I’m getting behind in my Rosi posts, and this one is out of order. But I wanted to write this now, to give you right now a glimpse of Laura Kelley’s fabulous new cookbook, The Silk Road Gourmet (available soon through Amazon and Barnes & Noble; have a look at Laura’s website for further details). I’ve known this was coming for quite some time; I’m a regular reader of The Silk Road Gourmet blog. So perhaps I should have been better prepared for the 402-page pdf that appeared in my inbox when Laura asked me to review the book. Massive! And what a delight. Volume One (there will be three in all) covers an extensive journey through Western and Southern Asia: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. This is what thrills me most: when I page through this book, I find flavor combinations and recipes from numerous regions with which I’m completely unfamiliar…. and yet these foods make perfect sense to me. These recipes reflect a long history of mingling.

More than cookbook, this is an ethnography of food. “The great Silk Road, which arose from the Afghan-Chinese trade in lapis lazuli and jade over four thousand years ago, eventually became a land and sea route that stretched thousands of miles and linked China with such far-away places as Roman Europe, North Africa, and the Levant states of the Middle East,” she writes. “As a result, Chinese foods and preparation methods such as stir frying spread west with the silks, gems, and spices, and flavors enjoyed in the west such as sesame, tamarind, and cardamom came east and were eagerly adopted by the Chinese people.”

Beyond the love of Asian food, Laura and I have something else in common: we both studied anthropology. She writes about the links between the study of cultures and the study of foods. “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.” So very true. No matter where I travel, it is almost always the food through which people so ardently characterize themselves. Food feeds body and soul. It makes people proud. And it also tells us much about history and politics and events that people sometimes want to forget. “Food can help us reconstruct political histories of who ruled over whom and relationships of diplomacy and trade between people,” Laura writes. “Similarities between foods eaten can even reveal the belief in a common creed or system of worship and show how that belief spread over time.” For thousands of years, humanity has mixed its myriad palates. “No nation’s cuisine—not even that of the great, monolithic China—has remained untouched by others over the millennia.”

Intrigued, I am. My hands-on assessment of The Silk Road Gourmet began earlier this month when I had a large bunch of beet greens on hand and I came across Laura’s recipe for greens with nutmeg—superb. Next, I decided to make a Rosi Dinner of dishes from Afghanistan: chicken kebab with cinnamon and black pepper, spicy eggplant with mint and Afghan cilantro sauce. As Laura notes, the kebabs would go beautifully with a pilaf; unfortunately, I ran short on time and ended up serving plain rice. Next time I’d like to try the carrot and raisin pilaf. I chose the spicy eggplant for its unusual combination of mint, tomato, vinegar and chile. And the cilantro sauce? We all went nuts over it. Big winner, indeed. Recipes below, my notes in italics as usual:

Chicken Kebab with cinnamon and black pepper
From The Silk Road Gourmet

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
2 medium yellow onions, roughly chopped
10 cherry tomatoes, whole
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp salt
4 T white vinegar (I used rice vinegar because that’s what I had handy)

Method:
1. Mix 1 onion and half of the pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, and salt together in a sealable, 1-gallon plastic bag. Add the vinegar and chicken and mix well. Marinate for several hours at room temperature or in the refrigerator overnight, turning several times. (I marinated overnight, which really allowed the flavors to permeate the chicken.)

2. When ready to cook, remove the chicken and string 5 or 6 cubes of chicken on each metal skewer. String the tomatoes and chunks of onions on their own skewers. Sprinkle the other half of the spices over the kebabs and grill or cook in a broiler oven for 5-8 minutes per side (we grilled). Serve hot with Afghan Cilantro Sauce and Afghan bead (We ate rice instead. These kebabs were tasty and the chicken very tender after a night in the marinade.)

Spicy eggplant with mint
From The Silk Road Gourmet

Ingredients:
1 medium purple eggplant (I wasn’t sure which type would fit this recipe best, as there are so many eggplant varieties; I used a common oval-shaped purple)
1 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup drained plain yogurt (chaka)
1 tsp white vinegar
1-2 tsp crushed dried mint (I used fresh)
1/2 tsp salt (more to taste)
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground coriander
3 T undrained plain yogurt
1/4 cup beef broth (I used chicken because I had homemade on hand)
2 hot, dried, red chile peppers (I used 3 to appease the heat lovers in our crowd)

Method:
1. Slice the eggplant crosswise into 1/2-inch slices. Place onto sprayed or oiled baking sheet and bake in 375-degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until nearly, but not quite, done. Remove from oven and let them cool.

