Silk Roads with Anna Ansari: Tracing Food, Migration and Identity Across Asia
Anna Ansari on Silk Roads: Tracing Food, Migration and Identity Across Asia
Iranian-American writer Anna Ansari joins Lecker to discuss her debut cookbook Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with recipes from Baku to Beijing. Cooking Risotto alla Bukhara in her East London kitchen, we explore how ingredients, people, and culinary traditions have moved along ancient trade routes - and how Anna's own journey from suburban Detroit to China to Scotland connects to these stories of migration and belonging.
We cover:
The movement of ingredients across the Silk Roads (melons from Uzbekistan, spinach from Iran, apples from Kazakhstan)
How Anna's Turkic heritage connects to Central Asian and Chinese cuisines
Experiencing Uyghur food in Beijing as a teenager and recognising familiar flavours
Adapting traditional recipes like bakhash into dishes recognisable in different contexts
The immigrant experience: giving up a legal career to move countries and start over
Cooking rice as a constant across homes and continents
Authenticity, authority, and whose food stories get told
About Anna Ansari:
Anna Ansari is an Iranian-American writer with a background in Asian Studies. A former trade attorney, she now writes at the intersection of food, family and history. Her debut book Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey is out now.
Find her: Substack - Where in the World is Anna Ansari? / Instagram @thisplacetastesdelicious
Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list. [aff link]
Further Listening:
What is a National Dish? with Anya von Bremzen
Gastro-Spirituality with Jenny Lau
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Lecker is a podcast about how food shapes our lives. Recorded mostly in kitchens, each episode explores personal stories to examine our relationships with food – and each other.
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Music by Blue Dot Sessions
Full transcript available below.
Lecker25_AnnaAnsari_v1
[00:00:00] Lucy: You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.
[00:00:11] This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. This month on Lecker book club. An interview in the kitchen of Anna Ansari, the author of Silk Dearlove, A Flavor Odyssey with recipes from Baku to Beijing.
[00:00:25] Anna: With that and with the, the, the dishes especially, I wanted to make sure that they are a nod to not just my heritage, but to, to my present, right?
[00:00:34] Like, what do I cook on a daily basis? What can you cook in your kitchen? Things in London and Edinburgh and Manchester and New York and wherever. You know, like what can, how can we sort of bring these flavors and these experiences into our homes, into our, onto our tables in ways that are accessible while simultaneously like stimulating, you know, not just your taste buds, but like potentially your perception of the food that you're eating and its origins.
[00:01:03] Lucy: Anna Ansari lives in East London now, but has made it there via suburban Detroit, China, New York City and Scotland. She's Iranian American and fell in love with China first during a study abroad summer as a teenager, then spending the next decade of her life going back and forth between there and the us.
[00:01:22] After spending the next period of her life as an NYC trade attorney, she moved to the UK to be with her husband and began slowly making the connections between the history of the world's most famous trade routes and her own personal family story. In Silk Roads, Anna draws together ingredients and narrative threads from across Asia.
[00:01:42] In a way, I found both surprising and illuminating. I joined Anna and her cat Enzo in the kitchen of her Ow house while she prepared lunch for us from the book Risotto. Buca Rezo. Yes, risotto. We'll get into that.
[00:02:03] Anna: This book has gone on its own long journey, but I really started in summer of, what was that? Summer 20. 21 maybe. I submitted a proposal for the YA Kiso Award. Mm-hmm. On food, new food writers in Asia about how I wanted to sort of trace Turkic food from my father's background and like childhood in Iran through to the Uighur neighborhoods that I spent a lot of time as a teen and then a young adult in modern day, you know, big cities in China.
[00:02:35] So I submitted this proposal. Which, you know, resulted in me getting a literary agent who then was like, this is great, no one's gonna buy it. But at that time I had also been doing a lot of recipe testing for Ole Hercules. Oh yes. And so she was the one actually who encouraged me to submit an essay to submit this project to the y get so awards.
[00:03:02] 'cause I had, you know, it was COVID. We just like. You know, started chatting online and end up, I took all these, all of her online workshops and I recipe tested for her, and I would send my feedback on the recipes to her. You know? Yes, this was delicious. Yes, this was also delicious. Everything's delicious, but where's the salt?
[00:03:22] And yada, yada, yada. And her responses were your descriptions in your, just your recipe testing feedback are so funny and so fun and so lyrical. You are just a born storyteller. So she basically encouraged me not only to submit a you know, piece for this award, but also to do an essay for her book, which she included in home food.
[00:03:46] And then we developed a recipe for that as well. So she was really. Integral to that process and just sort of saying like, you've got a lot to say and someone should hear it, so try to, try to write it down. And I've been such a fan of her writing as well as her recipes for so long. Yeah, that's quite an endorsement.
[00:04:02] Yeah, it really meant a lot. And so when, then after I got an agent, basically she said, well, listen, what would you think about turning this idea into a cookbook? We know you cook, we know you know how to recipe test. What? What are your thoughts on this? Hummed and hawed a bit, to be honest, because I was like, I just wanna write like narrative nonfiction.
[00:04:26] But I do love cooking and I love, you know, being very precise with quantities. Like I'm a, I think that coming from Aling background, actually, like writing a recipe. Is, is is very important to me that I have everything like lined up properly and I have the, the, the steps correct and nothing's left out.
[00:04:44] I'm, I'm just very, very precise and so I knew I could do it and so that's how this sort of just came about and I started doing the research on the different cuisines and recipes and I mean, I think that entire process. It was about two years. Mm-hmm. And then from basically signing with DK until publication day is another two years.
[00:05:02] So four years of work in in, you know, in one little turquoise and sort of reddish package. Gorgeous cover. Yeah.
[00:05:09] Lucy: Yeah. I'm so interested by that kind of writing journey for one of a better phrase, because you know, you have had. In so many ways, like quite an extraordinary life, like in terms of where you've lived, where you've traveled, the experiences you've had, you know, reading your substack, the stories that you have from all these different places.
