What is your earliest food memory?
My great-grandmother Alice used to take care of my sister and I after school when we were little, and I remember her making dinner for us. A very simple one of pan-fried minced beef and cabbage. Or a tin of Libby's Corned Beef Hash. Or a plain bowl of reconstituted dried ramen noodles. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive. Her daughter – my grandmother -- was in the hospital sick with (and eventually dying of) cancer. My mother was always either working or at her mother's bedside, neither of which were places for two children under the age of 6. So, off to Great Grandma's house we went while Grandma Rene was sick, and a lot of afternoons and evenings thereafter. Come to think of it, I do remember Grandma Rene buying me a McDonald's ice cream sundae with butterscotch sauce, so maybe that's really my earliest food memory.
What was the food you loved most as a child?
I loved rice. I still love rice. But I'm talking Iranian rice. I'd start my plate off with a dollop of butter and heap on spoonful after spoonful of warm (and often saffron-tinted) basmati rice. Then, a little more butter on top if I was feeling particularly greedy and cheeky. I'd grab the biggest piece of gazmakh –that crispy layer that you find on the bottom of a pot of Iranian rice and is know more commonly by its Farsi name tahdig – that I could take without infuriating everyone else, who all also wanted the biggest piece they could get, add that to the plate and finish everything off with a generous sprinkling of fine salt. I loved it. There was and is something so incredibly comforting and soothing about rice and gazmakh. Especially with the added butter and salt. I'm salivating right now just thinking about it.
Who taught you to cook, and what did they teach you?
I really am a self-taught cook. I started cooking while in university – started with rice and gazmakh, naturally, and a fillet of red snapper cooked on ye olde George Foreman grill. And I just kept going. Learning. Cooking. Eating. Expanding what I knew and how to do it. And I am still at it today, learning something new – if not every day, but close.
Which recipe has shaped your life more than any other?
Here we are again: Iranian rice and gazmakh. I just kept working at it. For years. I remember it very clearly. I was 27 years old. It was my first semester of law school and my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. I was single and not happy about it, and my ex-boyfriend had sprained my wrist a few months earlier. It was not the best time of my life. But then, I made my first 'perfect' pot of rice. It was so good I called home. I called my mother. I called my father. I probably called my siblings. I didn't have an iPhone yet; there was no easy way to share a photo of my success. I did post about it on Facebook though, because those were the days when you shared your 'status' on the (relatively new) social media platform; I am reminded of this rice-based status update as a 'memory' on a yearly basis now.
Since then, I refined and (eventually) perfected it my rice. And have included my recipe in my cookbook, Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing.
Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing
Which restaurant/chef has had the biggest impact on you?
Restaurant and restauranteur: Balthazar and Keith McNally
Chef: David Chang
Cookbook writer: Fuchsia Dunlop
What do you cook when you want to make people happy?
This changes on a somewhat frequent basis because I have a seven-year-old son whose taste also changes on a somewhat frequent basis. For a while he was obsessed with my shivit oshi – dill-infused green noodles from western Uzbekistan the recipe for which you can find in Silk Roads. Then, he got super into my jujeh brick chicken thighs (recipe also in Silk Roads.) Right now, he's a steak man, through and through, and just keeps asking for 'skirt steak, please, Mummy,' and so I happily oblige. I want to make him happy. I want to expand his mind and his sense of place through his palate and plate, and so I do. I want him to be 80 years old and remember how his long-passed mother used to make him cardamom-infused, walnut-studded blondies (recipe also in Silk Roads), blueberry muffins, rainbow-sprinkle topped Rice Krispie treats, 'green noodles' and skirt steak, and to know that he was so very loved.
What ingredient can you never resist buying?
Delicious seasonal fruit and vegetables. Sometimes no matter the price. Oh hey, that melon costs £6, but it's perfect? I cannot resist. How much for that bunch of fresh-from-the-farm asparagus? I don't care; I'm buying them. Broad beans! Artichokes! Strawberries! Green gages! Hello, tomato season! Ooh – here come the winter squashes. I'm sold. They've got me: hook, line and sinker.
What do you always have in your fridge?
I like a hot sauce. And a mustard. I actually have multiple varieties of both in my fridge now, and always.
What is your ultimate comfort food?
