690: Eating Along the Many Silk Roads with Anna Ansari

24:19So my dad, he found the few because this is what immigrants do. When you move abroad, you find your people. I don't know how people did it in the 60s and 70s and before then. Now it's pretty easy. I can find, like, Americans in East London, which I do. But, you know, they found each other. But my father is basically, he started a medical center in Monroe and called out to his colleagues and his former classmates, actually, from Tehran University, where he went to medical school and said, hey, you want to come over to America? Oh, cool. So a lot of these people that we grew, that I grew up with as family friends, my dad had known already for decades.

24:57So sort of started and formed this community that persists to this day. And I won't say he was like the first person to do this because there were other Iranian Americans, but definitely within our sort of small Southeast Michigan medical community, it was already like vastly connected to like the roots that they already had in Iran and just kind of like transplanted them over here. Yeah. Do you remember having celebrations over with food with your father's peers and colleagues? Oh, my gosh. So many. I mean, that's that we grew up. I grew up in a household that we were just entertainers. And every I mean, it's it's it's a common part of Iranian and Middle Eastern culture in general to just like throw parties and have celebrations that are all food based that are all just like, you know, so, so, so bountiful.

25:46I mean, kebabs and stews and breads and rice and then the like table full of desserts of all varieties. You know, you can just there's a there's a spread in my book at the end, double page spread of the desserts that I remember saying. Listen, I just wanted to look as though you have this like beauty. You've walked into a dinner party, like an Iranian dinner party, and you just have this like bounty of sweets. Someone on the set was like, well, who has a dinner party like that? I was like, every Iranian has a dinner party like that. And I want to show it to you in this book as well. But no, we had, my dad was not a good cook.

26:23I mean, he's still, he's just not a cook. He loves food. And my mom was the one cooking the Iranian food, though she was American, because my great aunt had come over from Iran and taught her a number of dishes. Yeah. But it was also like limiting, right? So all she knew were these certain dishes that my aunt, who didn't speak English and my mom didn't speak Farsi or Turkish. so she like halogen just taught my mom how to cook like i don't know like 10 dishes but so those are the ones that we had over and over and over and then i'd go to family friends house and we and i'd try something else there i remember being like oh this is not what we eat at home my mom's like well halogen didn't teach me how to make that so like i can't make it um but no we had i mean my family friend farima was such an incredible she is such incredible cook and i remember her rice specifically just being like buttery and delicious and like just perfect.

27:14Getting that rice right is so key. Credit your mom. I know, right? For really just, you know, entering this family with two open eyes and being really open to cooking these dishes. America. America, baby. America. I love it. So it is a true American story. But back to your story, you end up living in China as a teenager. Which I think is the start of kind of your global, your interest in food and really your travel. And we're talking about the late 90s, living in China with a family, not living in like a dorm, but with a family. What is that like? I mean, it was terrifying, to be honest. The first time I went to China, I was 15 years old.

27:53It was summer of 1997. My dad and mom kind of like sent me as a pseudo punishment. Slash, they were like, this is going to look really good on college applications. Oh, I see. I think it did, but, you know, because it was 90s. What kid's going to China? Like 1997. But I had gone to Europe the summer before and the liberal European drinking laws were something that my parents saw that I was willing to play around with. But they thought, you know, go to China. It's going to be China. Rules will be followed. there that they weren't. But I really, I was terrified and I didn't want to go. And I got there and I really, I just, I remember stepping off the plane in Shanghai in 1997, literally like walking out of the airport doors and being like, holy moly, where am I?

28:40And like, this is the most incredible place I've ever been. Just from like the first moment, it smelled different. It looked different. It sounded different. And in like the most sort of eye-opening, like, just extraordinary way. And I was quite young. Like I said, I was 15 when I got there. And then I was going into my senior year in high school. So I graduated high school at age 16. Okay. And I went to Barnard College, Columbia University here in New York for college. So my parents basically, and I'd gotten in, they were like, well, if you want to go to China for a year, we'd rather you go to China for a year at age 16.