[00:05:25] But I'm so interested that you sort of started writing this late, if you know what I mean. Was there never an inclination before that?
[00:05:32] Anna: I mean, I think there was, I think, you know. I know there was, I remember, I remember as a teenager, I was like, I just wanna like write books. Like this is what I wanted, that's what I wanted.
[00:05:42] And then I got so immersed into Chinese history and culture. Mm. And I really had, you know, a, a good decade of devotion to an entire region and. You know, and I don't, wouldn't trade that for anything, but it wasn't really a chance to sort of sit back and write. And some of the things maybe I wanted to write about those experiences in China, I would've like not wanted my parents to hear about, or like the government.
[00:06:08] I mean, there's a lot at stake, there's still some stuff that I don't, you know, there's, there is a lot at stake and I think that. You know, as a young adult, maybe that was too much for me to have at stake. And I thought, okay. It's a lot
[00:06:20] Lucy: to have out there as well. It's a lot to have
[00:06:21] Anna: out there. It's only, you know, there's a lot in this book that's extremely personal.
[00:06:24] There's a lot that's really historical and culinary, but there's a lot of my family in there. There's a lot of me. I sort of am at the point in my life where I just don't care.
[00:06:35] Music: That's great. That's very liberating. No, it's really liberating. Yeah. And I
[00:06:38] Anna: just, and I think that I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone Yeah.
[00:06:42] Other than to just let my voice be heard. Yeah. For like maybe the first time and sort of be really okay with sort of how people interpret that as well and just say, okay, you know, like here I am. Hope you enjoy and I really do hope you enjoy because. I think you will. But you know, it's, it's nice to finally get to the point in life where that's, that's the attitude I have.
[00:07:02] Whereas when I was in my late twenties and I had this like great job that I liked, but I didn't make any money, so I thought, okay, well I'll go to law school. You know, I went to law school. I still am in debt for that. I made some money. I'm still in debt. But it wasn't this great passion project. It's not a great way to have to choose your life, but it's a lot of, you know, a lot of us, that is how we make these decisions.
[00:07:29] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It has to be pragmatic. It has to be pragmatic. It wasn't the plan, but I, you know, it paid me well. It paid me well until I used up all my money. Traveling to visit my now husband in the uk. Sure. Like, well this is not gonna work. And then you
[00:07:43] Lucy: moved here and you can't practice law here.
[00:07:45] That is, that is very
[00:07:46] Anna: correct. So, and I'm still in debt. Like I think about this, you know, that, you know, I think one of the reasons I am. So, so passionate about this book is not only what is between, you know, this beautiful cover, but for what it means to me is that I did move here, unlike so many immigrants across time and space, you know, I've given up my profession to move to a new country, to make a new start, to have a new family.
[00:08:13] It is the sacrifices that you make, excuse me, the sacrifices you make when you move. Sometimes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, and it's, and it's really important, but it's, it's been a, um, it's been a real struggle moving here and realizing, you know, I worked so hard, even if it was a, not a career that I totally loved.
[00:08:31] Mm-hmm. Like, I was good at it and I worked really, really hard. Yeah. To not have that and to have worked so hard for so many years to get to a place where you're successful in your career and to be told. That is no more. So for me, this is really also a, you know, it's a big deal for me in this book because it is a journey of career wise and to get, hopefully, you know, I loved writing this book and I have ideas for more, so I want to be able to sort of not have another career.
[00:08:59] Sort of nipped in the bud.
[00:09:09] Lucy: So I read maybe in an interview you did that you were quote sent to China as a teenager. I was. Because you had attended a language program in possibly Switzerland. That's correct. Previously, and you had been caught behaving. Inappropriately badly. Mm-hmm. However we wanna put it. And your family had forbidden you from pursuing that particular language program again, and they thought you would have to behave better in China.
[00:09:39] And so that's what happened. Is that correct? Tell me about that. That is
[00:09:42] Anna: correct. I blame my little sister, Sarah, for this situation. Thank you. You set me on the course that I'm on with my life. I did. I got caught drinking and smoking when I was like 14 years old and it was like in the late nineties and we were running around.
[00:09:56] You know, relatively unsupervised. Sure. Outside of like schad and, and we're supposed to be designer French and we were, I knew how to like order a Malibu and Coke Great back, come up with lights, but yes, exactly. My younger sister definitely told on me. I remember the little, I remember the, uh, the phone booth in the center of the Village Square and Sarah being like on the phone because she was, I think 13, um, maybe 12.
[00:10:21] Anyway, and she, by the way, crazy that. Yeah, I was just thinking so young, so young, to be on the other side of the world. Yes. Before cell phones and everything. Right. Different times. Yeah. But I remember Sarah in that little square in Rouge Mall calling my parents and being like, Anna was drinking and she smoked a cigarette.
[00:10:39] And they were like, what? Like, okay, well this is, we'll deal with that. When you come home, you better be learning your French, you know, so you can get into a good university. But, so the following summer, I, you know, I wanted to go back to Europe. I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Detroit. I, I don't, you know.
[00:10:55] Nowadays, Detroit's a bigger city, but it certainly wasn't then, and I'm from the suburbs. I really just wanted to go to Europe. I was like, this is the bees knees. Like how very sophisticated, and that was just shot down. They were like, you are not going back to those Europeans. And they're boozy ways.
[00:11:14] They're not wrong. In any case, my parents, you know, this was summer of 1997 and. Basically, they handed me these two brochures and they're like, you pick, you go to China or you go to Japan. Wow. And I refused to pick. I was like, if I say nothing, they'll let me go to Italy. Right. In retrospect, I think that if I had done a little bit more research, I probably would've picked Japan simply because, I don't know, because it was less of an unknown because China was an unknown.
[00:11:42] Like this is 1997. I like to say Bill Clinton was alive. Princess Bill Clinton was president. Yeah. Prince. Say Diana was alive. Bill Clinton. Uh, bill Clinton. He's still alive. Still alive. Yeah. But, but by the way, this was pre Monica Lewinsky, like this was before that. Oh my God. When you put it like that. Yes.
