After last month’s post about the Harappan jewelry found in a Bronze-age tomb in Oman, I wanted to share a delicious, modern Omani recipe from my collection with you. With summer’s abundance of zucchini and other squash, this is a great recipe for the grill, that will become one of your new favorites. Don’t be wary of the amount of herbs and spices in the … Read more
A bronze-age group tomb in the Dahwa region of Oman has yielded several pieces of silver jewelry with Harappan designs – indicating period trade between the Indus Valley people and the Umm al-Na culture which flourished in Oman from 2600-2000 BCE. The star medallion pictured above is one of the pieces recovered. The site, which was excavated from 2013 – 2021, also produced remains of … Read more
Tomato Eggs is a home-cooked Chinese dish that reminds students, travelers, and those living abroad of home. Just a whiff of this cooking and folks will tell tales of sitting in or near the kitchen as a kid as a parent made this dish – and how good it tasted! it is simple, elegant, and savory, and less than 10 – 15 minutes from wok … Read more
For the past forty years, archaeologists on the Saudi peninsula have been piecing together a pre-Islamic past featuring great city-states that had cultural and commercial connections with the cities of ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. These ancient trade cities are one of the foci of a new exhibit at the Sackler in Washington, DC, called Roads of Arabia. The other set of “roads” … Read more
Friend of the Silk Road Gourmet, Sasha Martin of Global Table Adventure has prepared Omani Kofta from a recipe donated by yours truly. The recipe is for sausages that can be made from beef or lamb and flavored with cumin, and cinnamon. These are then bathed in a rich zucchini sauce full of parsley and mint. Delicious, easy to prepare, and as the photo of … Read more
Today we are treated to another guest post by the brilliant Deana Sidney from the site Lost Past Remembered. Deana is a professional designer by day and an avid food historian and accomplished cook all the time. She writes: Whenever I see the word Baghdad, a small door in my brain opens to a storybook world where perfumed silks billow over marble floors, scimitars flash … Read more
“. . . If I am to die, then what better place to do so than on the road to Mecca,” declares a very young and confident Ibn Battuta to his family and friends who saw him off on his first great journey. Time and the realities of travel in the fourteenth century soon tempered his youthful bluster as Battuta made his way across the … Read more
For those of you who think I’ve made an error in omitting the Levant States from The Silk Road Gourmet – you may be right. Originally, I intended to do a follow on to the Silk Road Gourmet that treated the cuisines of the Maghreb and Levant, but the more cooking I do from these countries (especially Arab cooking), the more I understand their influence … Read more