29:16I would have just turned 17. Then go to New York City, like 17 in New York versus 17 in Beijing, even in the 90s, and staying with a family. It was on a program called School Year Abroad, which is run out of a couple of East Coast boarding schools. It was just, you know, it was very structured. We took 16 to 20 hours of Mandarin language a week. And, you know, I lived with a Chinese family. And it was weird. It was weird. It was wonderful. My host father didn't speak a word of English. Sure. And I didn't speak a word of Chinese when I got there. But then after nine months, we were talking just as you and I are talking.

29:52And it was just like, this is so wonderful to be able to have this connection and have this like familial relationship as well. Not just teacher, student. No. My host sister, my host mom, she taught me how to make dumplings. Clearly informed the rest of your life and your interest in international law and also just traveling. What's food like when you're in 1997, we're talking about? 97, 98. Food was delicious. Oh, great. Food was delicious. I really, it was like Chinese. I always liked Chinese food. Yeah. In Michigan as a high schooler, I would like loved fried rice. Yeah. Specifically and like orange chicken and all that jazz.

30:31I mean, these are like the American Chinese hits. I still love American Chinese. Oh, obviously. I eat it when I come back here because like British Chinese food is different. Definitely. Than American Chinese food. Yeah. There was like a whole thing about that a couple years ago, I think on the internet. But so I come back and I'm like, I want American Chinese food. But this was not that. This was just like – I mean this is when I discovered, I believe it's called in English, fish fragrant eggplant. That was that like stewed eggplant. I was like, oh, I've never liked eggplant before and now I love it.

31:00And like gong bao jirin, the kung pao chicken, the way that you do not have in America that you eat over there. And stir fried eggs and tomatoes. is beautiful. No, you don't need fried rice because you've got noodles and you've got like perfectly steamed white rice and these bauzi and jiaozi dumplings and buns. The way that like it was a different kind of Chinese food. And then I also learned about Uyghur food, which is sort of, you know, leads back to the book, which is that I had this like incredible meal one of the first weeks I was in China that year in August or September 1998 that was a bowl of noodles covered in like a light tomato sauce with some bell peppers and chunks of onion and lamb.

31:49And then this flavor that I was like, what the heck am I eating? This doesn't taste like Chinese food. It didn't taste like the Chinese food in China that I had been eating. It didn't taste like Michigan takeaway Chinese food. It was something else entirely. And it tasted of like home, basically. And it turns out that because of the flavors in there were home, they were Turkic flavors. from the Uyghur Turkic people and the spice that I was tasting that tasted so familiar was cumin. And that's the common, you know, flavor profile of Uyghur cuisine that you'll find in the States or abroad if it can be defined, so to speak.

32:24Absolutely. But back in the late 90s, you weren't, I think there was like, apparently there was one Uyghur restaurant in the U.S. in D.C. at that point in time. But it was one of these cuisines that you really couldn't find outside of the borders of the geopolitical state that the people were living in. And so this was just like mind-boggling and it was mind-blowing and it was so delicious, but it tasted so similar to sort of these like Iranian and Turkic flavor profiles that I'd grown up with. And that was really just eye-opening to me as a teen to be like, what? Why am I tasting something so familiar so far away from home?

32:59It's cool. I was paging through the book and I stopped right on the Zirun Dofu, the Uyghur cumin tofu, which I have to make that. It's so good. It's a beautiful recipe. Was that something that you encountered during that initial trip? No, not at all. That is, I mean, the zuran yangro, the cumin lamb is something that you'll find at any Uyghur restaurant in China. Increasingly at Chinese restaurants in the UK and the US, just on the menu, it's kind of been like incorporated into that lexicon of Chinese food that, you know, is easily accessible to quote unquote white people. but I always just kind of felt bad for vegetarian and my mom's a vegetarian, my sister's a vegetarian and I actually deeply love tofu and that was something I learned in the 90s, I was like wow, tofu is amazing and there are so many different ways of eating it, there are so many different, like tofu skin tofu, like soft tofu fried tofu, I mean I will have it all of it, but I also just like love tofu and my son loves tofu he's six and a half and like the kid adores tofu, he hates chicken but he loves tofu So, you know, I wanted basically to give vegetarians a way to eat that cumin-lamb dish without having to eat the lamb.

