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Chinese Salted Eggs
Chinese Salted Eggs – Just Potted 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...
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“Asian” Food in Colonial American Cuisine
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...
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Garum – Its not as Roman as You Think!
Roman Fish Mosaic I had the pleasure recently to be a guest on Eat This Podcast with Jeremy Cherfas. On the show, Jeremy and I spoke about the fish sauce garum, how to make it, its origins (not Roman),...
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Crowdsourcing for Volume 2
A fan of Silk Road Gourmet recently suggested that I try crowdsourcing to raise funds for the publication of Silk Road Gourmet Volume 2. I hemmed and hawed a bit, thinking that 10K would be too much...
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Garlic Pickles in Zester Daily!
Autumn on the Silk Road means pickles, and one unique kind gives garlic a chance to stand out on its own. One of my favorite Silk Road pickles is Pomegranate Pickled Garlic enjoyed in the Black Sea...
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Sweet and Savory Eel – Feast of Seven Fishes
I grew up in a very closely knit Italian-American community in the suburbs of New York City. Nearly everyone I knew as a child was related to me by blood or marriage. It was a world of cousins. There...
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Food and Wine at Pheasants Tears
This is an essay that is long overdue. It’s been well more than a year since I ate delicious food paired with fantastic wines at Pheasants Tears tasting room in Sighnaghi, Georgia. The dishes and the...
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Early 20th Century Georgian Winemaking
On the subject of Georgian winemaking, I recently found these incredible old photos depicting various aspects of wine making and drinking. I found the photos on the British Library’s Endangered...
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Salted Eggs Revealed
Salted Eggs Ready to Harvest Its been a few months since I put up my salted eggs, and over the holidays I noticed that the water they were in had turned a rusty brown from the spices used in...
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A Meal Fit for Kim Jong-il
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,”...
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The Introduction of Chili Peppers to India
I saw you green, then Turning red as you ripened. Pleasant to look at and tasty in a dish, But too hot if excess is used Savior of the poor, enhancer of good food. Fiery when bitten, this makes it...
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A Roman Bowl from a Mongolian Tomb
Roman Bowl from a Mongolian Noble Tomb (5th C ACE) This bowl is a fine example of pinched-glass craftmanship. It is of Roman (possibly Byzantine) origin and is believed to be dated to the 5th Century...
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Natto in Japan and Beyond
Natto, or fermented soybeans, are everywhere in Japan. There are natto burgers, natto bruschetta made with heaps of natto mixed with melted cheese or tomatoes on toasted bread, and even natto curries...
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Great Asian Restaurants
A slide show of some of the must-eat-at restaurants in Asia. Stunning photography by David Hagerman, David Lett, Carla Capalbo, yours truly (me) and others. The restaurants I included were, Hua’s...
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Afghan Cardamom Cookies
Afghan Cardamom Cookies 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....
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Silk Money from the Silk Road
Silk Currency Bolts, 4th C, ACEFrom cowrie shells; and iron, copper and silver coins; to various kinds of paper, many different materials have been used by merchants and customers as credit or legal...
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Phoenician Dining on the Silk Road
Although we have no recipes definitively attributable to the ancient Phoenicians, and little information about the foods and dishes they ate, we do know from their material culture that they dined in...
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A 1675 Vindaloo Roast Chicken
Cover of Wellcome MS 4050, 1675 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...
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Spicy Asian – Authentic Szechuan in Ithaca
Wherever I go, for work or for personal travel, I like to hit a good restaurant during my trip. If that restaurant can be a Silk Road restaurant, all the better. I had the chance this past weekend to...
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The Silk Road at the The Corning Museum of Glass
I love glass and glassmaking. Glass is fire and imagination combined. Long have I loved watching craftsmen at historical sites blow air into a molten mass to form a useful bowl or bottle, or see the...
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