that line the streets for some Iranian saffron to take back to the … Read more

Olympics, 이해, and More Delicious North Korean Food

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Like Christmas Truce in World War I, the recent Olympics allowed for a temporary warming of relations between north and south Korea, between people still locked in a conflict that is decades old. To incorporate these events into the blog, I decided to cook up some more North Korean food, and headed off to the North Korean food website to peruse recipes. What the site … Read more

A 1675 Vindaloo Roast Chicken

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Move over Hannah Glasse. Your published recipe for butter chicken that is widely hailed as the first English recipe for curry, has an English contender. In a 1675 anonymous manuscript full of recipes and potions in the Wellcome Library in London (Wellcome Manuscript 4050) is an English recipe for a vindaloo-flavored roast. In the recipe, cloves, mace, and lots of black pepper form the spice … Read more

Afghan Cardamom Cookies

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Today I’m cooking for a holiday get together with friends we’re having this evening, but wanted to share a delicious recipe with you that is just perfect for this time of year. These Afghan cardamom cookies are spicy and savory, and deliver a blast of cardamom flavor as they melt in your mouth. They are also really simple to make, and take no more than … Read more

A Meal Fit for Kim Jong-Il

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One of the difficulties in understanding history and historical works, is to imagine the world truly differently than it is today.  We are so confident that our senses provide us with the, “truth,” that many of us cannot really fathom that the world of the past was different from the present.  Modern audiences recoil at the anti-Semitism expressed in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and laugh when … Read more

Asian Food in Colonial American Cuisine

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When we think of the diets of our founding fathers and mothers, we imagine porridges, breads, fresh and preserved fruits and vegetables, and gently flavored roast meats. What most people don’t realize is that the colonists had a taste for exotic fare from all over the world and would pay dearly for delicacies from India, China, Indonesia and other places far from the shores of … Read more

Chinese Salted Eggs

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I love to be of use. It turns me on to help people and to help them figure things out. To that end, this recipe is a request from a colleague who loves Chinese culture and cuisine and who is learning how to make some delicious and interesting dishes. Earlier today she asked me if I had a recipe for Chinese salted eggs. Wouldn’t you … Read more

Uyghur Big Plate Chicken

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This is a quintessential Uyghur Dish. Stir-fried chicken, potatoes and bell peppers in a rich, savory sauce redolent with star anise and cinnamon. Roasted cumin flavors the base of the sauce, with black cardamom lending a smoky taste, and Sichuan pepper offering up a few bright, spicy lights. Interestingly, the heat of this dish is extremely variable and ranges from mild to four-alarm hot. As … Read more

A Silk Road Summer Bean Salad

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No American picnic is really complete without a bean salad. Black beans, green beans or kidney beans, often blended with garbanzos and onions in a light vinaigrette, make for the dreams of many a midsummer picnic. These salads complement roast meats like nothing else and are light, quick and healthy additions to any meal. Roast meats in the form of kebabs and chops rule menus … Read more

Spinach Soup with Century Eggs

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We’ve come to the end of our current exploration of Century Eggs – from making them from scratch, to mixing them with other ingredients and preparing dishes with them. This is recipe number ten of ten, and what a nice way to end a series it is. This is a soup – a homestyle recipe – that is enjoyed across China as well as in … Read more

Thai Pork with 1000-Year Eggs

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This next to last recipe for 1000-Year Eggs might be my favorite way to prepare them. It is savory, spicy, and hot, and the Thai basil lends a wonderful lightness to both the pork and the eggs for a winning dish. This recipe also lightly fries half of the Thai basil for a delicious, crunchy herbal topping that one encounters in lots of dishes from … Read more

Stir-Fried Beef with Century Eggs

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This interesting dish combines century eggs with sliced beef in a stir fry that is perfectly suitable as a main dish, or as one of many dishes in a multicourse Chinese meal. Most of the flavor in the dish comes from a brief marinade of the beef in mushroom-flavored soy sauce, sesame oil and Shaoxing – a type of rice wine. This is accented by … Read more

Sliced Peppers with Century Eggs

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This is another appetizer or salad presentation of 1000-year eggs. One of the interesting things about this dish is that it can be served hot with the peppers and other vegetables fresh from the wok. Alternatively, you can let it cool for 10-15 minutes for a dish that is only slightly warm. I don’t recommend letting it sit too long though, for risk of the … Read more