[00:11:58] Like this was way back when. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but so I didn't pick in my. Parents picked China. They said, you know, well, we are going to China for the summer and we think that this is gonna be an interesting region. We think that this is going to be an important area to learn about, and also this will look really good on your college applications.
[00:12:17] And I was just in tears. I was just like bawling my face off. I remember getting onto the plane crying, getting onto the plane, and they just. Let me go. They were just like, well, there you go. You're getting on the plane in tears. And so how long were you going away for? I was six weeks. Wow. Six weeks. That's a long six weeks long time.
[00:12:34] Weeks. Yeah. I was 15 Shanghai summer of 1997. And I have to say, I remember arriving in Shanghai. And walking out of this airport that's no longer used and just being so overwhelmed and I remember my eyes just like bulging out of my head and like my face just breaking into something. Massive grin. It was like the coolest place I'd ever been from like literally moment one, like not day one, like second one.
[00:13:04] It was like the doors opened and this whole new world presented itself to me and I was like, where the. HMI and a. I never want to go. I never wanna leave. This is the cool. This is amazing.
[00:13:24] Hi. What's up kitty cat? All right, all we are gonna make some risto.
[00:13:31] Lucy: When you said you were gonna make this, my hadn't fully. Read kind of the, I had an in depth, I, I skimmed the rice chapter. Okay. Put it that way. When I was kind of plow through the books to do some research fair, and I went back to it and I was like, oh, this is so interesting, because my immediate reaction was risotto.
[00:13:51] Mm-hmm. In a book about Asia. Oh, I have two I, yes. But you explain perfectly, and it comes back to the origins of rice and the origin of an ingredient that was native to. This continent essentially, and then traveled to, I mean, you, you talk about it traveling to Spain where it becomes Baer and, and traveling to Italy along with Saffron.
[00:14:15] Mm-hmm. Which very much not an Italian ingredient, has many things that are now, you know, commonly cooked with in that country. Tell us about this risotto.
[00:14:24] Anna: This risotto I have named Risotto Ala Buca. Um,
[00:14:29] Lucy: and this is a name of your own invention. This isn't,
[00:14:31] Anna: this is my own imagining and this dish is my own imagining as well.
[00:14:35] And like, you know, this book is not an archive of recipes. There are none of them supposed to be definitive. I feel like that's really, there are no. That's a whole conversation about authenticity and definitive recipes and whatnot. But a lot of the recipes are my takes on things, and this is my take on something that is a bran Jewish dish called Zi Bash.
[00:14:57] I actually don't know how to pronounce it, which Zi means herbs in Persian Gourmet Sabzi is one of the most sort of beloved Iranian dishes. This very. Deeply green Herby stew with kidney beans and lamb or beef and dried limes. And soi means herbs, which just means herbs. So Sabzi comes from the, the Persian and so did the Bukharan Jews.
[00:15:21] Right. So did the Bukharan Jews who, you know, the Iran and the, and the Persian Empire over, you know, centuries has a very, very. Very, very deep Jewish history. Actually. It's been a very like multi-ethnic, multi-religious place until relatively recently. As with so many other political changes, sometimes empires come in or new rulers and they kind of.
[00:15:44] Persecute and at one some point in time, I think it was in the Sasanian empire, Judaism was not welcomed in Iran. And so you had a lot of immigrants, you had a lot of migration of Jews across Central Asia, and a lot of them, a big number settled in Bukka in Uzbekistan, where you can still find a, a very thriving Jewish community there.
[00:16:06] And this dish, well, they basically were coming from Iran, where there you have all these like soy green Herby dishes and moving to Uzbekistan. Basically this is a dish that you would prepare on the Sabbath. In Judaism, you know, you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath, and that includes turning on any sort of utensil, you cooking implements or whatnot.
[00:16:27] So what they would do traditionally is apparently. Cook this dish, which is a lot of herbs and meat and rice in a, I think a sheep's stomach, a special kind of bag that you would hang and sort of like a slow, right, like slow cook it overnight so that you could, you know, have it started before the sun goes down on Friday.
[00:16:49] You could have your Shabbat meal and then eat it the next day on the Sabbath without having, and it'd be nice and warm and ready to go without having done any work.
[00:16:58] Music: Yeah.
[00:17:00] Anna: But you know, I don't have one of these sheep's stomach and I'm not Jewish, so I just really wanted to learn about this dish, and that was my whole goal when I was researching.
[00:17:11] Like Bukka and cuisine specifically, one of the many things that went across the silk roads was religion. As the people went, SOTU did religion, you had Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, um, Raan, like there's so much. I mean, you can see it in the arts, you see it now, and I wanted to make sure that it came out in the.
[00:17:30] Cuisine as well to have something that is representative of, not, not representative of what we typically think of as Muslim food around this area. Yeah. That there are these other peoples and cuisines who have different religious inclinations, religious beliefs. Um, and so that's this. But I couldn't figure out how to make it because I don't have sheep, stomach.
[00:17:49] Uh, and then I, when I was in Bukhara, there was a cooking class announced saying Jewish. Cooking class here and you were like,
[00:17:59] Lucy: Ooh. And I was like, sold, sold,
[00:18:00] Anna: sold. And it was down the street from very old and still working synagogue. Also on the same little alley there is one of the only Hebrew schools in all of central Asia.
[00:18:11] Wow. That's incredible. There's this still very, very thriving community that's been there for centuries. Yeah, yeah. Um, even throughout the Soviet era, you know, this was not a religion or a community that was. Silenced and a lot of traditions remain including, you know, Jewish cooking class, which did not use a sheep stomach.
[00:18:31] It basically, what they taught in this class was to kind of make this dish Allah a risotto. And I say that Allah risotto in that, you know, when you make a traditional. Or what we consider to be a traditional risotto. It's this slow addition of stock, of hot, hot stock to a pan and letting the rice grains absorb it and then adding some more and sort of staying there slowly, slowly doing it.
