a fork in the silk road
Best eats
I didn’t manage to get any proper recipes whilst in China so here’s some favourite dishes instead. One day when I have time (and my own kitchen) I’ll test out my memories and construct proper recipes, till then you’ll just have to look out for the dishes in Chinese restaurants or look them up on the internet.
Yunnan
Of all the amazing food we ate in China I think that the Yunnan stuff remains my favourite. It was really simple, spicy but not too crazy and really fresh. We ordered things in a number of small restaurants by pointing at the meat and greens we fancied their baskets. Some of my favourite recipes were: Pork with green peppers cooked with garlic, ginger and chilli; Pork with fresh bamboo shoot; aubergine with minced pork and garlic; spinach (or bok choi or garlic sprouts or lotus root or cabbage or chard or sprouting broccoli) fried in a hot wok with garlic and chilli and a little pork fat; in Kunming we ate ‘Grandma potato’ - basically mashed potato with a delicious mixture of onions, chilli and tons of garlic, salt and oil. We also had a couple of amazing noodle soups for breakfast, one which had strips of pork another with a liver and beef stew.
Beijing
I think that Beijing has some of the best restaurants in the world. There must be thousands of them across the city, and as most of the expat population of the capital seem to eat out ever night they have a number of fussy patrons. We ate food from every region in China. A favourite was a small Hunan restaurant. Hunan food is similar to its neighbour, Sichuan, in its spiciness, but it has none of the numbing flavours. We had delicious chicken stews, beef and mushrooms and egg with onion.
Beijing food itself is dominated by noodles, dumplings and stuffed buns called baozi. The street food is great, many a breakfast was sated by a pancake, smeared with egg, chilli, sour plum sauce and sprinkled with spring onion, tofu and pickles or a hot sweet potato baked in a oil drum until soft and sticky.
Sichuan
Famous Sichuan. I was really looking forward to arriving in the province for the food more than anything else. Though the Sichuan pepper was numbing at times I wasn’t disappointed. Some of my favourite dishes were the simplest ones: fried beans with chilli is a winner. Along with the chilli they fry up a bit of minced pork along with the beans along with a couple of secret ingredients, then the beans are fried in really hot old until blackened on the outside but still crunchy in the middle. Another classic and safe bet, albeit a cheesy one was Gung Po Jiding or Kung Po Chicken. It’s basically chicken with chilli and peanuts. It can be amazing and fresh, it can be really sweet and really gloopy.
Another favourite was pork belly with spring onions, salt and chilli. Can be a bit fatty but really really tasty.
Along with the classic spice and salt in Sichuan they also do some very clever things with sweet flavours. One of our best meals in Beijing was accompanied by Chongqing cold noodles rather than rice. The cold noodles were flavoured with spring onion and sugar. The cold sweetness worked really well with the hot and numbing flavours of Sichuan spice.
In terms of restaurants one of the best Sichuan places we ate out at was a place in neighbouring Guanxi province in Guilin. The place is listed in the Lonely Planet (who finally get it right!), fantastic fried beans at great prices!
Gansu, Langzhou.
We had our first dumplings in Langzhou Night Market. 30 of them came steaming fresh from the pan and accompanied by local Yellow River beer. They were stuffed with a mixture of prawns and pork with ginger and spring onions and accompanied by a vinegary garlic dip. All that and change from £1.
Other Langzhou dishes include the famous Langzhou beef noodles. They are on sale all around the rest of the country, but nothing can compare to the home cooked stuff.
Uighurstan
Kashgar is perfumed with the scent of thin lamb kebabs (kewap) dipped in flaked chilli and oil and grilled over little charchol bbqs on the street. Round nan breads, flatter and harder than over the border in Kyrgystan are everywhere as well.
Central Asia:
Turkmenistan? erm, think I’m going to give that one a miss...
Uzbekistan had great kebabs and plov, also some fantastic Korean food. We went to a great restaurant just by the opera house, they brought us complementary starter of 16 types of pickles!
Kyrgyzstan has great fruit and veg and fantastic quality meat. When we arrived the markets were full to bursting with tomatoes, melons, strawberries, aubergines, peppers, herbs and spices.
Unfortunately Bishkek doesn’t have much of a restaurant scene. Some of the best food we had was homemade. Kyrgyz standards include Laghman - noodles with meat and veggie sauce; Besh Barmak - noodles with mutton and onion; Manti - Dumplings stuffed with gristle; Plov - rice with veggies, meat eaten with tomato and onion salad (Shakarob).
Baku (and Azerbaijan):
Azeri food was a great surprise. Basically like Turkish food but with Iranian influence i.e. more chickpeas, cinnamon and dried fruits. We very rarely had a bad meal, in even the cheapest cafes your meaty soup, stuffed peppers or kebabs would turn up after a free starter of fresh bread, tangy white cheese, a bowl of spicy tomato sauce, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and a pile of herbs - dill, purple basil, coriander, spring onion, chives. The food at the wedding in the mountains was incredible - especially as it was being cooked up to serve 400 people. Plates and plates would be piled in front of us: fresh salad, herbs, stuffed vine leaves, stuffed cabbage, grilled lamb, beef soup full of herbs, bowls of yoghurt, loads of bread and to finish a tulip shaped glass of tea with lemon to be drunk with a sugar cube between your teeth.