2. Pour the tomato sauce into a saute pan and heat. Add drained yogurt (chaka) and white vinegar as the sauce heats. When hot, add salt, pepper, chile, cinnamon, and mint (this threw me for a little loop, as the ingredient list didn’t mention cinnamon but it did call for coriander. I added coriander and a pinch of cinnamon). Cook 2-3 minutes, add beef broth and the undrained yogurt, and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes to give the flavors a chance to blend.

3. Cut the cooled eggplant into bite-sized pieces and add it to the tomato sauce; mix well, lifting more than stirring to allow the eggplant to keep its form. Saute for 2-3 minutes until eggplant is warmed. Cover and cook another 5 minutes until eggplant is done. It’s best to serve as soon as possible after cooking. The squash will absorb a great deal of the sauce. (This turned out very spicy, with a wild blend of flavors, which I enjoyed. I might use elongated Japanese-style eggplants next time, as I find them easier in cooking.)

Afghan cilantro sauce
From The Silk Road Gourmet

Ingredients:
1 medium bunch fresh cilantro leaves (20-25 sprigs)
1/4 cup white vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 cup walnuts, diced
1 tsp ground cumin
3 hot, dried, red chile peppers
1 tsp garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt

Method:
1. In a blender, combine the cilantro and vinegar or lemon juice. When the cilantro and vinegar or lemon juice has become a smooth paste, add walnuts, cumin, chile peppers, and garlic and blend again until the walnuts are integrated. (If necessary, add a bit more water to blend the walnuts.) Then add pepper and salt and blend well so that spices are well distributed throughout the puree.

2. Pour the puree from the blender into a saucepan and heat. Cook over low to medium heat for 3-5 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature. (This one is going to be a staple in our kitchen! Also works well as a dip with chips. Yum.)

*NOTE: No picture of Rosi this time. She was NOT in the mood to sit for a portrait.

Weird, I might be. But I’ve always found something lovely about the food scraps that end up in the metal bin that sits on our counter until we dump the contents into our vast compost pile beneath the New Mexican sun. I love the blood-red ooze of beet scraps, the paper-thin crinkles of onion skin, the vibrant orange of papaya. How could I not admire such a medley of natural colors?

Last week, I tossed a bunch of pea pods. When I returned a day later, the sun had dried them into the most intricately artistic shapes. I retrieved them from the compost pile and took them inside so Jerry could photograph them.

Is it my imagination or do you, too, see the beauty in these shriveled little scraps? Eventually, they will crumble into the tiny flecks that turn to soil. I’ll spread them around plants, and they’ll help our garden grow anew, and we’ll praise the fresh new vegetables and fruits when they ripen on stem and tree. Perhaps they’ll produce a juicy red tomato. And then we shall begin the whole process again, from scrap to earth and all the art between.

Meet the Siberian elm. Tenacious bastard. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, we find these trees popping up everywhere. They squeeze out the native cottonwoods and overtake vegetable gardens. One day, you look to the ground and find a tiny set of leaves. A few weeks later, you have a sapling. Two years, and these elms are tall and broad enough to shade a picnic table.

The Siberian elm is noted for its hardiness, its ability to survive drought and tolerate harsh winters. The Civilian Conservation Corps planted these trees in the Bosque del Apache in 1939. Thanks to our frequent whipping winds, it didn’t take long for the seeds to spread across the region. The Plant Conservation Alliance now puts the Siberian Elm on its Least Wanted list.

So Jerry was tending to the grapes one day (we have one grape plant in a constant duel with a headstrong elm that has taken up residence at the base of the grape) and did a little weeding. This is what he retrieved from the ground: an inch of leaves and six or seven times that in root. Our yard contains an underworld of elms. Despite my frustration, a part of me can’t help but admire the endurance of this species. It definitely reflects the will to survive—and the utmost desire to thrive.

Well, then: what’s the enemy of your garden?

On Saturday, we attended an Annie Proulx lecture, part of the UNM Summer Sunset series. After years of Wyoming conservatism, narrow-mindedness, bad food (her notes) and winters of frigid, howling winds (my note — I despised the wind while living there), Annie has decided to make Albuquerque her home. Or, she’s trying to; her library of 5,000 books makes for an onerous move. In any case, she spent much of the evening praising New Mexico food, especially compared with the “wretched fodder” found up north. Wyoming’s restaurants, she chuckled, sparked her interest in home cooking.