[00:18:55] This was like a couple of big. Drops of water, like poured a ton of water, then the rice absorbs it, then pour some more and the rice absorbs it. But I figured, you know, what a fun way of sort of showing how this dish evolved, not only in my conception of it and. My book was just sort of just make it like how I know how to make a risotto, but use the flavors and the ingredients that are traditional both to that dish and also a little bit toro to salo, which is the Iranian dish that is an herbed rice that you typically serve around.
[00:19:31] Well, I mean, I would typically serve it every day if I could, but it is traditional for Iranian New Year, so it's sort of my combination. B. Jewish race, Zilo and risotto Re because. I've learned over the course as, as Lucy, as you mentioned over the course of this research, that risotto exists that like bright, almost technical or saffron risotto that we so associate with this like capital of fashion and culture in nor, and money, frankly, in northern Italy is because the rice came, rice came across the silk roads, ended up in the Poe Valley in Italy via Sicily.
[00:20:13] And the Arabs, it went up, up, up. Suddenly you got, you know, arborio and Ka Kana Canaro Arborio, at least in Milan, which also was ruled by the Spanish, who, the, who brought Saffron with them across up the Iberian Peninsula, across into Milan. And the reason it was in Spain was 'cause the Arabs brought Saffron from Iran.
[00:20:42] So I was like, okay, so these are just all these different things coming together in one dish that is Otto. I mean, I don't speak Italian, so please forgive me.
[00:20:52] Lucy: That was pretty convincing to, so that's why I was like,
[00:20:54] Anna: I'll just call it a Bree and just be a little like silly. I have a giant pile of herbs here for you.
[00:21:00] This smells absolutely incredible. We have what deal I'm getting at, at the top there? Yeah. We have parsley, we have coriander. I would say we have some spring onions, but we don't. The highly you could do, but you could. Did you really wanna mix a big mix of herbs? A big, fresh mix? It doesn't matter what kind, you could do all one herb too.
[00:21:20] Like you don't like dill? Don't use dill. You could put mint in here. It'd be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just used what I had and I happen to have enough and I thought, Lucy will enjoy this. I will enjoy this. I'll it. So we've got, we've got a lot of herbs. The sub, we've got the beef, we've got the arborio, rice, onion, and garlic.
[00:21:40] Shall we make? That's what we need more or less. We need some stock, and then we're gonna do it with a topping of a candied barberry. Oh my gosh. Again, a little nod to Iran. And plus, I feel like sometimes with herbs too, the Barbies like an herb raise. You wanna have like something a little sweet tart, I think like always works nicely.
[00:21:59] Mm-hmm. And the barber is to me, just, again, this is, this is my heritage sort of. You know, like I'm making something new. But from these flavors and dishes that I've kind of had my whole life, which is, which is meaningful to me, I'm like, oh, this bukka Jewish PLO is also sort of like. Sam,
[00:22:20] Lucy: you know, I think there's, that's sort of the connections that you obviously made in the writing of this book, so they really bring it to life and, you know, they took me from, you know, as I said, being like, oh, I'm so interested that a's writing a book, which sort of incorporates not, not exclusively Chinese food mm-hmm.
[00:22:34] But. That is an element of it. Um, and it all, it all sort of reveals itself to be making sense with even your own heritage, which in a way that is quite, feels quite unexpected. And maybe it shouldn't.
[00:22:45] Anna: Well, that's the thing. I think it was, uh, to be honest, I think it was a little unexpected to me as well. I mean, with that and with the, the dishes especially, I wanted to make sure that they.
[00:22:54] Or a nod to not just my heritage, but to, to my present, right? Like, what do I cook on a daily basis? What can you cook in your kitchen, in Hastings, in London and Edinburgh and Manchester and New York and wherever? You know, like, what can, how can we. Sort of bring these flavors and these experiences into our homes, into our, onto our tables, in ways that are accessible while simultaneously like stimulating, you know, not just your taste buds, but like potentially your perception of the food that you're eating and it's origins.
[00:23:27] And I think that so often it's easy to just sort of look at history and. I assume everything is in the past and sort of things are static now and not continuing to change, but they are changing like every day we're getting new ingredients and to think there's, no matter what they say, people are moving and like, people like and, and we, you know, unless something drastic happens like borders are, you know, permeable.
[00:23:54] Yeah. And they will be. Yeah. No matter how
[00:23:55] Lucy: they try,
[00:23:56] Anna: no matter. But, and that's the thing, like, and this is. You know, it was important to me, I think, in the proposal part of the book, is I really wanted to make it clear to people who were evaluating this for publication that this, I didn't want it to just be a book about history and a book about specifically these regions, but more.
[00:24:16] A sort of example of the immigrant story and over the, over time and geography and space and like the We are, yeah. We're still doing it. And like that's beautiful and it's delicious. Like where would we be?
[00:24:31] Lucy: Yeah, I, it's interesting though, isn't it? 'cause I feel like there's also. There can be a nervousness around talking about and cooking a food that isn't quote unquote your own.
[00:24:41] Oh, yeah. Like did you feel that? Do you feel that? Yes.
[00:24:44] Anna: Yes and no. Yes, because I think that that is a valid concern that anyone and everyone should have, which is to say, I think that you should totally go out and cook cuisines and dishes that are not your own, but ideally with some thought and respect from.
[00:25:00] Or just, you know, an attempt at understanding. I think that for me it's the fact that like, this is my food. And as I said, said before, like, I'm not trying to give you some sort of definitive recipes. Yeah. Like, and I, like some of my recipes start with articles like the recipe title. Like it does not say Uzbek.
[00:25:21] It says Ann Uzbek. Like this is just one of the, I really like a differentiation. Yeah. But it's important to me. And it was, it was, you know, I don't, it's, it's that linguistic difference though. So this is just one of many.
[00:25:33] Music: Yeah. This
[00:25:33] Anna: is, there are a myriad of these recipes. There are a myriad of interpretations of these dishes.