34:12Yeah, definitely. So smart. It's your own recipe, your own kind of taking those flavors and bringing it to tofu. Really, it's so resonant of the lamb dish that you get at the restaurants and that you can get in Xinjiang and whatnot. But it's with tofu. I can't wait to make it. It's really good. It's really easy, too. Like, that's the thing. I want to zoom out a little bit and just talk about the title of the book, Silk Roads. What did you want to say about the namesake, Silk Road, and really the broad kind of objective of the book? So I think, you know, you've said it there twice or two different things.

34:49You said Silk Roads and then Silk Road. And I think that there's a big difference between the two. And I actually, so when I moved, I think it was when I moved to the UK, it was right around the time that Peter Frankopan's like Silk Roads History of the World kind of book came out. And I was really struck by that title, specifically the plural of Silk Roads, because as someone with my background in East Asian studies and Chinese history, I kind of had only ever heard the term Silk Road, like a singular road. And I was like, what is this Silk Roads? Oh, the Brits, they just do things differently.

35:25No, tomato, tomato, Silk Road, Silk Road. And so, you know, basically the publishers as well sort of were they were interested in the notion of using this title to express this this plurality of trade routes as opposed to a singular road. And I was like, OK, well, this is good. And so that's how it started. Like this, we're going to talk about the way in which food, family, flavors, and ingredients have traveled across this sort of Central Asian into Middle Eastern and into East Asian landmass, the land trade networks. But then for me, it became like a little bit more than that and sort of has expanded to, and I think that's why I like the S in there, the plurality, that it's not just this one thing and that it can be sort of used as a metaphor for, I think, a larger immigrant experience that can extend to sort of how my dad was looking for yogurt, you know, in Detroit in the 1960s as an Iranian immigrant to sort of how I am feeding my family in East London today and bringing some like Americanism as well as my Iranian and Chinese historical and personal background onto the table at home.

36:36So I really wanted to sort of shed light onto cuisines that have not necessarily gotten, I think, enough attention in the Western world. And specifically these trade routes as well that we don't really think much about. I feel as though when you think about trade, people keep asking me if this is all about spices. Because there's this, I think, tendency to think of trade on ships and the spice routes. How did you get nutmeg and cinnamon from Indonesia and Southeast Asia over to India and around the Horn of Africa and up to the UK? Same with tea. But these are roots that were basically just as vibrant.

37:22And there were thousands and millions of people and thousands of history here that we don't really know much about. And we don't, I mean, by we, I really mean like us in the West, because, of course, you know, people who are from this region or, you know, have this culinary and cultural background are familiar. But we are not in general. And I really wanted to sort of shed light on that. And I just happen to be one of these people. Yeah, no, it's like that's that's kind of worked out. It's such a personal story. I mean, it's a big swing. I know. It's a big swing. Were you ever like perplexed by the project?

37:57Or did you feel it was just natural and the stories started flowing out? Because really the book, you buy the book and you should to read your stories. Because I think there's excellent journalism in there and there's excellent personal memoir, which is rare in a cookbook. Because I think a lot of cookbooks are just doing the recipes and playing the hits and all that stuff. Well, and the recipes are excellent too. Sure. These are great recipes. But what I really enjoyed, I loved writing the recipes, but I really had so much fun with the headnotes and the essays. Truly. Like, that was my bread and butter, so to speak.

38:26Like, I love cooking. I love writing a recipe. But I loved, like, just delightfully discovering things. Like, I found out that after all these years of studying Mandarin, that the word for spinach basically means Persian vegetable. And that goes back to an archaic designation for Iran during Tang Dynasty times because spinach came from Iran into China via the Nepalese kingdom over the quote-unquote Silk Roads. And, like, we're sitting around talking about bo cai, bo cai, and not really realizing that that bo means really, really old Persia, like Persian vegetable. And so I, like, exclaimed out loud while I was doing this.

39:07I was like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. But so that was so fun. And it was like, I'm a dork. I love a good research. But no, the stories, I kind of had an idea from the get go. I mean, you've written books, you have to have a proposal, you have to have sort of an outline. But there were some that just said TBD just kind of, they fell in place as I was doing the research, as I was either digging through my father's memories or my great aunts and talking to other family members or my own. You know, they just worked out. Like I didn't set out to write a story about Dunhuang as a sort of start to a Buddhist and tofu-heavy chapter.

