Curated playlist
Romani cuisine
- GarlicAncient Greeks left garlic on piles of stones at crossroads as supper for the goddess Hecate.
- CardamomOne German coffee planter helped make Guatemala the top cardamom grower. He brought the plant there before World War I.
- ChickpeaChickpeas were already being grown roughly ten thousand years ago. The oldest evidence comes from Syria.
- BreadThe oldest evidence of bread comes from a desert site in Jordan, not a kitchen. The Natufian site is 14,500 years old.
- SaffronSaffron is the spice made from the crimson threads of a purple autumn crocus, and about 150 flowers are needed to produce a single gram of the dried product. That arithmetic explains why people call it red gold. It also helps explain why…
- PierogiAt the 2007 Pierogi Festival in Kraków, visitors ate about 30,000 pierogi every single day. Pierogi are filled dumplings. A cook wraps unleavened dough around a filling and drops the parcels into boiling water. The dish is a traditional…
- KebabKebab is not one dish. In the Syrian city of Aleppo alone, cooks are said to make at least twenty-six versions of it. Some are cooked with cherries, some with aubergine, some with chili, parsley and pine nuts, and one style is made with…
- SchnitzelIn Austria, a breaded schnitzel served under a sauce is considered unacceptable. That tells you how seriously Vienna takes a thin slice of fried meat. Schnitzel is exactly that: meat sliced thin, usually pounded flat with a tenderizer, and…
- BorschtBorscht is a sour soup from Eastern Europe, and in March 1961 its recipe was read out from space. The Soviet craft Korabl-Sputnik 4 was circling the Earth in low orbit, carrying animals and a mannequin as a rehearsal for crewed flights.…
- PilafPilaf, also written pilav, pilau or plov, is judged by one old test: does each grain stand apart from the next? Thirteenth-century texts set the bar plainly. The grains should be plump and slightly firm, like peppercorns, with no mush and…
- SauerkrautSauerkraut is finely cut raw white cabbage that lactic acid bacteria have fermented into something sour, with a remarkably long shelf life. Captain James Cook trusted it enough to take it on his first and second Pacific voyages, hoping it…
- AspicAspic is a savoury jelly, and in the 9th century the poet Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi thought one such dish deserved a poem. He described a gelled preparation of Iraqi carp as "like ruby on the platter, set in a pearl... steeped in saffron thus,…