Anna Ansari on the Silk Roads and the origins of everyday foods
Silk Roads, Saffron Rice, and the Stories Our Food Carries
Did you know every apple in the world can be traced back to Kazakhstan? In this episode, Samuel Goldsmith sits down with Anna Ansari — Iranian American cook, former trade lawyer, and author of Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing — to explore how food has connected cultures across Central Asia for centuries.
Anna shares how a plate of Uyghur food in 1990s Beijing tasted unexpectedly like home, why Uzbek plov is far more than the sum of its five humble ingredients, and how cooking Iranian stews became a way to…
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