Welcome to "Emory East Meets West: Pandemic Cookbook from Students in Quarantine!"

 

We have been teaching a course called Noodle Narratives on the Silk Road online every summer since 2016. In this course we explore the cultures and histories of China and Italy through the medium of food. Every time we teach, we ask our students to visit an Italian or Chinese restaurant and create a project that taps into the course content through interviews with the chef, restaurant staff, and customers as they observe food preparation and try customary culinary specialties from the countries we study. This year, however, our students, who are in different parts of the U.S., China, Korean, and India, have been in quarantine. 

 

Each of our students was tasked with cooking a different dish from either Italy or China. Because ingredients weren’t always readily available due to business closures or the cities under lockdown, there were times when students had to improvise while at the same time capture the spirit of the recipe and culture. They explored how some of the most famous Italian and Chinese dishes were created, often times the result of improvisation during times of drought, plague, war, famine, or weather changes. They were brilliant in their selection and creativity and with each dish they captured an authentic nugget from the culture they studied, while also adding in a pinch of their own personalities to truly make the dish their own. Please enjoy their recipes, photos, and personal reflections about their experiences cooking in quarantine.