Cumin, Chilli and Mushrooms on Flatbread, or What the Silk Road Actually Tasted Like

Fusion is usually an accusation. It suggests two cuisines forced together by a restaurant that wanted a hook. But some pairings are not inventions at all, because the two ends were already connected and everybody has simply forgotten the middle.

Cumin is the clearest case. It is the defining spice of Xi'an street food, of Uyghur cooking across Xinjiang, of North Indian tempering, of Persian rice, of Levantine kofta and of Egyptian ful. That is not coincidence or convergence. It is one continuous trade corridor, and cumin travelled it in both directions along with the flatbread that everyone at every point along the route was already baking.

So a cumin and chilli mushroom flatbread is not a collision. It is a dish assembled from things that have been next to each other for a very long time.

What you need

For two.

• 400g oyster mushrooms, or king oyster, torn not chopped
• 2 tsp whole cumin seed
• 1 tsp coriander seed
• 1 to 2 tsp chilli flakes, Aleppo pepper if you have it
• 1/2 tsp ground Sichuan pepper, optional but it is the thing that makes it taste like Xi'an
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• 3cm ginger, julienned
• 2 spring onions, cut in long diagonals
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 tbsp neutral oil, high smoke point
• 2 large flatbreads, or khubz, lavash or naan
• Yoghurt or tahini to serve, and coriander leaf

Tear the mushrooms, do not slice them

This is the step that decides the dish.

A sliced mushroom has flat, smooth faces and browns evenly and boringly. A torn mushroom has ragged edges and exposed fibres, and those edges catch the heat, crisp, and take on the chew that makes this work as a substitute for the meat the original uses. Tear along the grain into strips roughly the width of your finger.

Then get them dry. Mushrooms are mostly water and they will steam themselves into grey rags if crowded. Use the widest pan you own, work in two batches if you must, and do not stir for the first two minutes.

The method

Toast the cumin and coriander seed in the dry pan for about a minute until they smell like a spice shop, then tip them out and crush coarsely. Coarse matters. Ground cumin turns muddy here, and the pleasure of the dish is biting into whole seeds.