The genre of this book is interesting: it is a hybrid between a cookbook and a travelogue. To better situate it in terms of popular non-fiction, perhaps it would be most productive to introduce it by commenting briefly on its author. Jen Lin-Liu, a current chef and former journalist, is a woman of Chinese-American background, who was raised as a first-generation immigrant in California. Lin-Liu went on to establish a relatively sound career in freelance journalism, writing for Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Fanatically devoted to food, however, she established a successful cooking school in Beijing, called the Black Sesame Kitchen, and a couple of years ago was inspired to travel through several countries along what has been commonly termed the Silk Road. Her agendum: to trace the history of the common noodle as we know it, in countries such as China, Iran, Turkey, Italy, and parts of Central Asia.

Does she succeed in discovering precisely where the noodle originated in geographical terms? The unsurprising answer is: of course not. However, the book provides interesting insights into the fact that antecedents of the very first noodles may have originated in China, and then gradually become a popular food across the Mediterranean region. Lin-Liu can hardly be faulted for ‘failing’ at such an Icarus-like project, and the reader is fortunate that only a minor portion of the book is genuinely dedicated to that quest. Insofar as it is a cookbook, the text is only marginally more successful, since only about 50 pages are dedicated to recipes. As a travelogue however, it is enormously entertaining, possibly due to the light and informative journalistic style Lin-Liu adopts throughout.

Although she commences by writing about cuisine in Beijing, Lin-Liu then moves to rural areas such as Xinjiang where her hosts Nur and Malika (a Chinese Muslim couple) introduce her to various recipes involving traditional hand-pulled noodles. It is in this first section that one begins to get a sense of some of the cultural issues faced by the author, who possesses a very Westernised and independent personality, although her Han-Chinese heritage and ability to speak Mandarin fluently enable her to blend in relatively easily with other individuals in both Beijing and then rural China. However, it is when she journeys on (along with her Caucasian-American journalist husband, Craig) to Central Asia that one begins to get a sense that this travelogue will be consistently infused with the strong liberated views of the author. Parts of the book are blessedly humourous. For instance, Lin-Liu is awed by the intense respect in which Central Asians hold their mothers-in-law, a sentiment that she firmly believes was what magically protected her own mother-in-law, Caroline, from food poisoning when she accompanied Jen and Craig through a portion of their travels! This sojourn introduces Lin-Liu to a love-hate relationship with plov (rice pilaf), of which she partakes of many varieties in both Central Asia and then Iran. She is fed plov so many times that one can imagine even the coldest of readers beginning to sympathise with her, and the fact that it is a dish served primarily to honoured guests does not detract from the accruing monotony of the experience.

It is when Lin-Liu starts commenting on Iran that one gets a sense of how diametrically opposed her values are to those of Iranians in general, and conservative ones in particular. Although she respects their time-honoured dishes such as gormeh-sabzi (a meat and bean stew), her attitude towards their culture and society begins to border on paranoid and, occasionally, disrespectful. That Americans are regarded with suspicion and mistrust in Iran is hardly an original perspective, however, and details such as these are best left out of most travelogues that are primarily focused on cuisine. Perhaps this cultural conflict takes place because Lin-Liu is a garden-variety feminist as well as an established journalist, and regards many women in the countries she visits as strongly oppressed by her personal standards. Oddly enough, her stance relaxes somewhat in Eastern rural Turkey of all places, where she enjoys famous Turkish breakfasts in Van, and is indoctrinated into the fundamentals of honey production. The fact that she is on a quest to discover the origins of the noodle pulls her back to her original motivations once she reaches Italy (specifically Puglia and Naples) but in spite of the almost religious reliance of the Italians on pasta, the most memorable portions of this section of the text have to do with gelato (ice cream). We learn interesting details, such as the point that egg-yolks lend their creaminess to Italian ice-cream, and are given some interesting recipes for lasagna and orecchiette (a dough-based dish).

Ultimately, Lin-Liu’s book will appeal most to chefs and restaurateurs. However, since it flows well, and is far more informative than the average cookbook, it deserves a place on the bookshelves of most food-lovers. One should therefore be generous and forgive the numerous times Lin-Liu’s personality intrudes on the narrative tone of On the Noodle Road, since most good chefs rely on autobiographical data for their best and most original recipes. That much effort went into the authoring and compilation of this text is evident from the persistent and often dynamic attitude of its author, who battled linguistic differences and the inevitable glitches associated with travel, in order to write an account that is both heartfelt and comprehensive.

The reviewer is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration

On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta

(TRAVELOGUE)

By Jen Lin-Liu

Riverhead Books, US

ISBN 978-159448726-2

383pp.