silk road

checked out, from the public library, an interesting coffee-table-cookbook called silk road cooking: a vegetarian journey by the iranian chef najmieh batmanglij. it is a bit unusual to see such an exotic vegetarian cookbook (okay, also happen to possess a french vegetarian cooking by master chef jean conil which is fabulous, although quail eggs seem a bit over the top in a veggie cookbook). it was delightful to page through this exotic cookbook with lovely photos and recipes from italy all the way to china covering the "stans" in between, detouring through india, once or twice dipping down as far as madras which afaik was not on the "silk road" although kanchipuram stranglely is, famous for its silk sarees. interestingly, wiki claims that bodhidharma left for china from kanchi, taking buddhism and varmakalai with him. would be interesting to find out if there are still varmakalai masters left in tamilnadu and if they have students in this computer crazy world.

anyway, it's interesting to see samosas, pulaos and chais (i am deliberately making chai plural as various infusions and tisanes are generically referred to as teas in the book, with the more exotic ones containing jujubes, rose petals, valerian and the like) in various countries along the silk road, absorbing local traditions and spices and name variations, much like buddhism itself as it travelled from india to japan and now to the west and probably back into india one day. najmieh claims that persian food was originally vegetarian and her documentation of myriad meatless dishes along the silkroad countries is heartening. it was delicious to even think about the cities- venice, istanbul, konya, erzurum, tabriz, isfahan, shiraz, herat, ashkabad, bukhara, samarkand, tashkent, kashi, khotan, xian, beijing, shanghai...

here is a bold pulao experiment inspired by the cookbook, probably completely wrong but delicious-

in a little ghee (used a 1/2 cm thick square of butter and heated it till the foul smelling low molecular weight hydrocarbons boiled off, leaving the fragrant but slightly browned ghee), fry some almonds, pistachios, cranberries and raisins and keep aside.

add more oil and fry sliced green chillies, ginger, a star anise, cumin seeds and finally the chopped onions, green peppers (sliced into 1.5 inch strips) and orange peels cut into long thin strips (used a satsuma mandarin which was not bitter at all and delightful).

when the onions brown, add 2 cups of basmati rice (used sona masuri, which made it a tad soggy) and slightly fry it before transferring the contents into a rice cooker. add 4-5 cups of water and the orange wedges (slightly bruised to release the juices) and cook till done.

just before it is fully done, stir in the cran-nuts mixture and garnish with cilantro and let it steam for a bit. serve with raita.

didn't photograph the pulao even though the colours looked beautiful- green peppers, orange peels, rose onions, red cranberries, white rice. but here is an amazing stone chain at the varadarajaswamy temple in kanchi, incredibly and painstakingly carved from a single block of granite.