Real wasabi is the grated stem of a plant that grows wild in Japan's cold mountain streams, first farmed about 400 years ago in Shizuoka. Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is actually horseradish, mustard and green colouring.
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📍 Himalayan foothills, northern India & Nepal
Cucumbers were domesticated in India at least 3,000 years ago from a wild cucumber of the Himalayan foothills. Rome's Emperor Tiberius ate them all year round: his gardeners grew them in beds on wheels, rolled out into the sun.
📍 Western Ghats, southern India
Green cardamom, the spice of Swedish buns and Arabic coffee, grows wild in the rainforests of southern India. Yet since about 1980 the top grower has been Guatemala, where a German coffee planter brought it before World War I.
📍 Valencia (Albufera lagoon), Spain
Paella is named after its pan: in Valencian, paella simply means 'frying pan'. The dish grew up among rice farmers around the Albufera lagoon near Valencia, and the classic version uses rabbit, chicken and beans rather than seafood.
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📍 Ojiya & Yamakoshi, Niigata, Japan
Koi were first bred about 200 years ago by farmers in the mountain villages of Niigata, Japan, who raised plain black carp for food. The colourful new fish were a sensation when they were shown at a 1914 exhibition in Tokyo.
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📍 Northern China (Gansu to Luoyang)
The oldest paper scraps, from the 2nd century BC, were found in China, and Han court official Cai Lun refined papermaking around 105 AD. Egypt's papyrus was a different material.
📍 Near Aleppo, Syria
In 1930 zoologist Israel Aharoni caught a mother hamster and her litter near Aleppo, Syria. DNA studies show all domestic golden hamsters descend from one female, probably that very mother.