39:48And yet that's where it went. I love that about books. I mean, you start with a proposal, but especially when you're doing documentary style, you really don't know where the story is going to go. No. A smart publisher will allow an author to flex like that. I mean, talking about like your research, you bring out this interesting fact how the Greek yogurt we know today, the thick, you know, double-strain yogurt actually has roots that are not quite Greek. There is a Armenian lineage there. What did you learn in your research there? So I don't know. I mean, I think that the yogurt thing is actually a fraught.

40:20Well, let's go there. It's like hummus. Broadcast of the way. It's like hummus and baklava. Like who is who? Oh, who made – yeah, who created – yeah. So, I mean, with the term yogurt, the word yogurt is a Turkish word. Yeah. So we've got that. It's not a Greek word. It's not an Armenian word. It is a Turkish word. But I don't know who started making that actual like heavy scent yogurt that we call Greek yogurt today. I do know that it was Armenian immigrants in America that popularized it. Yeah. And at what point in time that became sort of the commercial thing to do to call it Greek, I don't know.

40:53Yeah. But that was a choice. I mean, the big boys at Chobani probably had something to do with it. But they're Turkish. Yeah, I know. They are Turkish. I know, I know they are. But it's, you know, at some point in time, we started calling it Greek yogurt. But I found it fascinating, actually, that there was this couple in like Andover, Massachusetts, Rosa and Sarkis Kolombosian, who started making their Armenian matsun in their home in Andover, Massachusetts. I think it was like 1927 or 29. And they started selling it out of their house. And then they bought an actual wagon, a wheeled wagon and a horse, and started taking it around to neighbors, selling this.

41:37And eventually got it into stores in the area in the 30s and then the 40s. And at some point in time decided to change their name and their name of their yogurt from Columboian to Columbo because New England had so many Italian immigrants. So basically they're like, oh, we'll just sort of fit in here, which I find to be really interesting. And, you know, you get so many immigrant stories of people either purposefully or accidentally having their names changed. But this was definitely a choice that was made by this family to sort of sell their product. And I remember the – do you remember the Colombo yogurt?

42:11I do. I remember that. I do remember Colombo yogurt for sure. And I'm thinking about like a 1930s New Englander eating Greek yogurt for the first time. And I mean, can you imagine how they didn't like it? This is not what I was thinking. You know, it was sour. We're used to Americans are so used to having dairy preparations be sweet. And at the same time that Rosa and Sarkis were doing this in Andover, the Danon guy was in the Bronx doing the same thing. He had come over, I think, from Barcelona and he was a Greek Sephardic Jew. and he was trying to sell yogurt in the Bronx and was also failing because Americans like sweet dairy.

42:55We like our, and if it's thick like that, right? Like yogurt was not the flavor profile we wanted. So these people, they're so smart. They started putting fruit on the bottom. Basically like fruit on the bottom yogurt to make it more palatable to an American consumer. And so when you, still to this day, You know, when you mix in that sort of fruit on the bottom, it's almost like a jam, like a compote, right? I mean, it's so delicious. One of the greatest joys in all food is stirring a fruit in the bottom yogurt. But I mean, I like it sour. I don't eat the fruit. But I can see why that was a choice that was made in order to sell this as a product.

43:36And then the big boys got in there, like the, you know, General Mills and all the like. I don't even know what massive companies there, but those, you know, who wants Yolkla? I mean, I think we definitely saw Big Food latch onto something that was a great affordable protein source. And it was framed as a breakfast food at some point along the way before it probably wasn't. And now, I mean, they probably took that from the French, I would imagine, especially with these French, these naming conventions, so to speak, or even French companies using the, I think it worked in like the 70s and 80s. You know, there was like, this is French, a French breakfast product.

44:13Oh, yes. That's very sophisticated. Yeah, sophisticated. Like, become European, eat some yogurt. In the rice chapter, you know, you write about the Bukharan Jews. And I love this history. I just screened a great documentary about the current day Bukharan Jews in Tehran. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of the film, but it's terrific. And I love that chapter. What did you learn about rice and Bukharan culture? Well, basically, I mean, I had heard about Bukharan Jews for a long time because there is a sizable community, actually, I think down in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. And you can get some like excellent Uzbek Bukharan food there to this day.