“I like to cook and as you can see, I like to eat,” she said. She enjoys shopping at some of the same markets we do—La Montanita, Talin, Keller’s. And she finds Albuquerque’s restaurants preferable to the “tourist mosh pits” of Santa Fe. “Sad to say, I’ve found most Santa Fe restaurants over-praised,” she said.

Food isn’t her only lure to Albuquerque. Proulx loves the way the Sandias hug the city’s east side, and she appreciates the volcanoes to the west. She noted an abundance of independent and used bookstores—more and better shops between Albuquerque and Santa Fe than in New York, she said. And she cheered the open-minded, thinking people who live in this city. Proulx is intrigued by the area’s diversity and its heritage. “There is little more pleasurable than learning a new place and its history,” she said.

Jaffna, during a ceasefire, December 2004

This morning I sipped my coffee and listened to an NPR report assessing Sri Lanka one month after the end of war. For a short while, this tiny island nation made world headlines as government forces pushed for victory in a conflict that had lasted decades. And then it all seemed to disappear—the war, the people, the place itself. But of course Sri Lanka has not disappeared, and the aftermath of war remains a daily punch in the gut to 280,000 displaced Tamil civilians who continue to live in tent cities.

Prabhakaran’s house, northern Sri Lanka

Jerry and I were in London last month when the news broke that Prabhakaran, the notorious Tamil rebel leader, had been killed. All around Tooting—home to a sizable Tamil population—shop windows displayed posters decrying genocide against the Tamils, waged by the predominantly Sinhalese military. We shared dinner one night with a Tamil couple from Jaffna. They had left their homeland years ago, for a new life in England. But they still maintain ties and frequent visits to Sri Lanka. That night, over a full table of rice and curries, they told us the same stories Jerry and I had heard time and again when we visited Jaffna years before: the Sri Lankan government was targeting ethnic Tamils through assassinations, rapes, forced sterilizations and other indignities.

This has been a terribly long, brutal war. We have Tamil friends; we have Sinhalese friends. We know people on both sides of this conflict who have suffered, directly and indirectly, in the most horrendous ways. Nothing good can be said of that.

But what I want to offer here are a few glimpses of the everyday life we found in Tamil Eelam, the homeland for which Tamils have fought so long. We met real people—good people—with real families and a real desire for peace.

A little background: in 1956 the Sri Lankan government enacted a law making Sinhala the country’s official language. That new law effectively blocked Tamils from government jobs, and it marked the start of ethnic clashes that eventually spiraled into decades of war. During a brief ceasefire, Jerry and I were able to visit Tamil territory in northern Sri Lanka in December 2004, days before the tsunami hit.

On that trip, we spent time with average Tamils struggling to survive in a land that already had been ripped apart. Everyone we encountered—every single Tamil—knew war would soon return. Still, they hammered away at the skeletons of houses that had been bombed. They would try to rebuild, if only for a few months.

We befriended a taxi driver, Mr. K, who once fought for the Tigers but retired from that life in hopes of saving his children from a future in war. You can click here to read more about our travels with Mr. K, and the food we ate, and the uncertainty in which we left that environment.

Or, simply scroll through the scenes below for a view of everyday life in Tamil Eelam, as we saw it then.

Fish drying in Jaffna

Jaffna fish market

Jaffna women collecting water at a public tap

Fruit vendor at a Jaffna night market

Tamil families gathered for a Martyrs’ Day commemoration, honoring the dead

Sinhalese government soldier stationed in the north

A Jaffna “liquor restaurant,” where men gather for a quick drink before heading home

A Catholic church in the former LTTE stronghold of Kilinochchi, showing its war scars

A Catholic priest performing a prayer service for women in Kilinochchi

Bikes and flicks in Trincomalee

Last month, I was so psyched at the thought of returning to summer in New Mexico. Blue skies, plenty of sun, mountains to climb, trails to ride, tomatoes to grow! If only. If only, I thought then, we had a farmers market nearby. The closest venues required a drive north to Albuquerque or south to Belen. Stuck in the middle, we were.

And then our dear neighbors, V & J, told us the news: our very own county would start its own farmers market. Where? At River Park on the Rio Grande, right at the junction of the bosque trails where I ride my bike several times a week.

And so we made a date. Several dates. The four of us. Every Tuesday. Bikes, trails, edibles (followed by dinner and wine).