[00:25:40] And I'm just gonna offer you one, 'cause this one's mine. Yeah. But also, I mean, I am Turkic. Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. So it, this is also mine, like. My grandmother's maiden name was Chinni, my father's mom, C-H-I-N-I, which is a designation that was given to people in Iran, you know, generations ago. And they were pottery importers, ceramic importers who quote unquote traveled the Silk roads to China, Chiney China, like, wow, like this is literally mine.
[00:26:13] But so I, you know. I think the Chinese recipes, I was very, very, very, very aware of wanting to, again, be very respectful Yeah. Of the fact that I am not Chinese. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not East Asian. My mom's from Michigan born and raised, white lady family came member on the Mayflower actually. That's incredible.
[00:26:34] And so, hey, that means that this country's mine too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also her other side of heritage is from Germany.
[00:26:40] Music: Right. So like I have a
[00:26:41] Anna: bunt cake in the, yeah. In the book. That really was how my mother tried to entertain our Iranian diaspora community and metro Detroit in the eighties and nineties, where she wanted to make something that tasted like.
[00:26:56] Something that Iranians would like. So it's almond, it's an almond bunt cake. But so she didn't like mess it up by trying to make an Iranian cake. So she just made a bunt cake 'cause she was like, oh, I'm partly German. And like bunt cakes are far more common in the US than they are in the uk. And I think that it has to do with our sort of.
[00:27:14] Larger Germanic heritage. Yeah. Population. So it was just like, oh, I'll just make a bunt cake. Um, and there's
[00:27:19] Lucy: something very like quite showstopping about bunt cake and the height and the Yeah, there's, there's quite a lot of drama there. There's
[00:27:26] Anna: a lot of drama. There's a lot of drama. Getting it out of the too.
[00:27:28] Oh yeah. Yeah. It's only showstopping if you manage to get it out. I was learned over the years you have to flour and butter that baby. Like you would not. Yeah. Like, like you think you've done it. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Otherwise it's gonna be a disaster. Yes, yes. But once you do that, it is showstopping and it's frankly quite easy actually.
[00:27:46] You just pour all the butter. Yeah. And then pull it back out. As long as you grease your tin. I know. You really have to all. So we've got the beef pink, we, we've got
[00:27:54] Lucy: the beef in. Beef is brown. We're gonna add
[00:27:55] Anna: the garlic.
[00:27:56] Lucy: Okay, great. It's smelling incredible already.
[00:27:59] Anna: I'm gonna add 500 m of water.
[00:28:04] Lucy: So. What was being cooked in your home growing up?
[00:28:08] What were you eating? Things like, I mean, not specifically this, 'cause this is obviously, like we've talked about the story of this quite specific dish.
[00:28:15] Anna: My mom learned how to cook a lot of Iranian food from my great aunt. It's a great story in the book. Yeah. So there's like an entire chapter on holiday.
[00:28:23] Yeah. So she came over with my mom, my dad's aunt on her. His mom's side. Sorry. Wait. Oh, I need to bring this to a boil. Oh. And then we're gonna reduce it to low and cook for 30 minutes. Perfect. All right. So wait, I don't wanna forget. Oh, I gotta add half of my herbs too. See? Ah, I'm forgetting things. I'm forgetting things.
[00:28:44] Lucy: It's too distracting. This is the problem.
[00:28:46] Anna: I'm gonna add half my herbs. So my, my great aunt taught my mom how to cook a lot of Iranian food.
[00:28:52] Music: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:53] Anna: And in my household growing up, there was me, there was my younger sister. It was my older brother, older sister, or my, from my dad's first marriage. And also my cousin moved from Iran, um, in the eighties.
[00:29:07] Oh. And he was a teenager at that time too. Wow. So there were three teenagers and two babies. Wow. Uhhuh. Yeah. So my mother was very busy taking care of a big household. Yeah. And meanwhile, yeah, her mother was. Very ill. So yeah, it was a busy time in the Ansari household. Yeah. But one that was filled with a lot of rice my mom made really, really makes to this day.
[00:29:33] Although she doesn't really cook that much anymore, a lot of, you know, just like traditional rice and potatoes, like the G milk that you, you know, the a rice dish that you turn over and sort of have these crispy potatoes or my preference crispy flatbread. Oh. Um, oh yeah. I know potatoes is what people really like and I feel like you see at the, at like restaurants and everything, but the like, am I you to put like a piece of lavage?
[00:29:57] Oh my gosh. Or pita bread and it's just like fried bread. It's fried bread with rice and like what's not saffron and butter? It's, oh man, so good. But then we ate a lot of Iranian food, but only like the same things over and over. She didn't have a large repertoire. She was mostly vegetarian. Oh, so she is
[00:30:18] Lucy: okay.
[00:30:19] Anna: Yeah. Um, so, but was she
[00:30:21] Lucy: cooked meat for the family? She would
[00:30:22] Anna: cook meat, but I don't think she like taste it. Wow. So there was a lot of overcooked meat. I remember, I remember this like chicken dish she used to make that was not Iran. And it was like a stir fry. Yeah. That was so dry. Oh. Just because, you know, she's not gonna taste it.
[00:30:38] But yeah, we ate a lot of Iranian food, a lot of kebab. I mean, frankly, a lot of Wendy's also like some good, good old fashioned American fast food. Yeah. So as I got older, specifically during lockdown, actually, I started cooking a lot more Iranian food from the Nib B Food of Life cookbook, and just sort of expanding my own repertoire.
[00:31:01] We'd have these dishes at like different family. Hi Enzo. Hey. Yes.
[00:31:05] Lucy: Hi Kit. Exactly
[00:31:07] Anna: a different family functions or like parties and whatnot, but like I didn't know how to make them so I knew what they were were supposed to taste like. Yeah. So I just started cooking more and more. Now I cook a lot of Iranian food, but I've had to sort of self, yeah, self-teach.
[00:31:20] And you know, back in the eighties and nineties there weren't no, you know. There weren't these cookbooks available. Yeah. And there weren't restaurants, at least in the US between like sanctions and like Right. The fallout from the, you know, hostage crisis. Right, right. It wasn't like Iranians were like sticking their necks out to be like, Hey, we're over here.