44:55And I know there's like a new supermarket in the West Village, too. Oh, yeah. The Tashkent supermarket is open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'd heard about this as a population for quite some time. But I specifically went into my research, food and historically speaking, because I wanted to talk about the way in which religion also traveled across these regions and that, you know, people from different religious backgrounds have different culinary traditions as well. So I had basically been researching this dish called Sabzi or called B 'kash or something. I don't know how to pronounce it. You said it right, I think.

45:31But it's traditionally made, I think, in like a sheep's stomach and held up. It's rice and broth and meat and herbs. And it is cooked, slow cooked, basically, in a sheep's stomach for the Sabbath. So you're not having to expend any work and therefore go against your culinary and religious rules. And I was like, well, this sounds really delicious, frankly, but I don't have a sheep's stomach. I'm like, what to do? What to do with the recipe development. But what to do when I don't have a sheet of stone? How to hack it. What's the hack? How to hack it. Well, the hack was I ended up down the street from a synagogue in Bukhara.

46:09Still the, I think one of the oldest synagogues in Asia. Still open to this day. Also down the street from the only Hebrew school in Asia. It was, by the way, my husband's Brit. It was his first ever time in a synagogue. And I was like, this is so cool, actually, that the first time you're going into a synagogue is here in Bukhara. Like down the alley basically from this little cooking class that they were advertising Bukharan Jewish cooking school. And I was like, yes, we're doing this. And I'm pretty sure they're not going to teach me how to make this rice dish in a sheep's stomach. So I'm sold.

46:46And basically they made it like risotto, so to speak. It was a slow addition of broth to rice and just allowing the rice to sort of absorb the water like you do in a risotto. But it was in like a massive pot. So my take on the recipe is more of a risotto because you can't get that kind of medium grain Uzbek rice so easily outside of Uzbekistan. So I thought, you know what, I will sort of interpret this dish to do a service to this cuisine, hopefully. And to these people who have been fleeing persecution across Asia for centuries, but still have these traditions and these culinary delights that we just are not that familiar with.

47:32And I was just floored by how delicious it was. The one that I had in Bukhara had a bunch of liver in it, which I did not include in my recipe. But, you know, to each their own, by all means, add some liver in. But, I mean, rice is so important to specifically to the Uzbek culinary tradition. It is a celebratory meal. Plov is made in massive vats for weddings, for funerals, for birthdays, for just any special occasion, but also just for like a regular occasion. It's just really a staple, but a celebration of these simple ingredients that when they come together, make this sort of beautiful, beautiful symphony of flavors in your mouth.

48:12And like, you're just like, I don't want to eat anything other than rice ever. Oh, I'm just craving it right now. I mean, that Mayu's back club is so good. I'm craving it, yeah. I just keep eating it. I keep making it. And I'm like, this is so good. And I grew up eating Iranian rice dishes, which I love. And so to find these other ones that are simultaneously like very, very close in flavor profile and preparation, but completely different at the same time. I know that sounds really like a contradiction, but they're not. It's been so fun and just so delicious because rice is my favorite food. I will just eat white rice every day, any day.

48:51Let me ask you, we have a lot of wanderlust listeners who want to see every country and have those charts and stuff, which I love. I love folks like that. Should we visit Uzbekistan? I think it's definitely an interest. The stands travel is definitely something that we've talked about on the show quite a bit. But you say yes emphatically. Oh, emphatically. I mean, I think that between the warmth of the people, the extremely deep, beautiful history and the like monuments. I mean, the Registan and Samarkand is like literally sparkles. It is so beautiful. When my dad was there in 1978, it was kind of falling apart.

49:28but the post-Soviet state has put a lot of money and they've done it in conjunction with UNESCO to really like redevelop and revitalize these gorgeous, gorgeous, important cities along these trading routes. And they're just, I mean, they're just so beautiful and the food is so good. And the trains are really easy. Is it difficult to travel? No, it's so easy. This is great. We flew into Tashkent, stayed in this really, really cool like Soviet, I think it's called like Hotel Hotel Uzbekistan. You can look it up. It's super brutalist Soviet architecture. And there's so much of that there. Tashkent was a really, really important city for the Soviet Union during the Soviet time.