We pedaled our way to opening day this week and discovered an array of potted herbs and vegetables, ready for the garden. Next week, Jerry will bring the bike with a rack on back (he has three bikes for different purposes; he’d have another six or seven if money allowed, and he’d build his own if time permitted).

But this time, I toted my goods—blackberry habanero jam, prickly pear cactus jelly, fresh peas, two types of chard, beets and greens—on my back.

Tonight, I cooked the beet greens using a Georgian recipe from Laura Kelley’s book-in-the-works, The Silk Road Gourmet. Volume One in her series covers a lot of ground: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. We’re talking 400 pages of recipes here. Stay tuned, as I’ll be writing more about this book soon. (The beet greens, by the way, were divine, thanks to two critical ingredients: butter and nutmeg.)

I couldn’t resist. As soon as I read Nan San San Aye’s recipe for an aromatic mutton meatball curry, I knew it would be part of the next Rosi meal. Now, let’s get a couple of things straight. In Burma, “mutton balls” might very well mean goat testicle curry (which a friend recently referred to as “fighting balls”). In much of Asia, “mutton” means “goat.” And testicles are sometimes part of the diet. Interesting discussion here on the consumption of goat meat among immigrants to the US. But on our plates that night, we had Burmese lamb meatballs, Burmese butter rice and Burmese guacamole (which I’d been itching to make).

She’s still adorable, isn’t she? OK, on with the recipes, my notes in italics again. I had more meat than the recipe called for, so I upped the other ingredients.

Mutton meatball curry
Adapted from Cooking with Love Myanmar Style

Ingredients:
450 grams mutton or lamb (I used 1.75 lb ground lamb)
1 cm ginger (I used a segment 1.5 inches long)
1 lemongrass stalk* (I used 1 1/2)
3 onions (after the previous week’s very oniony curry, I stuck to three small, mild onions)
2 cloves garlic (I used three)
5 tomatoes (I used 7)
1/3 cup oil
A little masala Indian spice**
A little paprika, turmeric, salt

*Make sure you chop the lemongrass finely before pounding, or you will end up with lemongrass slivers.

**I made my own masala, based on Camellia Panjabi’s recipe in 50 Great Curries of India. In a dry skillet, I toasted 3 2-inch cinnamon sticks; 1 1/4 tsp each of cloves, black pepper and cardamom; 1 tsp fennel; 1 bay leaf. After toasting, I ground into a fine powder.

Method
Mince the mutton if it isn’t already. Mince in ginger. Slice thinly the lemongrass and pound with garlic. When smooth, mix half of the pounded ingredients into the mutton. Add salt, turmeric and masala; form into balls.

Heat the oil and fry thinly sliced onions with the leftover pounded garlic and lemongrass. When golden and fragrant, add chopped tomatoes and sweet paprika. When oil sizzles, add mutton balls and gently turn them to brown on all sides. When oil sizzles add enough water to cover and cook until oil sizzles again (don’t add too much or the curry will be watery). Sprinkle with more masala and serve.

Burmese butter and lentil rice
Adapted from Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way by Mi Mi Khaing

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups raw split-pea lentils (I used corn, boiled and cut off the cob, because Mom is limiting her lentil intake due to adverse effects on Rosi’s digestive system)
2 1/2 cups raw rice
2 large onions
4 T ghee
4 cardamom pods
2 cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tsp turmeric or 1/16 tsp saffron (I used turmeric)
1 cup shelled green peas (didn’t have, so I didn’t use)
1 T salt

Method:
Wash and soak lentils ahead of time to shorten cooking time (if using corn, boil cobs, then cut off kernels). Boil lentils until halfway done. Wash and drain rice, slice onions.

Heat ghee, add spices and let aroma rise. Add half the sliced onion. When it begins to brown, add turmeric, remaining onion, green peas, lentils and salt. Stir well. If saffron is used, dissolve in 2 T hot water and add to the 4 1/2 cups of water for the rice.

Add rice, mix well, then add 4 1/2 cups water. Cover and cook over high heat. Stir once or twice before it comes to a boil. As water is absorbed, lower heat, shake pot with lid on. Continue to cook very slowly until rice is dry and fluffy, shaking pot once or twice more. (This turned out beautifully buttery — I love ghee!)