I think we know the answer already, right? It's rice. Sometimes that means Iranian rice and gazmakh. Sometimes that means chicken fried rice. Sometimes it's a biryani. Or a bowl of short grained Chinese rice and stir-fried egg and tomato. Ooh! Or a bowl of rice topped with a fried egg, soy sauce and chili crisp. But it's always rice.
What do you cook when it's just for you?
Ha. Ha. I am laughing out loud. See above! Rice, rice, baby!
Tell us about a meal you'll never forget.
Oh my! There are so many! But here's a particularly memorable for you:
I remember going to an Afghani restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side a week or two after 9/11. I was craving rice (obviously) and koobideh (Iranian minced meat kebab), and Afghani food has a version very close to the one I love. I was craving comfort and home and security. And I was furious with the anti-Muslim / anti-Middle Eastern sentiment sweeping my country and community. My cousin had recently been arrested and sent off to jail along with hundreds if not thousands of other Middle Eastern men in America; where he was, I didn't know – just that he was in jail. My father had been denied entry to a hospital at which he had worked for decades because of his accent.
It was not a great time to be of Middle Eastern descent, and I remember feeling the need to eat Afghani food not only for my own culinary and spiritual comfort, but also of the importance of showing up, of solidarity, of support. And, so my boyfriend and I trekked twenty-odd blocks south, for Afghan kebab and rice. We were two of only a handful of patrons, but I like to think it mattered. And I'll never forget the meal – and maybe owners won't ever have forgotten us, two college kids, eating their kebab and rice when practically no one else would.
What food instantly transports you somewhere else?
Chinese-style stir-fried egg and tomato. A bowl of that and I am back in Beijing. It is 1998. I am teenager living outside my family's home for the first time. I have no cell phone. I can hardly speak Mandarin, but I know how to order egg and tomato and a bowl of rice, and that's all I need. And, nowadays, that's all I need to be right back there and then.
Which cookbook would you save if you could only keep one – why that one?
Easy! Najmieh Batmanglij's The Food of Life. THE bible of Iranian food by the grand dame of Iranian cooking. My copy is already falling apart, and I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of its 640 pages.
What food trend do you wish would disappear?
Trends in general irk me. Why is 2026 the so-called 'year of the cabbage' when we have been eating cabbages for centuries? Why do we feel the need to call something 'fricy' or 'swicy' when we can just use the words 'fruity and spicy' or 'sweet and spicy?' How can fermentation be a 'trend' when humans have been eating fermented food for millennia? Same thing goes for nose-to-tail cooking! It's not a trend (and shouldn't be a trend) to eat all the parts of an animal (if you're going to eat animals). Who are these trends for? Who comes up with them? Why can't we just eat what we like, eat for our health, and eat for the planet's health? (On that note: no-waste cooking – also not a trend: where do we think preserves and jams came from? From people not wanting to waste fruit!)
What is the most overrated food?
Oh goodness. I don't know... Caviar? I don't love it. I don't hate it. But I definitely don't want to pay the prices it commands. Overrated for sure.
If you could eat just three dishes for the rest of your life, what would they be?
A really good cheeseburger.
Iranian rice and flat-bread gazmakh, with a fillet of pan roasted, butter-basted white fish.
Sichuan hot pot.
What would be on the menu for your perfect last supper?
Ooh! Ok. I'm going to write a whole menu for this!
To start: A perfect Caesar salad. No chicken. No bacon. Plenty of croutons. Nicely-aged shaved parmesan.
To continue: Tachin – an Iranian saffron and yogurt rice and chicken dish. Specifically, I would like my version, the recipe for which you can find in Silk Roads.
To finish: A warm brownie sundae, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzled with Sanders hot fudge sauce.
Taste Test: 3 Anna Ansari Recipes We Love
NO-WASTE BEETROOT BORANI
Iranian Yogurt Dip
Serves 4–8 as a dip
Borani laboo and borani esfanj are two of the most beloved Iranian yogurt preparations, the former made with beetroot and the latter with spinach. This is my ode to them, as well as to my commitment to kitchenwaste reduction, making excellent use of those gorgeous beetroot stalks and leaves you often find attached to the divisively delicious, incredibly nutritious earthy orbs and which, sadly, often find their way to the bin.
