1Recently, I’ve noticed that I’ve got a bunch of new subscribers and followers. I’m not 100% sure what that means, but I’m 100% sure it’s a good thing. However, I am also 100% sure that it’s time to do a quick reintroduction of myself and what this newsletter is all about.
Hi! I’m Anna Ansari. According to my bio (which I wrote), I am “an Iranian-American food writer and former international trade attorney whose writing explores the intersections of food, history, migration, and the everyday act of cooking. [My] acclaimed debut cookbook, Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey from Baku to Beijing, blends recipes with travel, family stories, and cultural history, exploring how ingredients move, settle, and transform across borders. With academic training in Asian and Middle Eastern studies, [I live] in London with [my] husband and son, and [believe] deeply in the power of the home kitchen to tell global as well as personal stories.
The above is all true. A bit polished, but true. I also love cats, grew up in Michigan, have spent years living in both Mainland China and New York City. My favorite band is the Rolling Stones and my favorite candy is Toostie Rolls. I do not enjoy mushrooms, but I do enjoy the occasional (well-placed) swearword. The longer you stick around here, the more you’ll get to know me. Promise.
I started this newsletter in October 2024 with this initial post, a quick description of what this is all about. But I can tell you what this is all about even more quickly right now: every month I do a deep(ish) dive into a different country and write something about it.
The name of the newsletter comes from my childhood love for Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (game AND tv show)2, as well as from the fact that I used to go MIA overseas in my 20s and received occasional emails from my (frustrated and sometimes angry) parents asking me that very question.
I also try to send out biweekly(ish) pieces on either something related to the country in question or something totally unrelated (e.g. this month, on the country front, I’m writing about Mexico [alas: no time for Malawi as I had initially intended], but this right here is an introduction newsletter + a book excerpt / pseudo Lunar New Year celebration piece, and a few weeks back there was a recipe.) Oh— and my organizing principle is the….drumroll, please….alphabet. Yup. Very creative, I know. Last month: L. This month: M. Next month? You guessed it: N.
That’s it. That’s what this newsletter is all about. It’s fun. It’s (hopefully) informative and enjoyable. And it’s FREE.
Without further ado, seeing as how today is the start of the year of the FIRE HORSE, I present to you part of the introductory essay for the Dumplings chapter in Silk Roads. Why? Because dumplings are associated and enjoyed with the holiday…and also because: why not?
We lived on the 31st floor of a 34-floor apartment block. One of three communist-style buildings, differentiated only by the strip of color that ran down the outside of the elevator shaft. We were in the yellow one, a block east of Shanghai’s Xujiahui Park and kitty corner from a ground-floor hole-in-the- wall dumpling restaurant. Too poor to hit up M on the Bund, the newly-opened Jean Georges, or even Maoming Lu’s Blue Frog on our (very meagre) English teaching salaries, my boyfriend and I ate dumplings at the Jianguo Lu jiaozi guan at least three times a week. For a year. The only foreigners ever present at the eight-table spot, where we could pay 4 RMB for six dumplings (in 2003, 4 RMB was equivalent to 50 US cents or 30 pence), we ordered plate after plate of boiled, northern Chinese-style dumplings. Pork and cabbage. Pork and leek. Lamb and coriander. More pork and cabbage. We inhaled dumpling after dumpling after dumpling, dipping each into black vinegar mixed with hot chilli oil, until we were full and ready to return home to watch a bootleg DVD.
“I think about that dumpling place all the time,” Joe tells me in 2024.
“How so?,” I ask him.
“It’s really hard for me to pay eight dollars for eight dumplings at Vanessa’s Dumpling House,” he replies. “I think about it that way.”
I don’t tell him that I think about that dumpling place all the time too, but not as a price comparison to jiaozi in London. No, I think about that dumpling place all the time because it’s the first place I remember eating and loving dumplings.