Burmese guacamole
Inspired by a breakfast buffet at a Yangon guesthouse

Ingredients:
3 small ripe avocados
a drizzle of peanut oil
3 sliced shallots
a handful of chopped cilantro
a large pinch of ground chickpea or peanut powder (I used roasted peanuts to grind)
hot chile powder to taste
juice of 3 key limes
salt to taste

Method:
Remove pits from avocados and scoop the meat into a bowl. Slice the shallots, chop the cilantro and pound peas or peanuts. Mix all ingredients. (If you really want to make an authentic Burmese salad, mix by hand! This would work well with corn chips, as you would serve an ordinary guacamole.)

I love the light in London this time of year. What a switch from Southeast Asia, where the sun follows a rather set clock, year-round, with few leisurely sunsets. In torrid climes, the ball falls below the horizon and suddenly it’s night. But at 51 degrees north, in May and June, you get long, drawn-out evening light.

So, then: one fine weekend day, we piled into the Tooting mobile and began our grand tour. Not the usual or expected tourist sites. First stop: Wimbledon Parkside for a look at the Buddhapadipa Temple, the UK’s first Buddhist temple, established in 1965. A treat! Not every day do we see a Thai temple amid such northern vegetation and temperate air. The murals inside differed from the usual as well. Airplanes and missiles? How about the two-headed demon featuring Muammar Qaddafi and Ronald Reagan? Interesting, indeed.

All of us book fiends, we visited an Edwardian favorite, where I picked up a copy of this and this. We looked for this too, but the store had sold out (our dear guides later gifted us with a copy). Jerry bought me a bizarre little item, which I finished at 5 a.m. one sleepless night. It contains several worthwhile musings on food: “Don’t despise the domestic potato.” And my favorite: “Don’t forget to feed the ‘brute’ well. Much depends on the state of his digestion.”

We also stopped at Rococo Chocolates, where packaging is an art as much as the goodies inside. We picked up a four-pack of truffles filled with Islay whisky, which we’d come to love during our Edinburgh trip last fall.

Oh, and if you’re looking for obscure Burmese ingredients—roselle leaves, for example—stop by Mum’s House, a teensy-tiny shop behind half a dozen others on High Road, across from Burger King.

Much of our London touring centered around pubs—some for libations, but several for the gastro aspect. (The male half of our guide duo had research to do. Really.)

Just as that evening light hit its most pleasant notes, we stepped into the York & Albany, where I tasted a fine bottle of Aspall Suffolk Cyder.

Can you tell I have a thing for light? We found ever more of it at the Bull & Last, one of London’s most notable gastropubs…

…which makes its own charcuterie.

Now, how about that for a city tour? Thank you, dear Tooting friends. I leave you with the words of diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in thanks to Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed after a visit in 1697:

“…a most thankful acknowledgment of Your Crowd of Favours, both intellectual and Culinary, at my late visit; and both of them heightened by the conversacion and kindness of your Excellent Lady.”

I’m working on my own kitchen library, but I doubt it will ever match this mighty impressive collection of culinary reads (and what you see here is only half of it—the rest is stacked upon office shelves upstairs). I suppose such an achievement is to be expected when you bring together the food and drink editor of this informative group and the editor of this fine site, eating and cooking and living tastefully under one roof.

Lucky us—we got to be guests in this dynamic household! We took the long route home from Asia, with a four-day stop in London. We’d met Him and Her for dinner on our last trip through, in October. When we came through this time, They generously offered their guestroom as a halfway stay between continents. We couldn’t have asked for better hosts and guides, who welcomed us with a full-on home-cooked Burmese meal made from the recipes of this grand book (to which She recently gave a big thumbs up).

Nor could two fans of Indian food have asked for a better halfway house location. She and He live in Tooting, which offers one of the world’s best assemblies of Indian and Sri Lankan eats. Next up: touring London with two of the city’s most refined palates.

This, by the way, is the disaster we faced after 8 months away. Everything needed a thorough spring cleaning.

We’d been gone so long, neither of us could remember which drawers held the towels, which cabinets the measuring cups. We’d lost our kitchen instincts. It would take a few days to find our way again.

In order to avert a repeat of The Mouse Problem, we had packed all salvageable spices and dry goods into a tightly sealed metal trunk.

I returned home with so many new spices and condiments and no proper place to put them. Our counters remain cluttered with homeless bags and jars. It might take me another 8 months to get everything back in order.

But that sweet basil plant on the far right, above? It’s now in the ground, growing nicely, along with two others just like it.