![]() ![]() By the end of thedynasty, China already had developed the technique for swinging dough into individual strands. As soon as the mills appeared, however, Han cooks adapted or invented a vast array of "noodle foods," as they were called by writers of the time. 220 C.E.), China lacked the mills for large-scale flour grinding, which it acquired as she expanded to the west via the newly explored Silk Road. What is known is that before the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. No one knows exactly how the technique for making pasta reached China. It was probably the Arabs who introduced noodles, and the hard durum wheat necessary for making them, to Italy in the 9th century via Sicily (noodles) and Genoa (ravioli). (The Russian lapsha and the Yiddish lokshn, for example, derive from lakhshah.) The same book also mentions that the dish was invented by the Sasanian Persian King Khosrow I (531-79 C.E.). The first pasta dish is recorded in a 10th-century Arab cookery book, Kitab al-Tabikh wa-islah al-Aghdiyah al-Ma'kulat, which calls it by the Persian word lakhshah, meaning to slide, presumably because of the slipperiness of noodles. Today, culinary food historians agree that pasta probably originated in Iran. Recent archeological and linguistic scholarship shows, however, that the transfer was much earlier and in both directions. ![]() Such mastery would seem to support the old legend that Marco Polo brought noodles from China to Italy in the 13th century. The sauces and soups that enhance these noodles exist in as rich a variety in China as they do in Italy. In northern China a noodle master, in what looks like sleight of hand, can stretch and swing a lump of dough into perfect individual strands in 15 minutes. The noodles of my childhood are present in almost every country along the ancient Silk Road. In China they refer to a similar layout of little dishes as dim sum, while in Italy they are the antipasti. Consider only that tempting assembly of little dishes found throughout the Middle East ( mezze) and into Spain (where they are called tapas). The dishes to be made from this rich bounty appear in infinite variety. I like to call these "Silk Road ingredients" - and the wonderful produce, fresh from the earth, stalk, vine, or branch, has come to the markets of America, too. Aromatic ginger, onions, and leeks are everywhere to be found as well. In Xi'an, stalls groan under bright persimmons, pomegranates, big red jujubes, and figs, peaches, and grapes. In Iran the familiar flat bread - also called nan in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, much of Central Asia and Western China and cooked in a tandoor (clay oven) or on a saaj (a convex cast iron plate placed over fire) - is offered on wooden carts, loaves scented with onion, garlic, and sesame, cumin, or nigella seeds. ![]() In markets in Uzbekistan, one finds huge melons of surpassing sweetness and vibrant orange carrots unlike any others. It was along the caravan trails (and later the sea routes) that vegetables, fruits, grains, and seasonings - and the techniques for cooking them - passed from one civilization to another, to be absorbed and transformed into local specialties. The same is true of salads, soups, breads, rice, kabobs, and pastries from Xi'an to Samarkand, from Isfahan to Istanbul and then northwest to Italy. Each place on the Silk Road itself, be it splendid city, rich trading town, or green oasis, has its own distinctive character and culture and yet is linked across desert and mountain to every other place. ![]() Join me on a voyage of culinary discovery that stretches through the ages and across half the world, from China in the east to Persia and on to the Mediterranean in the west, along the ancient network of trading routes known today as the Silk Road. ![]()
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