Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing

by Anna Ansari

“Anna Ansari is a rare kind of home cook who is able to turn the simplest ingredients into pure magic.” Meera Sodha

In this rich and delicious cookbook, Iranian-American cook and writer Anna Ansari takes us on a culinary, historical, and personal odyssey across the Silk Roads. Weaving together essays, family photography and 90 recipes, Ansari brings life to the flavours of the Silk Roads – from the walnut groves of her father’s Iranian childhood, across Central Asian markets brimming with fragrant melons, and into the neighbourhoods of modern-day Chinese cities.

Discover delectable dishes from Baku to Beijing – Azeri-Iranian stews served with crispy-bottomed rice, dill-infused noodles from Western Uzbekistan, Georgian cornbread, Uyghur lamb chops and all kinds of dumplings, plus refreshing drinks and sharbats, and American-inspired desserts like apple pie with quince, sticky persimmon pudding, and walnut-studded spiced blondies.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Food, Cooking

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 14, 2025

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating is for the pretty but frustratingly impractical cookbook design, not for the content. The designer has chosen to take a low contrast approach, giving each section a vibrant, dark-ish hue, which when combined with the very small point (size) typeface, makes the book very difficult to read. I mean difficult while sitting in an armchair under a good reading light. I can't imagine what it would be like when actually waltzing around the kitchen, preparing a dish. I slowly made my way through the introduction, which I enjoyed, then mainly just flipped through the recipes. It seemed to include a good range of traditional and innovative dishes, based on the titles and ingredient lists. Unfortunately this one is not going into my personal collection.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters (835: Fall Cookbooks with Aleksandra Crapanzano, Anna Ansari, and Cassie Yeung)

This week, we’re celebrating new fall cookbooks that belong on your kitchen counter. First, Aleksandra Crapanzano, author of Chocolat: Parisian Desserts and Other Delights, takes us from Marie Antoinette’s early “truffle” to the French art of baking at home. She leaves us with her Chocolate Ganache Tart with Raspberries. Then, Anna Ansari explores the delicious connections across cuisines in Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey, tracing flavors from Baku to Beijing and shares her recipe for Shivit Oshi (Khivan green noodles with beef stew). Finally, creator and Next Level Chef alum Cassie Yeung brings big, weeknight-friendly energy from Bad B*tch in the Kitch, including her 30-minute Beef & Broccoli. 

Broadcast dates for this episode: 

October 3, 2025 (originally aired)

Celebrate kitchen companionship with a gift to The Splendid Table today.

https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/5/dt...

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the very beginning, with her father and the melon, it’s clear that Ansari is a fabulous storyteller. It was those stories, those anecdotes preceding each section and each recipe which kept drawing me back to Silk Roads, again and again. She deftly drew me back into the memories of her childhood, youth, and travel. And while our origins were quite different, she drew me back to my own childhood as well, through the Soviet commonality. Damn it, now I want a kompot something fierce.

The recipes themselves are often not for beginners in their complexity, but Ansari’s informal, elbows-deep style makes them easy to parse. I may not be comfortable making my own breads, pastas, dumplings, etc., but damn it, I’m now on the hunt for quinces, so I can make me a khoresh.

(If you live in Massachusetts, Arax Market in Watertown is an excellent bet, as a fantastic, family-owned source of Armenian and Iranian ingredients.)

The photos illustrating the book are homey, candid, and unpretentious, making you feel like you’ve stopped in for tea and a chat with the author.

If I have to nitpick, I did find the e-book arrangement a bit odd, with photo subtitles bleeding onto the next page, and photos for the previous recipe heading up the next. It wasn’t insurmountable, but it didn’t look the most professional, either. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this, and I get how e-book design isn’t what cookbook teams think of first. But perhaps they should.

Thank you to NetGalley and DK for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions within are my own.

[Jemma Bartholomew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't normally review a cookery book, but for once I read ALL the blurb! I was thrilled to attend the authors book tour in Bath, and she was very personable and knowledgeable.

Part cook book, part memoir and part travelogue, the author takes us on a culinary journey along the Silk Roads. The author is Iranian/American, and her father was Azeri/Iranian. She was brought up with the foods of Azerbaijan and Iran, and later lived in China. She has travelled extensively in the region but sadly, for political reasons, never into Iran. "the blurb" includes many stories from her own travels as well as those of her father, alongside some interesting food history.

I lived in Azerbaijan for 5 years, and travelled extensively throughout the country, as well as into Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and later to Iran. So I bought this book as much for the memoir/travelogue as I did the recipes. It brought back so many memories for me, and was a joy to read.

As someone who is mainly vegetarian and has various food intolerances, along with a deep dislike of cumin, I knew I wouldn't be able to cook many of the recipes in the book. However, I did find a few that I could do and the ones I have done so far were super tasty. The beetroot/yoghurt dip in particular took me right back to Azerbaijan, was very easy and delicious.

[Anastey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley and Anna Ansari for sending me this advance review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This is a great cookbook!

I learned so much reading this, and there are lengthy essays sprinkled throughout the book.

The recipes are well written, easy to understand and also have tips, and suggestions on paring with other recipes in the book. There are a few ingredients that can be hard to source if you don't have an ethnic market nearby, but I think most of them can be substituted or left out.

The photos showed the dishes really well. Overall the recipes are a good mix between authentic, and some with a modern spin on them because of hard to get ingredients. There is a wide variety of recipes from many different areas, but they are chosen well and all go together nicely.

I think an adventurous beginner could cook most of the recipes in this book.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no connection or previous exposure to Central Asia. I read this book to be able to learn more about the region, especially its history and culture.

Part memoir, part travel log, with plenty of history thrown in, this cookbook was an enjoyable and very accessible introduction to the food culture of the region. I appreciated the historical context of many of the dishes and was grateful that the recipes were adapted so that home cooks in the US and UK could use the ingredients and tools available there.

The flavor combinations and seasonings were so unique. With significant emphasis on the food from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia, and the Uyghurs of northwest China, it also includes recipes from all across the region.