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, very thinly sliced into half-moons
- 200g (7oz) beetroot leaves and stalks, leaves roughly chopped, stalks finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 2 tsp dried mint
- 250g (9oz) cooked beetroot, coarsely grated
- 375g (13oz) Greek yogurt
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- zest and juice of 1 lime
To serve (optional)
- pistachios
- flaky sea salt
- mint leaves
Method
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Once hot, reduce the heat to low, add the onion, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown. Add the beetroot stalks, garlic, and 1 teaspoon of the dried mint. Cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent any burning. Add the beetroot leaves and cook for 3–5 minutes more, or until the leaves are soft and wilted. Set aside to cool.
In a medium bowl, combine the grated beetroot with the yogurt, salt, lime juice, and half the lime zest. Stir to mix well. When the onion and beetroot leaf/stalk mixture is cool, add this to the bowl and stir to mix everything together, before moving the bowl to the refrigerator. Chill for at least 1 hour so the flavours can come together.
Just before serving, sprinkle the borani with the last of the dried mint and lime zest. If you like, top it off with some pistachios and flaky sea salt, and garnish with some fresh mint leaves.
QURUTOB
Tajik Bread Salad
Serves 4–6 as a side
The 'qurut' in qurutob is what Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks call the dehydrated dairy preparation known to Iranians as kashk, Armenians as chortan, and Turks as kurut. Ubiquitous and beloved across the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, today's dried dairy balls are not so dissimilar from those with which, according to Marco Polo, Genghis Khan's soldiers once fortified themselves:
“They … have dried milk, which is solid like a paste. It is dried like this: they boil the milk and skim the cream off the top, putting it in another vessel to make butter… Then the milk is put out in the sun to dry. And when they go to war, they each carry about ten pounds of this [dried] milk. In the mornings, they each take half a pound of the milk and mix it with water in a little leather flask shaped like a bottle, which they keep with them as they ride until the milk has been shaken up and has dissolved into a syrup. Then they drink it for breakfast.
”
Lucky you – you don't need any qurut to make this salad (though, by all means, if you have some, go for it!). Instead, I've given you a recipe for a tangy yogurt dressing, redolent of the American ranch dressing of my youth, but healthier and much more delicious, with which to dress this Tajik bread salad. And, honestly, is there anything better than bread in a salad, soaking up a vinegary dressing while occasionally maintaining a crunch? No. The answer is no, there is not anything better, and there are not many salads better than this one either.
Note: These amounts will give you more dressing than you need for this salad, so you'll have some for next time. It will keep in the fridge for about 1 week.
Ingredients
- 2 Layered & Fried Flatbreads
- 1 round of Central Asian Bread (see p205), or 3 toasted store-bought pita breads, roughly torn into pieces
- 1 head of romaine lettuce, roughly chopped
- 1 cucumber, sliced
- 50g (1¾oz) walnuts, shelled
- 250g (9oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
- ½ red onion, very thinly sliced
- freshly chopped herbs (e.g. coriander, dill, or chives), to garnish
For the dressing (makes 320ml/ generous 1¼ cups/11fl oz)
- 250g (9oz) full-fat Greek yogurt
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- ¾ tsp onion powder
- 10g (¼oz) chives, chopped
- 5g (1//8oz) dill, chopped
- 5g (1//8oz) coriander, chopped
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- dash of Worcestershire sauce
- freshly ground black pepper
Method
In a medium bowl, combine all the dressing ingredients. Mix well, then add cold water, a tablespoon at a time, to thin out the dressing to your liking. Give it a taste. You may find you want more of a certain flavour; by all means, add it.
Combine the bread, lettuce, cucumber, walnuts, and tomatoes in a large bowl. Mix well, then toss with a generous (or stingy) few tablespoons of your personally seasoned salad dressing. Serve the qurutob either in that bowl or on a platter, topped with the red onion and some herbs.
ALMOND BUNDT CAKE
Serves 10–12
Our family friend (and my French teacher) Farimah made the most incredible Iranian almond cookies: sweet, chewy, and perfectly crackled on top. I can still taste them. And I can still hear her telling my mother, in her accented English, 'No, Sue. I cannot. I don't have recipe to give you. I don't know.'
It was the late 1980s in suburban Detroit. You couldn't search online for 'Iranian almond cookie recipe'. You could barely find one in a cookbook because, well, in those days, there was approximately one Iranian cookbook on the American market. My mom tried that recipe multiple times with little success. 'Something's missing,' my dad would say.