50:12So there was a lot of money spent. There are these like extraordinary subway stations. There's one that just has like all these murals of cosmonauts. It's so cool. It's like so, so cool. But we stayed in this like awesome, brutalist Soviet architecture hotel and then got on a train, overnight train out to Kiva in western Uzbekistan. Really, really easy. Really, really cheap and delicious and beautiful. And then we just hop train to train, heading back to Tashkent. And it's just really simple and, like, highly recommend. I don't know if there are direct – they're probably not direct flights from the U.S., but definitely from Europe.

50:49I think I actually randomly was walking through JFK at night and I saw a Tashkent flight. Okay. I saw one. Wow, wow, wow. That's amazing. Uzbek Air. Is that an airline perhaps? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A flight carrier. I absolutely remember this. Okay. That's awesome. No, because they have a direct flight from London to Tashkent. I know that. So, oh, well, that's wonderful to know. Yeah, I think it was kind of like in the corner, one of those, like, you know, not one of the Delta flights, but yeah. Anyways. No, go to Uzbekistan. You're selling me on this because I think it's a part of the world that Westerners just do not think about for travel at all.

51:24There's so much to see as well. And like just geographically speaking, like physically speaking, there's so much land there. Between Istanbul and say Beijing, between Istanbul and Xi 'an, you know, these sort of start and end of these silk roads, there's a massive amount of culture and people and geography that is just ripe for the exploration and for the respect and appreciation that I think we can all get that. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of Xi 'an, I love the memory about cold sesame noodles. You reflect on the cold sesame noodles you ate at Ollie's. Uptown was your location. I remember dining at the downtown location in the East Village or village.

52:10and you reflect on how those sesame noodles of your younger days were quite different than the ones you found in Xi 'an and the recipe reflects the Xi 'an style. Tell me about that kind of squaring of the sesame noodle. Yeah, I mean, I remember eating them at Ollie's and I loved them. I was like, what is this? I remember it was my college boyfriend. He was like, oh, sesame noodles. And it was one of these Chinese dishes I'd never eaten before. And I think because it, I don't know, maybe it was always on the menu in Michigan, but I think it's a particular New York Chinese food, Chinatown thing that Ollie's was making.

52:41Definitely peanut butter in there. Well, that's the thing. There was definitely peanut butter and they were gloopy. Yeah. And also just delicious. Delicious. I loved them. Yeah. They were so good. Ah, you can eat like a whole bowl of sesame noodles from Ollie's without a care of the world. That's an entire jar of peanut butter in there. I know. But I don't think I, I mean, I haven't had those in a long time. I don't know if I would like them still. But when I was in Xi 'an most recently, I had these gorgeous like sesame noodles and they reminded me of the Ali's ones, but not at all. And I think it was because, you know, there's a Chinese sesame paste.

53:17And I think sometimes people assume that the Chinese sesame paste can kind of be used, substituted in for tahini, which is another sesame paste. And they're just not the same. Definitely agree. It's a thicker, more concentrated sesame flavor that you want to just water down a little bit. And I've got Sichuan peppercorns in there, some soy sauce. And it really is just like light and refreshing, but simultaneously like reminds me of being that like 19-year-old who could eat this like bowl of peanut butter noodles, basically. So I wanted to, I specifically don't, I have a number of Chinese recipes in the book, but the ones that I do have are all related to my own food memories because though I am a Turkish, an Azeri, Iranian, American person, you know, I feel like I wouldn't want to, I'm not Chinese.

54:12You know, I wasn't going to try to write a lot of Chinese recipes that were not my own. So I wanted the ones that I did include there to be my own, that these are related to my flavor memories and to my personal history. So I really wanted to lean into that and sort of say, OK, these are the kind of noodles I ate as a teenager. And these are the kind of noodles I learned to make in Xi 'an. And so I'm going to give you an amalgamation of those two because those are my sesame noodles. I think a lot of readers will relate to that point of view. And I'm so happy you're open about your point of view.

54:43And this isn't a historical Chinese cookbook, but it's your very unique point of view. And I love it. I have to mention back to Detroit, I did spot the Bablo Island boat in the photo. Isn't that amazing? I love that you referenced Bablo Island. Just like we have to put that down. Bablo Island. What are your memories of it? I mean, like I said, we grew up on the East River Road. Grew up on Grisil on the Detroit River. And I remember going to Bablo Island. Like it was so cool. I love it. I don't know when it closed. It was this little amusement park. 2000s or something. Yeah. But there were these specific boats.

