Chinese Islamic Cookery

[piazzola]

Yes samsa is the word used for samosa but the shape varies from tringular to half moon shape it is also known as kashu'ur in Mongolia and they are baked in tandir(tandoori) ovens check out this uzbek site http://www.angelfire.com/ct/DIVA/UzbekBread.html

[chefzadi]

Very interesting link. I would not have though to look into Usbek preparations. Thank you.

I have Algerian preparations that are similar or the same. Variations in spicing and presentation in some cases.

I have some Algerian breads on my blog, will present more.

Some of the nons look like variations of Khobz be'Sinouj/ Kesra be'Sinouj. Non must be related to Indian naan breads. Possibly introduced to India by the Turks?

Algerian samsas are obviously introduced by the Turks during the Ottoman reign there. But depending on the region there are different names that point to earlier variations.

[Pan]

I don't agree with what Pan had to say about Chinese empire expansion into Turkemenistan. There was never such a thing as Chinese dominance over Turkic peoples of Turkmenistan or Khazakhstan in fact it was the other way around when Ghengis Khan left the shores of lake Baikal(East Siberia) and lauched an attack on the famous wall.[...]

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It's probably off-topic to get into arguments about who conquered what when, but you might find this site, with its chronology of "Major Events of Tang in Central Asia" (scroll down) to be of interest:

http://www.silk-road.com/artl/tang.shtml

I loved K. M. Abramson's post, in which she shows us how both tradition and contact with various neighboring peoples has inspired the people of Xinjiang to what sounds like a marvellous cuisine!

[Adam Balic]

An interesting article on the topic.

From my extremely limited knowledge on the topic, I believe that there is pretty good linguistic evidence that some of these Chinese foods stuffs have Muslim and pre-Muslim Persian roots.

"Laghman" I think is fairly well documented:

This is from Charles Perry in the "Oxford Companion to Food"

Laksa a term which derives from the original Persian word for noodle, lakhsha (meaning 'slippery'). Although Iran has not been a heavy consumer of noodles, it has an ancient history of noodle-making; indeed, there has been speculation that the Chinese learned the idea of noodle-making from the same Persian merchants who introduced the flour mill to them during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). The term lakhsha was certainly used in medieval Arabic and has shown considerable powers of survival. It is still used in E. Europe (Hungarian laska, Russian lapsha, Ukrainian lokshina, Lithuanian* lakstiniai) and in Afghanistan (lakhchak).

Also, it is known that Arab traders or Indian Muslims had spread the use of pasta to Indonesia in perhaps the 13th century. The old Indonesian and Malaysian name laksa shows that this pasta originated in Persia, not from a Chinese source (as in the case of the modern Indonesian name mie).

* I am flying to Lithuania tomorrow, hopefully I will try this dish.

[Laksa]

My Italian friends* insist that pasta originated in Italy.

Isn't Persian Lakhsha is just a riff off La(g)sagna?

Seriously though, does evidence exist to support the theory that the Chinese learnt noodle-making from the Persians? I think all "Laksa" tells is that that the Persians (or Arabs) introduced that word, along with a host of others, to the Malay language.

*They are those guys you see wearing "Italians do it better" t-shirts.

[K. M. Abramson]

I've just posted some pictures on ImageGullet.

-KM

[Adam Balic]

Nobody is suggesting that the Persians taught the Chinese to make noodles as after all the Chinese invented everything...

Certainly it appears that the root word for some types of pasta are Persian, I don't think that this is in doubt. An interesting question is where the Chinese got there soft-wheat from as the origin of this is in the middle-east, not the far east.

My Italian friends* insist that pasta originated in Italy.

Isn't Persian Lakhsha is just a riff off La(g)sagna?

Seriously though, does evidence exist to support the theory that the Chinese learnt noodle-making from the Persians?  I think all "Laksa" tells is that that the Persians (or Arabs) introduced that word, along with a host of others, to the Malay language.

*They are those guys you see wearing "Italians do it better" t-shirts.

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[K. M. Abramson]

Fuchsia Dunlop, author of an excellent Sichuanese cookbook, has written an article on Xinjiang cuisine in the Observer. Here is the link.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly...1660789,00.html