A Culinary Journey Across the Silk Road
By Ian MacAllen on Monday, July 29th, 2024 at 2:19 pm
My wife wanted to host a dinner party to celebrate her birthday. A while back she started reading Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Then a few weeks ago she attended an event where she met AK at a potluck birthday party. He sometimes moonlit as a private chef, who happened to offer a history-themed tasting menu inspired by the historical silk road.
The historic silk road was a trade route connecting China to Europe through central Asia and the Middle East. The route functioned from the second century BCE until the 1450s, when political discord led to the pursuit of other routes, primarily by sea. All manner of goods, ideas, and technology flowed along the road, particularly food and spices. The term Silk Road was coined in the 19th century, long after other trade routes had been established. The singular road is also something of a misnomer, since there were several different routes trade flowed, as well as secondary caravan routes acting as tributaries.
We initially planned on hosting the dinner party in our apartment. My wife sent the invitation without really counting up the chairs. As guests began confirming, I started counting. Chair management was going to be critical for us to have a successful event and I arranged to borrow some folding chairs from friends.
Two days before the party I opened the folding table we have hidden under the bed, and pulled up a small cafe table and tried estimating the number of guests I could fit around. After several configurations, it was apparent the only solution was to move the party outside.
New York had been in the middle of a heat wave, but the weather service promised it would break by Friday. We committed to hosting in our building’s courtyard. The yards spans a block with buildings facing parallel streets. We’ve hosted other less formal parties here like a baby shower and toddler’s birthday, but never a sit down dinner.
Luck was on our side when it came to weather. The heavy heat had lifted, dry air and a cool breezed settled in as I began setting up the patio section. We strung some lights between the trees, laid out tablecloths across the outdoor tables, and decorated with flower arrangements from Rosehip Social.
AK prepped the food ahead of time, arriving about ninety minutes before dinner service. Even though the food was prepped, he put a lot of work into plating the dishes. I had pulled all of our serving plates out for him to choose from, and then he meticulously began plating.
The first dish he plated was the Badakshan Borani. He started by layering a Turkish-inspired yogurt on the platter. He then carefully arranged concentric circles of eggplant, squash, and carrots. In the center was piled fried chickpeas garnished with mint sauce.
Because of the size of our party, he built two of these platters. Both were so delicate nobody wanted to cut into them.
Next up was a “Not-A-German Potato Salad.” The salad consisted of roasted purple potatoes, cherry tomatoes, and sweet peppers. These were tossed in a dijon dressing.
As AK described it, the potato salad looked more like a salsa, in part because all three ingredients are from the Americas. They only arrived in Europe and across the Silk Road region as a result of the Columbian Exchange.
One branch of the Silk Road headed north into China and served as the inspiration behind the Xian Cumin Beef. The thin sliced beef stir fried with onions was strongly spiced with cumin. There were also a few whole chili peppers in this dish, a fact I found out the morning after eating the last bit of leftover meat.
The Mini Kofta offered a complex layer of flavors. The tiny balls were mixed with walnuts that had been roasted with spices, feta cheese, roasted carrots, and capers. The tanginess of the yogurt in the Badakshan Borani complimented the meatballs particularly well.
We were eating from disposable bamboo plates, and so the flavors all sort of mingled together eventually, especially on second helpings. The flavors worked, and some ingredients could be seen in several dishes.
Drawing inspiration from the Silk Road’s southern route was perhaps the best dish of the evening, the Chicken Massaman. Masssaman curry is a popular American Thai takeout menu staple, but at AK explained, massaman curry simply means Muslim curry. His somewhat unique interpretation includes frying the chicken before adding it to the curry. This dish was spectacular, and there was absolutely nothing left except a few rogue peanuts.
Incidentally, not only was this dish delicious, but it gave us the opportunity to use this amazing bowl. Its an Italian pottery I grew up with. My mother passed it on when I finished college, but its a big bowl, intended for party-sized servings.
The dinner also included Bhuna Kicchuri, a large amount of rice pilaf made with Indian daal, and raisins and almonds. There was a slight sweetness to the rice, and one of our friends revealed a secret almond allergy. There was plenty of rice, and we enjoyed leftovers two days later.
AK also served a cucumber salad topped with feta and honey. The simple, fresh flavors offered a balance to the meal filled with spice.
Before we ate, AK offered a brief introduction to the food, including a history of the Silk Road and explaining the history of some of the dishes and how it fit into the dinner. He also added that it’s not intended to be authentic because he’s adding his own interpretation to the recipes.
The final course was a saffron tea made with rose and cardamom, and a little bit of sweetness. Tea is consumed throughout the regions of the Silk Road, especially in Muslim regions where alcohol consumption is banned.
Alongside the tea, we served baklava my wife had purchased earlier in the day from Lion’s Milk.
Ultimately we were taken on a culinary journey through history, a delicious taste of the 4,000 miles of trade routes.