The area we lived in had a lively but small Iranian (mostly medical) expatriate community. This meant we attended and hosted a lot of Iranian parties, and this meant that my Michigan-born-and-raised American mom, who had never been to Iran, needed a dessert suitable for a lot of Iranians – and it needed to be one that didn't taste like anything was missing. So she made an almond bundt cake, the recipe for which she found on the back of an industrially produced tin of 'almond filling'. Everyone loved it.
My recipe is based upon the one my mother made for years, for Iranian party after party after party, but with some updates (adios, corn syrup-based almond filling!) and additions (hello, yogurt icing and rose petals!). This cake is a testament to my mother's understanding of the Iranian palate, her ingenuity, and her dedication to good food and great hosting.
Ingredients
- 225g (8oz) unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
- 200g (7oz) caster or granulated sugar
- 3 eggs, at room temperature
- 280g (9¾oz) plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp whole milk
For the almond filling (makes 540g/1lb 3½oz)
- 150g (5½oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 150g (5½oz) granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp almond extract
- 150g (5½oz) ground almonds
For the glaze
- 165g (5¾oz) icing sugar
- ¾ tsp almond extract
- 110g (3¾oz) Greek yogurt
To decorate (optional)
- edible rose petals
- flaked almonds
- pistachio nibs
- sprinkles
Method
Start by making the almond filling. In either a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or in a medium bowl and using a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula when necessary. Add your eggs, one at a time, and mix well, scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and, once mixed in, add the ground almonds. Mix until fully combined and set aside. (The almond filling will keep for 2–3 days, covered tightly, in the refrigerator.)
Now on to the cake! Preheat your oven to 170°C (150°C fan/340°F/Gas 3½) Butter a 2.4 litre (10-cup) bundt or tube pan, and dust with flour. Be very, very generous. Get into every nook and cranny so that nothing sticks when you pull your cake out. Set the prepared pan aside.
In either a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or in a large bowl and using a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well and scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Add 315g (11¼ oz) of the almond filling and mix again until combined.
In a separate bowl, use a fork to combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add your flour mixture to your wet ingredients a little at a time, adding a dash of the milk after each flour addition and mixing well. You want to alternate additions – dry ingredients, milk, dry ingredients, milk, etc. – and make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Fully combine everything.
Pour your batter into the prepared bundt pan, using a spatula to spread it around as evenly as possible. Holding the pan on two sides, knock it gently but firmly on your work surface a couple of times to evenly distribute the batter in the pan.
Bake for 40–55 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the fattest part of the cake comes out clean. I start testing at 40 minutes and go from there. When your cake is ready, remove it from the oven and let it cool for 15 minutes in its pan on a wire rack. Then, cross your fingers, put your wire rack on top of your cake, turn it upside down, and pray for a quick and smooth cake release! Let your cake cool completely before icing and decorating. To make the glaze, whisk together the sugar, almond extract, and yogurt in a bowl. Add more sugar or more yogurt to achieve your desired texture. I sometimes go crazy and add an extra smidge of almond extract.
Depending on the viscosity of your glaze, you will either drizzle it over your cooled cake or use a pastry brush to paint it on. If you like, decorate your cake further with dried edible rose petals, flaked almonds, and/or slivered pistachios. If you are my son, you will also cover it haphazardly with brightly coloured sprinkles. Whatever works. It is going to taste amazing, in any case.
All recipes extracted from Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing by Anna Ansari. DK RED, 9 October. RRP £27
FAQs: Anna Ansari
Who is Anna Ansari?
Anna Ansari is an Iranian-American food writer, former lawyer and author of the award-shortlisted cookbook Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing.
What is Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing about?
The cookbook combines recipes, travel writing and personal memoir, exploring the cuisines and cultures that stretch across the historic Silk Roads, from the Caucasus through Central Asia to China.
What food is Anna Ansari best known for?
She is particularly passionate about Iranian cooking, especially perfectly cooked saffron rice and gazmakh (also known as tahdig), while also celebrating dishes from across Central and East Asia.
Which cookbook does Anna Ansari recommend?
If she could keep only one, it would be The Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij, widely regarded as one of the definitive books on Iranian cuisine.
What is Anna Ansari's ultimate comfort food?
Rice in almost any form. Whether it's Iranian rice with gazmakh, chicken fried rice, biryani or simply rice topped with a fried egg and chilli crisp, it remains her lifelong comfort food.
