Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & The Caucasus - Hardcover

Ford, Eleanor; Eden, Caroline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1909487422 ISBN 13: 9781909487420

Publisher: Kyle Books, 2016

Synopsis

Over hundreds of years, various ethnic groups have passed through Samarkand, sharing and influencing each other's cuisine and leaving their culinary stamp. This book is a love letter to Central Asia and the Caucasus, containing personal travel essays and recipes little known in the West that have been expertly adapted for the home cook.

An array of delicious dishes introduce the region and its different ethnic groups-Uzbek, Tajik, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Caucasian, and Jewish-along with a detailed introduction to the Silk Road and a useful store cupboard of essential ingredients.
Chapters are divided into A Shared Table, Soups, Roast Meats & Kebabs, Warming Food for Long Winters, Plovs & Pilafs, Accompaniments, Breads & Doughs, Drinks, and Desserts & Sweetmeats. One hundred recipes are showcased, including Apricot & Red Lentil Soup, Chapli Kebabs, Rosh Hashanah Plov with Barberries, Pomegranate, & Quince, Kefir Pancakes with Blackberry Syrup, and the all-important regional breads. And with evocative travel features such as Lunch on the Road to Samarkand, A Banquet on the Caspian Sea, and Shopping under Kyrgyzstan's Sacred Mountain, you will be charmed and enticed by this relatively untouched region and its cuisine.

About this title

About the Author:

Caroline Eden is a regular contributor to the travel and food pages of The Guardian, Financial Times, Independent, as well as a weekly travel page for London's Metro. Eleanor Ford has been a recipe developer and editor for the Good Food Channel and BBC Good Food. She has judged The Guild of Food Writers' Awards, was local editor for Zagat's Hong Kong guide and has been a Time Out restaurant reviewer.

Review:

The book's artfully curated recipes complement each one another, and Eden's essays help bind the feasts, flavors, and colors even more closely. Though readers may never find themselves traversing the Silk Road, this is a terrific way to replicate a key part of that journey. (Publishers Weekly)

'“Samarkand: Recipes & Stories From Central Asia & the Caucasus,” looks at the region through the cuisines of seven groups that left their mark on Samarkand: Tajiks, Russians, Turks, Jews, Koreans, Caucasians, and Uzbeks. Over several years of working on the project, travel writer Caroline Eden visited a dozen times and food writer Eleanor Ford spent time in the kitchens of home cooks and restaurants to create recipes highlighting flavors of the region. ' (Michael Floreak The Boston Globe, June 28, 2016)

"This vividly photographed cookbook examines the culinary influences of the historic trade route that brought fragrant Persian rice plovs, Russian meat dishes and European herbs together in Central Asian cooking. The recipes here, a mix of traditional dishes and modern iterations, are surprisingly approachable. Most call for familiar ingredients used in pleasantly disorienting combinations: seared lamb chops paired with tangy sour cherries, young potatoes dusted with cinnamon and cardamom." (Georgia Freedman, The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2016)

"As an armchair traveler, I was led by Caroline Eden's firsthand account of journeys to the Uzbek city of Samarkand and other exotic destinations, then lured into the kitchen by Eleanor Ford's fine recipes." (Florence Fabricant The New York Times, July 5, 2016)

"Top of the reading pile right now..." (Heidi Swanson)

A Semifinalist for the Piglet Cookbook Award (Food52)

Winner of the "Food and Travel" award 2017 (The Guild of Food Writers)

About this edition

• Publisher: Kyle Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1909487422
• ISBN 13: 9781909487420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224