When I was a teenager in Beijing, I would bao – wrap – jiaozi with my host family on a pretty regular basis. My host mother would bring out a vat of soft raw mince speckled with spring onions, a pile of pre-rolled-out dough wrappers, and a few sets of chopsticks. She and I and my host sister would sit around our dining table, chatting about who-knows-what, using our chopsticks to place a dollop of meat into a wrapper, then using our hands to fold and seal the wrappers, and placing our filled and finished dumplings on a tray from whence they would eventually make their way into a pot of boiling water and our hungry bellies. It sounds cute, right? A scene you might see in study-abroad brochures or on exchange-program websites as an example of deep cultural immersion, personal growth, and fulfillment. A meaningful family bonding session. A cultural and culinary bridge between disparate women. An inadvertent dumpling diplomacy. I absolutely hated it. I hated bao-ing jiaozi. And I hated jiaozi. Passionately. And I don’t know why. And I don’t know what happened between 1998 and 2003 that made me change my mind and my culinary preferences, but change they did, and by the time I was living my not-so-best post-collegiate life in Shanghai, I was not just a dumpling convert, but a devoted disciple.
I adore dumplings. Any and all varieties. Steamed. Fried. Boiled. Deep-fried. Thickskinned. Thin-skinned. Jiaozi. Manti. Baozi. Gurza. Pelmeni. Should I go on? Tuhum barak. Vareneki. Khinkali. Gyoza. Xiao long bao. I love any stuffed dough product, more or less, from Baku to
Beijing – and beyond. Stuffed with pork. Lamb. Leek. Tofu. Prawns. Coriander. Egg. Cheese. Carrot. Cabbage. Mushrooms. OK, I take that back – I don’t like mushroom dumplings (other than those made with my mushroom filling on page 190), but you get the picture. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is … give me a dumpling, and I will be there.
Writing nearly 2,000 years ago during China’s Western Jin Dynasty, the poet Shu Xi provides us with some of the earliest references to the ancient bready preparation known as bing. While bing today in Mandarin refers to flat pancake-like breads, the word initially referenced several different types of dough preparations, including flat, stuffed, and fried breads, noodles, and dumplings.
Among the myriad things Shu tells us about bing is when to eat different types. Stuffed breads, like the modern baozi, are for springtime. Summer calls for thin pancakes. Autumn is leavened bread time, while winter is for steaming bowls of noodles. To every bing there is a season. Except for dumplings. Unlike other bing, laowan, a meat-filled stuffed dough ball (aka dumpling), can, Shu declares “always be served all year round, / and in all four seasons freely used, / in no respect unsuitable”. A bing for all seasons. I can get behind that. Oh, and the name of Shu Xi’s prose-poem is “Rhapsody on Bing”. A literal rhapsody on bread and dumplings. I can definitely get behind that.3
To read more and to find the recipe for this awesome Kyrgyz oromo, do buy my book :)
A quick explanation for those who might find it helpful: Mandarin Chinese has four tones (plus a neutral). “Mā, má, mǎ, mà, ma” is commonly used in early language instruction to explain both the tonal differences as well as the different meanings that come from said differences. The first tone is represented by a straight line (in pinyin), as in 妈 (mā) — mother. An ascending line ( 麻 [má] — hemp) represents the second tone. Third tone is shown in pinyin by a curved line (马 [mǎ] — horse), and the fourth tone is represented by a descending line (骂 [mà] — to scold.) No line indicates a neutral tone. The meaning of “ma” depends on how you pronounce it tonally— this is the year of the horse (马 ), the year of mǎ !
I can 100% still sing most of the theme song, and now you can too. Geriatric millennials FTW!
Excerpted with permission from Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing by Anna Ansari. DK RED, 9 October. RRP £27
Thank you for sending the link, Anna. I’m all subscribed now, and won’t be missing any issues anymore.
I only had to bao jiaozi once with my host family. I was very grateful that my teacher had invited me over to teach me beforehand!