The historic Silk Roads are the arteries along which people, goods, ideas, religions, and many other things have flowed.

Iranian American cook and writer Anna Ansari is a former international trade lawyer and Chinese history scholar who has been fascinated by the Silk Roads ever since her stay in China as a teenager and due to a growing obsession with The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (a record of the exotic goods imported into China during the T'ang Dynasty [618-907 CE]). Her writing focuses on the intersection of food, family, and history, with special attention to the immigrant experience, as well to foods of the Asian continent. She is particularly interested in the ways food—flavor, ingredients, and dishes—move across borders, carried in the memories and pockets of travelers and transplants.

This cookbook is a culmination of her lifelong passion for the history and food of these regions, one that is ambitious in scope and flavor and appealing to curious cooks and lovers of global history.