The expat presence in Baku has brought a huge range of international restaurants to the town. We had fantastic Indian in the Taj Mahal restaurant two blocks south of Nizami.
Armenia:
The best food that we had was from roadside stalls, the ‘khorovats’ stands that line the major routes serve up tasty pork mince kebabs in paper thin lavash bread. Otherwise, to be honest, it was all a bit crap.
Borjomi:
The old railway station has recently been beautifully restored and half of it converted into a restaurant. They serve great food, but it’s not as cheap or as homely as the smaller cafe opposite it in the park. We had delicious beef soup - Khorcho - there and I asked the chef for the recipe.
Tbilisi:
For good Georgian cuisine we went to a place on Rustaveli (the main shopping street) it was down a flight of stairs directly opposite the Marriot Hotel. Despite it’s prime location it was a really cheap place with a very friendly waitress and beer on tap for 50p a pint. The Chakapuli (Lamb with tarragon and plums) was so delicious I got the recipe.
Batumi:
After the queues at the border, Jamie said that his first impression of Georgia was that it was “open to corruption”. After we’d dropped our bags in the hotel and started our lunch in a nearby restaurant he said his opinion had changed to “Georgia has the best food in the world”. The food in this little restaurant was amazing, and the first time you have the super salty tomato and cucumber salad covered in dill, coriander, hot green chillis and purple basil it’s quite a sensation.
The restaurant’s name was in Georgian so remains a mystery! It was in Vazha Pshavelas Kucha on the left hand side of the road if you are walking towards the sea. It wasn’t far from the sea, I think it was in the block or two before you got to the park at the sea front. Get the nice lady to help you with the Georgian menu - the soups here were really amazing.
Nemrut Daği:
The guys who ran the pension, local shop, campsite and bus service also cooked a mean lunch: peppers, tomatoes and eggs with bulgur-yoghurt salad
Cappadocia:
Goreme was not particularly impressive food-wise. The local speciality according to the restaurant touts was “Testi Kebap” - an unremarkable lamb and vegetable stew cooked in a terracotta pot which is then ceremoniously broken open at your table. The best food we had was in the town of Kaymiklı. On the corner of the road near to where the Dolmus drops you off is a little, plain, Formica-tabled restaurant. There was no one in the restaurant apart from the 4 staff members. We ordered some Turkish standards, but what we were brought was far from the norm: delicious freshly made lentil soup - with a squeeze of lemon juice; onion, pepper and tomato salad sprinkled with red chilli pepper; and Saç Tava - The real local speciality.
Istanbul:
I went to a half day cookery course in Istanbul at a place called Hotel Sarnic, in Sultanahmet. The hotel is run by Eveline, a dutch ex-pat who’s a real turkish food enthusiast and (conveniently) a Cordon Bleu trained chef. Together with Eveline and the hotel’s head chef we made 5 courses of traditional turkish food, and then ate it all on the roof of the hotel overlooking the Blue Mosque. The food (mainly because it was very fresh and home cooked) was some of the best I have eaten in Turkey and I got the recipes to take away with me! All the dishes were great, but I really wish I had a kitchen to try making courgette blinis and the stuffed aubergine again.
Selcuk:
Recommended by Osman at Hotel Nasser is a little kepapci on the main road in Selcuk just before you turn right onto the pedestrianised streets. On the road there is a little stall facing the road dispensing cop (pronounced ‘chop’) shish, you can either take your kebab away or sit in the vine covered eating area behind the stall. The kebabs come on tiny wooden skewers (about 8 skewers per portion), and you get a really fresh salad and loads of bread as well. Two Cop Shish and two Ayran (salty yoghurt drink) came to 8 Turkish Lira - about 3 quid.
Belgrade:
Boba Tica my Serbian language teacher from SSEES took us to some great places in Belgrade. One of the best was a floating restaurant on the Sava river just over the bridge from Belgrade city centre. Pasha specialises in river fish (including pike and sturgeon) and it’s famous for it’s fish soup. Served in a big pot in the middle of the table one portion is enough for 3 as a starter. See the link to the page with the recipe.
Vienna:
A sausage and a beer. There are lots of stalls around town selling wurst of different colour and lengths. All the sausages come with heavy dark bread and a big dollop of mustard.
1.5 Euros-ish a sausage and another 2 Euros for a bottle of beer.
Paris:
The sorbets and ice creams of Ile St Louis are unbelievably delicious. The most famous ice cream maker on the island is Berthillon. The raspberry, pear and fig sorbets were like eating the best of the real thing distilled a million times, and the chocolate ice cream made Katrin and I stop in our tracks on first lick. 3 Euros a scoop, but worth every cent!
HA
Recipes:
