On the Noodle Road

by Jen Lin-Liu

  Bake the dumplings for 10 minutes. Then raise the oven temperature to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

  Alternative vegetarian filling:

  Substitute 2 cups finely cubed pumpkin for the ground meat, and dot the filling generously with butter before folding and sealing the dumplings.

  MANTI (UZBEK STEAMED DUMPLINGS)

  Makes about 30 dumplings

  FOR THE DOUGH:

  1 cup warm water

  1 extra-large egg

  1 teaspoon salt

  2½ cups all-purpose flour

  Meat or pumpkin filling as for Samsa

  Ketik, or whole-fat plain yogurt

  TO COOK THE DUMPLINGS:

  3-tier steamer pot or large, covered pot with a steamer insert

  1 tablespoon vegetable oil

  Make the dough: Place the water, egg, and salt in a large bowl, and add 1 cup of the flour. Mix thoroughly. Then add the rest of the flour, ¼ cup at a time, until all the flour has been incorporated. Transfer the dough to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead for 3 to 5 minutes, until the dough is soft, pliable, and smooth. Cover the dough with a damp cloth or wrap it in plastic and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.

  Follow the instructions for rolling out the dough for Chef Zhang’s Hand-Rolled Noodles/Andrea’s Pasta. Cut the dough into 3-inch strips, then cut the strips crosswise into 3-inch squares. Make a few stacks of the squares, dusting them with flour before stacking to keep them from sticking.

  Shape the dumplings: Place a dough square in the center of your palm and add approximately 2 tablespoons of filling. Bring one pair of diagonally opposed corners together and press to seal. Then bring the other pair together and press again. The dumpling will take the shape of an open box. Repeat until you run out of wrappers or filling.

  Slick the bottom of a steamer insert or tiers with a little oil. In a pot large enough to fit your steamer insert or tiers, bring 1 inch of water to a boil. Place as many dumplings in the steamer insert or tiers as will fit without touching and steam each batch for 15 minutes. Serve with ketik or whole-fat plain yogurt.

  ANTICA BED-AND-BREAKFAST PLOV

  Serves at least 10

  1 cup canola oil

  3 pounds bone-in lamb or beef shank, cut into 4 hunks, or 2 pounds boneless stew lamb or beef

  3 large onions, diced

  4 large carrots, peeled and cut into sticks about 2 inches long by ½ inch thick

  1 tablespoon salt

  1 tablespoon ground cumin

  1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

  5 cups rice, medium grain, Thai jasmine, or Indian basmati, rinsed and soaked in hot water

  3 cups water

  ½ cup chopped raisins or other dried fruit

  1 white turnip, cut into eighths

  1 kohlrabi, cut into eighths

  4 heads garlic

  2 quinces or apples, peeled, cored, and cut into eighths

  Pomegranate seeds, for garnish

  Place a large wok or stockpot over high heat and add the canola oil. When the oil is smoking, add the meat and onions and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, turning the meat until it has browned on all sides. Add the carrots and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the salt, cumin, and black pepper. Drain the rice and add to the wok or stockpot, allowing the rice to fully cover the meat and vegetables. Add the water and cover the pot. After 5 minutes, reduce the heat to medium-low and allow the mixture to simmer for 15 minutes.

  Uncover the pot and remove the meat. Add the dried fruit to the pot and mix with the rice. Then place the turnip, kohlrabi, garlic, and quinces (or apples) atop the rice mixture, cover again, and allow it to steam for about another 25 minutes, until they are tender. Meanwhile, cut the meat into 8 portions and place each portion on a plate. Divide the plov among the plates and garnish with pomegranate seeds before serving.

  7.

  The morning we left for Iran, I dressed carefully, in a turtleneck, baggy pants, and a long black sweater jacket. As our van snaked up a sloping road that cut through barren yellowed hills, I unfurled a purple scarf and draped it over my head. Our ethnic Russian guide chuckled from the front passenger seat: “Soon you’ll have to wear that everywhere! These are your last moments of freedom.”

  I shivered, despite the warm autumn sunlight that filtered into the van. Though Craig and I were happy to leave Turkmenistan, we approached Iran with mixed feelings. For the next three weeks, we would lie about our identities. I was no longer a writer, just a chef interested in Persian cooking; Craig was not a journalist but the owner of my cooking school. We’d sent our notebooks, laptops, and video camera back to Beijing, lest they arouse suspicion from authorities. Part of me felt ridiculous for making such efforts—after all, what authorities imprisoned someone for reporting on kebabs and khoreshts? But the Islamic government had locked up and tortured many innocent foreigners.

  I’d been hesitant about Iran from the start. Even after we’d gotten our visas and I’d set out on my travels through western China and Central Asia, Craig and I had continued to talk about Iran as if it were a hypothetical (“If we get to Iran, we’ll . . .”). But somewhere along the way, the idea had gained so much momentum and the country’s allure was so strong that by the time we were at the border, it seemed impossible to back down.

  As we went through bureaucratic formalities to get stamped out of Turkmenistan, the border guard seemed to hold on to our passports for longer than usual. Craig and I exchanged glances, hesitating for a split second. Were we really just about to enter the Islamic Republic of Iran?

  “There’s still time to turn back,” Craig said.

  But our guide had said good-bye, and our van had dropped us off and pulled away. We were stranded.

  “I guess we’ll have to go on,” I said, sucking in my breath.

  “Truthfully, you’ve always seemed more concerned about getting into Iran than getting out,” Craig noted as the Turkmen official handed us our passports.

  “Trust me, it will be totally fine,” I said. I tried my best to slip into a Zen-like state despite having tossed and turned all night.

  At the gate on the Iranian side, we handed our passports to a border guard—our first contact with an Iranian. He examined them carefully, slowly turning each page as if he didn’t believe the documents were real. After he handed them back, we went on, crossing paths with a group of Iranian men happily heading the opposite direction. In Turkmenistan, we’d heard that Iranian men often went there for rollicking weekends filled with liquor and women. If Iranians went to that wretched country for fun, what did that say about their own nation? We were exchanging one crazy authoritarian leader for one more sinister, who spewed vitriol against America, Jews, and the West in general. Resisting the urge to turn back, I adjusted my scarf, and into the border control office we went.

  Our first peek of Iran surprised me: it was as mundane as a Department of Motor Vehicles. Waiting in rows of plastic bucket seats were a couple dozen Middle Eastern men, mostly in Western clothing, and head-scarfed women. Before we could join the line, though, an official with a warm, grandfatherly smile waved us to the front, as if he’d been anticipating our arrival. Standing next to him was a man who introduced himself as Mr. Sanjar, the guide who’d escort us for our entire Iranian sojourn. With a backpack slung over one shoulder, he greeted us with a toothy smile. “Welcome to Iran!” he said joyously in remarkably clear English.

  Despite the warm reception, we remained on edge. The border guard pulled out two yellow cards labeled “Interpol Iran Police” and asked us to fill in our details. Then he had us dip our fingertips into ink and press them against the back of the card. Was this part of a plot? Were they going to incriminate us now that they had our fingerprints? From the corner of the room, a poster of the Ayatollah
Khomeni, the leader of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, stared down as if they were sternly admonishing us. Hadn’t one of them issued the death decree against the writer Salman Rushdie?

  The guard stamped our passports and looked at us, brow furrowed. It seemed as if there was a problem or a question. Our passports still in his hand, he told us he had one further request. We tensed and nodded.

  “He wants a ride to the next town. Would you mind if we take him?” asked Mr. Sanjar.

  As Craig and I left the office with our new Iranian friends, the aroma of turmeric and onions wafted from a food stand next to the exit, rousing my nose from its Central Asian dormancy. We celebrated our arrival in Iran with a ground kebab called kubideh on grilled flatbread, garnished with tomatoes and cucumbers, washed down with a can of alcohol-free beer made from lemon malt. (Iran was the one place on our journey where liquor was banned by law.) All for just over a dollar. That was the first promising sign that Iranian food would be better than Central Asian.

  • • •

  Forget the possibility of being tortured in Iran; arranging to go there had been torture itself. Fellow journalists and Iran experts I spoke with said Craig and I were outright crazy for wanting to go. America and Iran had cut off diplomatic relations in 1979, when protesters overthrew the shah and stormed the U.S. embassy, taking dozens of American diplomats hostage for more than a year. Since the revolution, Islamic religious fanatics had governed the country, and the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been elected president in 2005. When he was reelected four years later, thousands of protesters took to the streets, accusing the government of rigging the election. Iranian authorities in turn blamed Europe and America for instigating the instability as they had in the past. Months later, antiforeign sentiments still ran high, with Ahmadinejad continuously denouncing America. The West suspected Iran of building nuclear weapons, and the Israelis were threatening to bomb Iran. In the midst of the tension, Iran had jailed dozens of Americans, including three hikers who’d unknowingly crossed the border, accusing them of spying. Whether Iran believed the accusation or simply regarded them as bargaining chips hardly seemed to matter.

  I could have bypassed Iran; Azerbaijan, a sparsely populated country once part of the Soviet Union, also offered passage to the West. But Iran stood at a pivotal place on the Silk Road, a major empire between the Chinese and the Romans. The Parthians, a nomadic tribe who rose to power around the second century BC, first established formal links between East and West to transport silk, a fabric they were as enamored with as were Europeans. After the Parthians, Persia (as the nation was known before the early 1900s) had been conquered by an assortment of leaders from east and west, as in Central Asia. Alexander the Great swept through in the third century BC, sacking the famed city of Persepolis. Arab Muslim invaders followed in the seventh century AD, bringing Islam with them, only to be knocked out of power by the Seljuk Turks of Central Asia and the Mongols in the Middle Ages. In the sixteenth century, Persia reestablished itself as a formidable empire, its influence spreading through Central Asia and Turkey at the height of the Safavid Dynasty.

  Through the centuries, Persia served as a transit point for goods moving east and west. Ancient caravanserai still dot the desert, spaced about twenty miles apart, the distance camels could cover in a day. Persia produced its own alluring ingredients that dispersed in either direction. Saffron, grown in the arid region of Khorasan, made its way westward, where it found a strong following among Egyptians, Spaniards, and Greeks; going eastward, the ethereal red threads also gained popularity in Central Asia and China, where they were used as medicine. Iranian pomegranates and pistachios became so widespread that I found them all along the Silk Road. Some suspected that noodles, too, came from Iran. Though noodles aren’t central to the Iranian diet nowadays, wheat had long been consumed in the country. The more I learned, the more I wanted to go.

  Besides, we had friends in the Iranian diaspora with family in Iran, and they told us stories of how accommodating the people were. And once we’d started our travels, we’d met numerous Silk Road tourists who said that Iran had been the highlight of their trip. Unlike its neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran wasn’t embroiled in war (not yet anyway), making it a much safer destination. I took comfort in knowing that the upside of repressive governments was less crime.

  I wanted to go to Iran, despite—or because of—the supposed dangers. The same urge had drawn me to China more than a decade before. Part of it was my contrarian, independent streak. But also I wanted to get behind the rhetoric. I thought there was more to gain from going to a foreign place—from learning firsthand of its complexities—than staying home and letting my ideas about it harden into the image the media conveyed.

  So several months earlier in Beijing, I’d gone through the complicated process of applying for Iranian visas, made extra difficult for Americans, especially those of non-Persian descent. We would have to join a tour group and be escorted at all times. Officials occasionally googled applicants to confirm their identities and determine their motivations for visiting. Sometimes visa applications were rejected for no particular reason at all. I’d managed to find one Iranian travel agency that had a good record of getting Americans in, and we agreed to a six-thousand-dollar private tour for two, should our visas be granted. I hoped that it would help that we were applying for visas in China, which had better relations with Iran than the United States. But still, I was doubtful about our chances.

  As our visas went through the cryptic Iranian visa system, I visited Rumi, a Beijing restaurant where I’d first eaten Persian food. After opening several years before, it had acquired a loyal expatriate following, drawing not just Iranians and other Middle Easterners but Westerners and Chinese as well.

  Fariborz was the thirty-nine-year-old owner, with knitted eyebrows, expressive dark eyes, and a round face. At a table on the second floor of the airy, white-walled restaurant, he told me his story. He was born to an affluent family in Tehran and lived there until he was nine, when the Iran-Iraq War broke out. He and his family happened to be vacationing in Germany. His father, already troubled by the Islamic Revolution the year before, decided to relocate the family to their summer home in Britain, where they eventually gained citizenship. After graduating from college and marrying the daughter of another Iranian family in exile, Fariborz and his new wife moved to New York, where he worked as a buyer at Bloomingdale’s. The rat race eventually tired him out, and when a relative who’d been doing business in the Far East persuaded him and his wife to move to China, he could finally realize his lifelong dream to open a restaurant.

  Fariborz treated me to an enormous feast. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the dishes as they arrived and saying he’d already eaten. I started with a delicious eggplant dip called kashkt badenjum, richer than Middle Eastern baba ganoush. Then came gormeh sabzi, a savory stew made of lamb, kidney beans, powdered dried limes, and a trio of greens: dill, parsley, and fenugreek, a sweet herb that originated in the Middle East but is also used in Chinese medicine. The fluffy saffron rice made me reconsider the grain, the most mundane of Asian foods. Fariborz instructed me to smother butter and a roasted tomato over it. The buttery rice mixed with the condensed sweet-and-sour flavor of the fruit could have been a meal in itself. But a rack of lamb, juicy and succulent, accompanied the rice. I complimented the food, and Fariborz beamed with delight.

  As we ate, I told him about my plans. The delicious food filled me with anticipatory regret for what I’d miss if our visas didn’t come through, I said.

  “Oh, you’ll get your visas all right,” he said.

  “You don’t think the embassy will do a background check? Or at least google us?” I asked.

  “I don’t think they know what Google is,” he half-joked, shaking his head. “But the real question is, why do you want to go there?”

  Fariborz hadn’t been back to Iran since he
was a child. He was Baha’i, a banned religion in Iran, and the persecution of its followers (along with Jews and Shi’ite Muslims) had escalated after the Ayatollahs gained power. Since the revolution, the government had jailed and killed hundreds of Baha’is because of their beliefs, virtually wiping out the religion in Iran.

  Though he’d built a life overseas, Fariborz felt the deep pain of exile. He told me he’d recently applied for an Iranian passport and thought about visiting the country, but his wife objected. He stayed in touch with Iranian friends and family, who shipped him ingredients and updated him on the news. He’d heard that the government had gotten even crazier lately. He wished Craig and me well on our trip, but warned me: “Do you realize that if you’re walking on the street with your husband, they could arrest you if you can’t produce evidence that you’re married?”

  I thanked Fariborz for the delicious meal and the leftovers, which he’d boxed up and insisted I take home. I forgot his warnings and was heartened by his prediction that we’d get our visas. Sure enough, a week later, when I went to collect our passports at the Iranian embassy, they slid effortlessly through the hole under the glass window. I flipped through my passport to find an actual Iranian visa, gleaming with a hologram.

  • • •

  After dropping off the man who’d stamped our passports at a small town just beyond the border, Mr. Sanjar drove Craig and me on to Mashhad, the first city on our itinerary. As we cruised through dry mountains that gave way to a wide highway in a flat desert, he told us about himself. He looked vaguely Mediterranean, with olive skin and curly brown hair rumpled with gel. The singsong cadence of his Farsi seemed to echo the lilt of an Italian speaker: “Ba-lay! Ba-lay!” he’d say when he reached agreement after a lengthy negotiation with a hotel clerk or a street vendor. Like many Iranians we met, he’d been exposed to the West: he was fluent in English and Italian and had studied architecture in Rome, where he’d passed as a local. He told us that Iranians and Italians had many things in common, including pride in their history and architecture, a proclivity to eat late into the night, and joie de vivre. I asked if he’d enjoyed Italian food. He’d tried pork, he told us—the flavor of prosciutto was incredible! And wine: “Yesh, I drank red wine! Why not?”