[00:31:39] I've written this great cookbook. No, it was really like you put your head down. I mean, we had people, we weren't like allowed to go to some people's houses because we're, you know, Iranian, which is also fun because then some of the Iranians would be like, you can't come to our house 'cause you're white. So, you know, I had that going on for me.
[00:31:56] Ies. I think it was, you know, a lot of this, I hate to sound like a cliche, but you know, I had a child and a lot of, I think a lot of perspective starts to change when you realize, you know what your, who you are and what your heritage is and what you want to pass on to the next generation. Yeah. Yeah. And it is important to me, and my son is not only born in London, I'm gonna be raised in London, but he's Scottish.
[00:32:23] Like my husband's Scottish. I am. Half American born in Canada, but also half Iranian. And like what parts of that do I want to, and do I get to pass on? For some people in my family, I shouldn't be really allowed to pass on any Iranian heritage because I'm not like a full-blooded Iranian.
[00:32:46] Music: That's wild. It's such a limiting, it's it's
[00:32:48] Anna: very limiting and And it's very, yeah, but I don't know.
[00:32:53] And then there's. On the other side, you know, I've spent a lot of time in certain groups of people in the us um, of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant variety. Sure, yeah. Who are like. Oh, you might look like us, but like, you know, you're Iranian like, so there's like, there's a no win situation. Well, thank you for the
[00:33:13] Lucy: reminder that I been in here.
[00:33:15] There's a
[00:33:15] Anna: no win situation. Yeah. And I've, I feel like I've always sort of felt on the outsides of two different groups.
[00:33:22] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah. And,
[00:33:24] Anna: and it's really like been a difficult one to sort of reconcile. And you know what? I feel so fortunate. That I have both of these sort of heritages.
[00:33:34] Lucy: While we were waiting for Anna's beef to simmer to the perfect level of tenderness, we talked a bit about the movement of ingredients.
[00:33:42] Really the central theme of silk roads, which opens with a story about Anna's dad trying to bring back an Uzbek melon, the most perfect melon ever in existence into the us.
[00:33:54] Anna: What I hadn't realized in my father's Uzbek Mellon story of all these years was that melons actually, you know, come from Uzbekistan.
[00:34:03] Like this is where they have been basically born and raised since time immemorial. Like there are archeo botanical findings of melons that go back thousands and thousands of years. That's incredible. Yeah. So every single melon that we eat today. Is basically the progeny of the central Asian melons. Yeah.
[00:34:21] And so as I did research for the book, I think what ended up being really fun and interesting for me and hopefully makes the book itself, you know, enjoyable and interesting for readers and cooks alike is that I, I sort of looked into where a lot of the other ingredients. Originated. So my, my initial thoughts has been like, how did these turkic flavors move across these borders and across these geographies?
[00:34:45] But a lot of it ended up being like very ingredient based too. Like spinach, for instance, comes from Iran and traveled across the silk roads into Asia via Nepal, and presented itself basically as a, was a, a gift from the Nepalese king to the Tong dynasty emperor. Oh my God. In C And that's how you got.
[00:35:05] Spinach into China and it, you know, it made its way down into Southeast Asia as well. Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, it's from Iran. Yeah. It's from Persia. Yeah. So in addition to, you know, the movement of people, you know, you've got these, the movement of these ingredients and also, you know, I, what I find fascinating is where these ingredients kind of came from.
[00:35:24] Music: Yeah. Like,
[00:35:25] Anna: I love, I love knowing that apples, every single apple again, that we eat. Comes from Kazakhstan, basically modern day Kazakhstan from this like Garden of Eden in the Han Mountains. Absolute mind where apparently you can still go visit this like crazy old, like centuries, centuries old apple grove.
[00:35:45] I mean, Almadi means like was the ca used to be the capital of Kazakhstan, I think means like Prince Apple or something like that. Yeah. But just I think that. You know, for me it, it, what began as a very personal thing became a lot more and a, and a lot more to do with not just like my dad trying to take a melanin everywhere, but like people taking apples across these regions and what, you know, different cultures and communities use these ingredients for and how those were similar across.
[00:36:13] These regions. And also different because as we move, you know, we might be taking walnuts with us from the Hian Forest of the Caspian Sea, but the, you know, Cantonese. Cookies that you're making in Southern China and Hong Kong with walnuts taste nothing like baklava, but we've, we have this sort of movement of people and ingredients to thank for the fact that these nuts exist simultaneously in, in all of these places.
[00:36:39] I don't know, I feel like we talk a lot about people's movement and not necessarily ingredients and it certainly. And obviously people are, you know, the heart of it all the reason ingredients are moving except for when the boars and the bears are depositing things. That's people, yeah, it's people. We're taking our, our culture on our food with us.
[00:36:58] But I think that, you know, for me, I feel like. I've read and heard so much about the spice trade. Yeah. How did we end up getting, you know, cinnamon and cardamon? How did we end up drinking coffee and tea and even like the Colombian exchange ingredients. Mm-hmm. How did you know potatoes and tomatoes and pepper move?
[00:37:17] They moved because of these giant, you know, global power. Global global power as they move because of the Dutch, because of the French, the Italians, the Brits, the Americans, and we don't really. Pay, or we haven't traditionally paid so much attention to what's gone across. Overland roots in Asia.
[00:37:37] Lucy: Yeah, that's so true.
[00:37:38] Yeah.
[00:37:39] Anna: The beef's ready. The beef's gonna be delicious at this point. It is. Well, the beef and you've got your pot of hot stock. I do. Oh, let me squeeze in here if you don't mind. I've got a little, little baby ladle. Okay. Oh, that's so cute. I dunno where it came from, but it is cute. It doesn't like match any of our other stuff, so I don't, I like genuinely don't know where it came from.