55:18And I guess one of them is in Pennsylvania somewhere. I was doing some research. Yeah, yeah. One of them is like in a dock and like they're trying to get funding to keep it, you know, renovated or whatnot. But there were these special boats and it was really was one of the last things I did for the book was my editor said, you know, we need some subtitles for these pictures. And I looked at that picture of my father and my grandmother in 1964 standing in front of the Detroit skyline on the Canadian side. They were clearly in Windsor looking across. and I just kind of like squinted and looked. I was like, is that a Boblo boat?

55:52I see. And I was so delighted to find that like true piece of Detroit, like Michigan history and to be able to have that in the book. And I specifically was like, I've got to write this. This is a long subtitle, but it's making its way in there. It was beautiful to see. Yeah. I love it. I love this book so much. Oh, thank you so much. Congratulations on releasing it. Thank you so much. It's been a joy. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code.

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57:45That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. On this, it tastes who has guests or brother to certain tastes. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire. Fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? I am ready. The best fruit. Stone fruit of all types. Of all types. Good stone fruit. So give me the top three then. nectarine peach plum green gauge I love the specifics the worst vegetable marrow tell me about it it's like the wateriest grossest zucchini you'll ever have that has no flavor and I was really interested because apparently this is what Poirot you know the detective Poirot retires and he gardens and I was like oh marrow I'm going to try this and I was like why Why would anyone ever do this?

58:35Useless vegetable. Useless. What is your typical breakfast? Coffee. That's it. So you know nothing else. I'm not a breakfast eater. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. How's your coffee? What are you doing these days? A little bit of milk. A little bit of milk. Okay. Fair enough. All right. The best dessert? Tres Leches cake. Ooh, great. Where did you first taste it? Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have. I just, I love it. It's my favorite. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. In London, I wish I could bring back Sardine. Alex Jackson's beautiful restaurant that closed post-COVID New York Dojo I would love a soy dinner any day with the ginger dressing and then Dumont Burger not Dumont Burger the one down by the Lorimer stop I love that place so much that was a great place great memories that Dojo I feel there should be a documentary about Dojo I feel like so many people have this love for that place and the memories of those flavors.

59:33Like, I can taste it right now. If you go to Superior Burger, there's a great photo of old Dojo in the restaurant. I think it's behind the bar somewhere. Dojo followed by Angelica. Like, that's the move, right? Early aughts. Yeah, early aughts, New York. We're the same era. I love it. When you're craving fast food, where are you going? Shake Shack? Is that fast food? You got those in London, right? Oh, yeah, we've got them everywhere. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what's this little aside? What's the London restaurant scene like these days? It's great. It's like so vibrant and so delicious. Yeah. And yeah, I live in this neighborhood in East London called Walthamstow, which is like very Brooklyn-y.

1:00:15And you got these great pop-ups. Like my friend, the chef Marie Mitchell just did one like no joke, like a six minute walk from my house. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Like you've got really good stuff going on. Your favorite city to visit for food in the world. Big question for you. in the world for food, any city in China? Like, plop me into any of them and I will take it. Beijing, Xi 'an, Hong Kong, Kunming. I can't get it. Chengdu. Yeah, we didn't talk about Yunnan. Yunnan. There's some nice sections in the book about it. Oh, man, I love Yunnan so much. Yunnan food. Yeah. It's excellent. But anywhere in China.

1:00:53A great answer. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Turkey. Turkey and cheese. But maybe, you know, you can't really get turkey in, like, the UK. Really? They don't have sliced turkey? Not really. There's, like, one little packet that you get a pre-packet of it. Yeah. And it's just sad that I don't want to get it. I can see why you crave it as an American Midwestern. I just want turkey sandwiches. Yeah. Every time I go to Zingerman's, I get that Georgia Reuben. It's, like, my favorite. Well, okay. I, like, at home, I make a turkey and cheese sandwich at my dad's house. But if I'm out and about, I want that Georgia Reuben from Zingerman's.

1:01:26I just want a turkey sandwich. I love that. Yeah. Anna Ansari, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much for having me.

1:01:59Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.