Silk Roads with Anna Ansari: Tracing Food, Migration and Identity Across Asia
Anna Ansari on Silk Roads: Tracing Food, Migration and Identity Across Asia
Iranian-American writer Anna Ansari joins Lecker to discuss her debut cookbook Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with recipes from Baku to Beijing. Cooking Risotto alla Bukhara in her East London kitchen, we explore how ingredients, people, and culinary traditions have moved along ancient trade routes - and how Anna's own journey from suburban Detroit to China to Scotland connects to these stories of migration and belonging.
We cover:
The movement of ingredients across the Silk Roads (melons from Uzbekistan, spinach from Iran, apples from Kazakhstan)
How Anna's Turkic heritage connects to Central Asian and Chinese cuisines
Experiencing Uyghur food in Beijing as a teenager and recognising familiar flavours
Adapting traditional recipes like bakhash into dishes recognisable in different contexts
The immigrant experience: giving up a legal career to move countries and start over
Cooking rice as a constant across homes and continents
Authenticity, authority, and whose food stories get told
About Anna Ansari:
Anna Ansari is an Iranian-American writer with a background in Asian Studies. A former trade attorney, she now writes at the intersection of food, family and history. Her debut book Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey is out now.
Find her: Substack - Where in the World is Anna Ansari? / Instagram @thisplacetastesdelicious
Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list. [aff link]
Further Listening:
What is a National Dish? with Anya von Bremzen
Gastro-Spirituality with Jenny Lau
---
Lecker is a podcast about how food shapes our lives. Recorded mostly in kitchens, each episode explores personal stories to examine our relationships with food – and each other.
Support Lecker:
Patreon: patreon.com/leckerpodcast
Substack: leckerpodcast.substack.com
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/lecker/id1158028729
Merch: leckerpodcast.com/merch
Listen everywhere: leckerpodcast.com
Instagram: @leckerpodcast
Full transcript available at leckerpodcast.com
Lecker is part of Heritage Radio Network - heritageradionetwork.org
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
--------
50:51
--------
50:51
Digesting the Internet with Ruby Tandoh
On this month's Lecker Book Club – a regular interview series with authors writing in or adjacent to food culture – All Consuming by Ruby Tandoh.
Ruby’s new book, All Consuming, is really a natural progression in her work: taking the unique position she occupies as both a professional cook and baker but also something of a commentator and observer in order to deeply and thoroughly investigate the culinary landscape we find ourselves in. From Dubai chocolate to Nara Smith, there's no-one else I would rather read on decoding and digesting contemporary food culture.
Lecker is now part of Heritage Radio Network! Find out more about this independent podcast network dedicated to food, beverages and the culinary world and discover their many fantastic shows at heritageradionetwork.org.
You can find a transcript for this episode at leckerpodcast.com.
All Consuming is out now. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list. [aff link]
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
--------
1:06:10
--------
1:06:10
S9 Ep6: A Bigger Table (Kitchens Revisited)
This month Lecker is re-releasing some older episodes: here’s Kitchens, a six part series from 2021 about the most important room in the home.
How can the practice of eating together secure a sustainable future for our kitchens?
In the final episode of the series, Joanne MacInnes and Betul Piyade from the community centre West London Welcome describe what it's like for refugees and asylum seekers to live indefinitely in hotel rooms without kitchens. And academic and "food crisis responder" Marsha Smith explains why social eating is so important for us as a society, and explains how it's the key to future proofing our eating habits.
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove
Thanks to my contributors on this episode Betul Piyade and Joanne MacInnes at West London Welcome, and Marsha Smith.
West London Welcome is an amazing place. You can donate to support their work via LocalGiving here.
The transcript of the episode is here.
Buy the Kitchens print zine featuring original essays and illustrations!
Original music was composed for the series by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Research and production assistance from Nadia Mehdi.
Editorial feedback by Rory Dearlove
Cover collage by Stephanie Hartman
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
Find Lecker on instagram.
--------
43:43
--------
43:43
S9 Ep4: Flat Pack (Kitchens Revisited)
This month Lecker is re-releasing some older episodes: here’s Kitchens, a six part series from 2021 about the most important room in the home.
Prefabs – built to help counter the post war housing shortage - were actually some of the earliest examples of fitted kitchens in the UK, and came with built-in fridges at a time when this technology was unaffordable to most people. Jennie Thomas reflects on growing up in a post war prefab in Hackney, and Alice Wilson, whose academic work examines tiny houses, reflects on the movement as a reaction to the housing situation in contemporary Britain.
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove.
Thanks to the contributors on this episode, Jennie Thomas and Alice Wilson. Find out more about the OpHouse project.
A full transcript is available on the Lecker website.
Buy the Kitchens print zine featuring original essays and illustrations!
Original music was composed for the series by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music also by Jeremy, and by Blue Dot Sessions
Research and production assistance from Nadia Mehdi.
Additional guest research by Sarah Woolley.
Cover collage by Stephanie Hartman
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
--------
42:38
--------
42:38
S9 Ep5: The Hearth of the Home (Kitchens Revisited)
This month Lecker is re-releasing some older episodes: here’s Kitchens, a six part series from 2021 about the most important room in the home.
Does it matter what fuels our fire in the kitchen? Javon Bennett explains how his family adapted their cooking when they moved from Jamaica to England, and Carwyn Graves explores open fire cooking and other Welsh kitchen traditions.
A full transcript is available on the Lecker website.
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove
Thanks to the contributors on this episode, Javon Bennett and Carwyn Graves.
And also thanks to Naomi Oppenheim who put me in touch with Javon via the British Library Caribbean Foodways project and also to my friend and previous Lecker guest Sian Stacey for telling me about Carwyn’s work.
Buy the Kitchens print zine featuring original essays and illustrations!
Original music was composed for the series by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Research and production assistance from Nadia Mehdi.
Extractor fan recording by Victoria Ferran
Cover collage by Stephanie Hartman
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
An award-winning podcast documenting cooking, eating and domestic life. Often recorded in kitchens.
lecker (German): delicious {adj} [food], tasty {adj}, mouth-watering {adj}
Produced and hosted by Lucy Dearlove
Part of Heritage Radio Network
Logo design by Holly Gorne