[00:37:59] It's a mystery and it's just this like little, okay. We have stock simmering, we have beef and the herbs also a simmering. Yep. And we're gonna take that off and check that out. Smells pretty good. All right. I think we are getting almost all that evaporated
[00:38:17] Lucy: out. I can see that it's just getting, when the bubbles sort of stuck and a bit a little bit slower.
[00:38:25] And you talk about that. You talk about when you had the experience in maybe. I think Shanghai, maybe Beijing, correct me. And you are kind of down this little alley and you experience Uighur food for the first time. Oh yes. And you talk about eating cumin with lamb and it being this whole like strange experience.
[00:38:40] Well it's, you know, strange, yes. I think can have negative connotations, but it was just like an experience you haven't had before. It was a novel experience and there was a familiarity in eating these flavors together that you couldn't quite put your finger on. Right.
[00:38:53] Anna: No, exactly. And that was, yeah, that was this.
[00:38:55] That was in 1998. Sorry, I, I forgot. You're also gonna saute the rest of the onion. So, you know, I was in, it was Beijing in 1998 when I basically just moved. There was the day that I got my bike that I drove to school every day. No helmet. 'cause it was the nineties. Sure, yeah. Barely any cars because again, it was the nineties so there were not as many like bikes as one.
[00:39:17] I think little teenage me expected we got our bikes and we went down to this. What I know now to have be a Uyghur restaurant. Mm. Uyghurs being a Turkic, people from northern Northwestern China and traditionally across Central Asia, they actually, their ancestors, the Soans used to control the entire trade.
[00:39:37] Oh my gosh. Across the Silk Road, like Soan, Turkish was the, like lingua franca of the silk roads. And they, the people, they, they were the ones who were basically like. Settled in all the oasis. So they pretty much like controlled the thing. Yeah. Ran the show. Yeah. They just, they ran everything. But I didn't know that then.
[00:39:52] Yeah. What I knew was I was eating this food as a teenager my first day on a bike in China that tasted like nothing I'd ever had before, and yet, like everything I'd. Always had where there was these noodles that were like chewy and toothsome and, and covered in this like silky tomato sauce with chunks of pepper and onions.
[00:40:15] So I mean, it was, I was like, I'm eating noodles with tomato sauce. And then there was these like, so that's, you know, familiar. But what is this flavor? Turns out it's cumin. And why are there like these chunks of this like fall apart, like tender to the bite lamb in here and when I eat it all together? It tastes sort of like Iranian food and it tastes like, and which again, it turns out it's, 'cause it was cumin and I did not know what that was 'cause I was 16 years old.
[00:40:44] But I, it was so confusing to me. 'cause I was like, why does this taste like everything? Mm-hmm. And like, what am I eating? And. Can I have some more like over and over and I, you know, learned very shortly thereafter what and who Uyghur people were and are and why? The why came a little bit later, which is to say.
[00:41:10] I don't think I realized that until I was researching this book that that cumin actually comes from Iran as well and made its way, and the line becomes a circle once again, exactly like cumin. Cumin comes from Iran and Turkey, basically, and made its way east and made its way into a lot of central Asian cuisine and into the Uyghur.
[00:41:33] You know, restaurants in the backways, the back alleyways of China in the nineties and now you know, there's Uyghur restaurants. Yeah. In London of Plenty, which is incredible. We can actually Yeah. Pass on the way here. Yeah. We can get it on Deliveroo. Yeah. I could never have imagined in the nineties or early aughts that I would be able to Yeah.
[00:41:49] Order Uyghur food to my house. Yeah. In London. In London. First of all. Why? Because I could in Beijing, but you know, I mean, back then you couldn't really, there were not a lot of. Uyghur people living outside of the, outside of China. And so if you wanted to eat Uyghur food, you know, you pretty much would have to be within the borders of the, you know, people's Republic of China.
[00:42:11] Music: Yeah.
[00:42:13] Anna: And now there are not as many places or chances to eat Uyghur food in China. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we're very fortunate that there has been this immigration, immigration and, you know, people who maybe are not able to. Share their cuisine as easily as they once were in their homeland. Mm-hmm. Are now able to do it, you know, on ho Street and Walham Stove.
[00:42:36] Yeah. All right, we're gonna add the rice to our pan. Okay. Now we're gonna turn this one off. So I'm actually switch this, we we're gonna switch.
[00:42:46] Lucy: Okay. So rice is going in with the onion. Her rice is going in with the
[00:42:49] Anna: onion. Her
[00:42:50] Lucy: Okay. Okay, so you've, you know, as we've talked about, you've lived in a lot of different places.
[00:42:56] You've moved around a lot.
[00:42:57] Anna: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:58] Lucy: As you've moved from place to place and kind of back again and away again, what are the things that you have taken with you in the kitchen, either literally or metaphorically?
[00:43:10] Anna: Rice.
[00:43:11] Lucy: Right. Okay. Rice, I've,
[00:43:12] Anna: I remember my first apartment in New York was senior year in college.
[00:43:16] This is like 2002 to 2003. And I remember when we were like outfitting that, that apartment, me and my roommate, and she was like buying like, I don't know, probably like muffin tins or something and I was like, I gotta get a rice cooker. I had that rice cooker for a while. Mm-hmm. It went into storage when I moved to China, but I just wanted to make rice and then I sort of figured out how I can make guz milk.
[00:43:36] Without learning how to make it on the stove top, which I now do very well. And in fact, the first day I was able to do that in law school, I called my family on the phone. I was like, I did Eureka. I did it. I made the best. Like I made real Iranian rice perfectly, but I still have a rice cooker. It's funny you asked that 'cause I was thinking about it yesterday actually.
[00:43:55] 'cause I used it to make some. Rice for my son. Mm-hmm. But the, the rice cooker itself I've sort of had everywhere but really making, making rice and trying to approximate Iranian rice. Even when I was living in China, like, I'd be like, all right, how do I make like the GS milk and specifically not the potato one that I've recipe for in the book, but the, the bread one, like how, like how can I keep making this and like having this in my life, especially?
[00:44:23] When I didn't know how to make it properly. But, um, definitely, definitely that and that, that, I mean, just the ability to have something that really tastes like home.
[00:44:32] Music: Yeah.
[00:44:33] Anna: Yeah. I think, and especially if you have lived in a lot of places, to always be able to, to do that and to, like, even if you're far away from your parents or your kids or whatnot, you can, you know, feel comforted by that.
[00:44:45] Yeah. But other stuff. What is, I mean, any utensils that traveling, that's, I'm thinking you've
[00:44:51] Lucy: got a lot of like beautiful things in your kitchen. You've got this like fantastic sort of texture artwork. So that's in
[00:44:55] Anna: Georgia.
[00:44:56] Lucy: Amazing. I love it. You've got spring onion. Is that a kipper? Some kind of cured fish.
[00:45:01] Not a kipper. That's some
[00:45:01] Anna: cured fish. It's a bottle of stole. It looks, yeah. Heck. Cigarette and an ashtray. Cigarette and an ashtray. I love it. I think this is meant to be an old cigarette packet. Sure.
[00:45:11] Music: Yeah.
[00:45:11] Anna: This is a painter. This is a painting from Georgia as well. Apparently this guy is well known. I have no idea.
[00:45:17] Is it an original Uhhuh? Sure. I met the painter and he was like, no, it's me. It's me. And he showed me his website and he was like, oh my God. That's great. I love it. And this is from France? This is, this is my salt, like a french tin enamel, salt cellar. It's
[00:45:30] Lucy: lovely on the wall.
[00:45:30] Anna: Oh, nice. On the walls. A little spice rack out from the cots walls.
[00:45:34] Great. This is a potato. I have things in a, in a potato. Tabba from, oh yeah, from France.
[00:45:43] Lucy: S from from
[00:45:44] Anna: Fancy little potatoes, Palm deter.
[00:45:46] Lucy: Love that. And that's
[00:45:47] Anna: Spanish strawberries. I like, I like collecting things. Yeah. Oh, and this apparently is a Ming Dynasty. Thing that I've broken
[00:45:54] Lucy: that you've got your U terms closet.
[00:45:56] Yeah, that's
[00:45:56] Anna: right. You can find it also in the DPS of my dessert chapter filled with flowers. Oh, yes. I love it so much, and I broke it. How did you end up with that? I got it at an antique market in Chian, and I recently showed it to a. A family friend who is like a really big art collector and has an entire like collection of like tongue and m sell it on.
[00:46:19] He was like, oh yeah, that's definitely m and I'm like, couns, live it. And I broke the handle off. So,
[00:46:26] Lucy: hey, things should be used, whatever.
[00:46:28] Anna: Iwe way breaks pottery. So can I. Right. But, and this is an old, there's a sort of copper and silver plate in front of my stove here that is from Iran from the sixties.
[00:46:39] It's my dad's. I just, I like things that have history to, yeah, I've
[00:46:44] Lucy: had a.
[00:46:45] Anna: Exactly. And I like my home to feel like it's had a life or is in the process of being alive. Like yeah, we've been in here for seven years and it's not done yet. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like it's, the decorations are not finished.
[00:46:57] Yeah. And I, and I envy these people sometimes who I see these homes and whatnot where everything is just so manicured and like clean and everything and it's done. I'm like, how could it be done? Yeah. You haven't gone on your next holiday. I think I've thought about so much in terms of the book and. You know, the immigrant story as like the things that we take with us, sort of metaphorically, right?
[00:47:19] Like that we carry into our kitchens or in our memories or, you know, on our, in our taste buds. But yeah, there's also a bunch of actual physical stuff that we do take with us that does make it, you know, feel like home. And those are those goods as well historically, that again, we're taken across, you know, these trade routes and, you know, integrated into new lives.
[00:47:40] Mm. I mean, my dad used to just come back from Iran with like suitcases filled with carpets and pistachios and dried chickpeas and like things to eat, but also just like things like, like this tray, you know, like he would just bring stuff home or like mm-hmm. These enamel tissue boxes. I just remember always seeing these like beautiful tissue boxes that we had.
[00:48:03] I don't know where they are now, or like inlaid tissue boxes. This is what, you know, I grew up around in this sort of very, very hybrid. Household of, you know, not just cuisine, but decor and items. All right. What's next? Oh, we're just gonna make the barbies. Sorry.
[00:48:25] Got some date molasses. We gotta do this relatively quickly. 'cause you don't want the Barbies to burn.
[00:48:30] Music: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:32] Anna: Alright.
[00:48:36] Is that all I want in here? Yeah. I'm just gonna let this,
[00:48:48] okay. I think we might be ready to taste this. Oh my god. Um, to see if it's, see the texture of that rice? Yeah. Hmm. Hello? Tell me how much you want. Oh my God, that looks perfect. Thank you.
[00:49:10] We cannot forget the fact that we're also gonna have some gorgeous beef beef on it. We're not done yet. Some berries, we want a little smidge, couple flake almonds.
[00:49:28] And just a teen. Tiny, tiny, tiny bit of cinnamon. There we go. There we go.
[00:49:35] Lucy: Thank you so much. You are so welcome.
[00:49:37] Anna: What are you gonna eat? Risotto with fork, knife, spoon. I don't even know.
[00:49:43] Lucy: Lecker is hosted and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove, thanks to Anna Ansari for being the guest on this episode. Silk Roads is out now. You should also subscribe to Anna's Substack. Where in the world is Anna Ansari linked In the show notes a little reminder that Lecker is now part of Heritage Radio Network.
[00:50:03] You can find out more about this network and listen to other partner shows on their website. Music is by Blue dot sessions. Leer is an independent podcast, which is generously supported by listeners. If you enjoy what you hear and you're in a position to do so. I'd really appreciate any paid subscribers, uh, signing up to support Leer on substack, Patreon, or Apple Podcasts.
[00:50:27] Links are all in the show notes once again to any paid subscribers listening here. Thank you so much for your continued support. Your contributions helped me continue the work and the running costs. Of making le so yeah. Thank you very much and thanks to everybody for listening. I'll be back soon.