Food by Country

Chapter 5 Food by Country Medieval chronicles speak of tribes living on dairy products and meat, trading for millet (or growing some), and trading for wheat products. Settled people had more elaborate cuisines, with spices typical of the neighboring civiliza- tions: Iranian, Indian, or Chinese, (depending on whether one speaks of West, South, or East within the larger region). Overall, cuisines were not diverse or complex. There was considerable local variation, as now, from oasis to oasis. The Yinshan Zhengyao is one of the few sources making an effort to mark local foods. A recipe for Kashmiri or Nepali curry, “Bal-po curry,” reveals a Tibetan informant for the dish. It is also the first known curry recipe, pre-chile, point- ing up many connections. Certainly, coming from Iran to Afghanistan convinces one that the food of the latter is basically provincial Persian. This is in spite of the use of turmeric and other characteristic Indian spices, and a few Indian beans such as mung beans in the areas closest to the Khyber Pass. Food language throughout much of Central Asia is not only Iranic, it is spe- cifically Farsi, complete with the heavy dose of Arabic loanwords (halwa, ka bab, sharbat…), typical of that language. Widespread food words from Farsi include: berenj and derivatives for rice, ash for stew, kuku for omelet-like egg dishes, and murgh for bird (usually understood to be chicken). Twentieth century sources still write of old foodways in remote areas, and indeed the diet of rural Mongolia is still usually dairy with some meat (usually tough boiled mutton), and flour foods. In most of Central Asia, foods are more diverse and varied, and show that there has been considerable change over time. The major processes that created this change involve the usual “modernization” and “globalization,” but took specific forms. One was the steady expan- sion of the Russian state, which by the 17th century brought it to the doors of the Eurasian heartland, beyond in the North. Slowly, the power of the Turkic khans was eroded or violently attacked. In the 19th century Russia conquered and incorporated Khiva, Bukhara, Farghana, and Samarkand, into the Russian empire. The Russians moved in the direction of Afghanistan, causing a British response that led to serious fighting. This was to continue for decades. Trans- formed into a worldwide effort, it continues today, as the Western world tries to hold Afghanistan as an ally, and bring the other Central Asian countries into © Paul D. Buell et al., 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432109_007 This is an open access chapter distributedPaul D. Buell, under E.N. theAnderson, terms Montserratof the CC deBY-NC-ND Pablo Moya, 4.0 and license. Moldir Oskenbay - 9789004432109 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 07:05:35AM via free access _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien B2 voor dit chapter en dubbelklik nul hierna en zet 2 auteursnamen neer op die plek met and): 0 _full_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, vul hierna in): Food by Country _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 Food by Country 205 the world. Turkey has been particularly active in wooing the Turkic-speaking “-stans.” British influence on food was negligible, except in India. Russian influence has waxed steadily in the former USSR states and in Mongolia. Familiar today are borscht, Russian salads, favorite Russian foods like cucumbers and pickles, and more recently the whole suite of Russian canned, bottled, and preserved goods. Russian alcoholic and soft drinks are widespread, although lately Kore- an food is seriously competing with the Russian in Mongolia. Another effect of globalization was the coming of the New World food crops. They seem not to have been known in the region (beyond trivial incur- sions) until the 18th or even 19th centuries. After that, potatoes became very widespread, with tomatoes and New World beans widely known. Tomato- based stews exist, for example in Afghanistan. Chiles are far less widespread than in neighboring areas, but are still found widely in the southern border- lands. Commercialization and related economic forces, including communist central planning, led to the disastrous choice of abandoning food growing to ex- pand cotton farming. More positive was a sharp increase, especially in the 20th century, in cultivation of fruits, especially grapes, melons, mulberries, peaches, apricots, and apples (locally in the northwest). The melons are deservedly fa- mous. Commercialized grain farming came to areas where grassland could be cul- tivated, especially in Kazakhstan (the “virgin lands” developed from the 1950s) and Inner Mongolia; results have not been good. In general, commercialization of agriculture has had negative (even disastrous) effects on local populations in developing countries. Communism, with its detailed plans and government bureaucracies substituting for a freer market, has not had a stunning record of success. Neither has capitalism, either in neighboring lands or in post-Soviet Central Asia. One can only speculate as to what the ideal economic formation would be; the region has not found it yet. The following country by country survey reflects current information including a plethora of cookbooks. Many were clearly intended for foreign con- sumption. With modernization has also come improved scholarship in the countries of Western Turkistan. Now also found alongside the well-illustrated, and glossy cookbooks are works such as Dosymbek Qatran’s Qazaqtyng däs- turli as-tagham madenieti, “Culture of the Traditional Foods of the Kazakhs.” The author is a Kazakh (born in Mongolia) associated with the Kazakh Central Museum in Almaty. He not only presents a broad cross-section of traditional Kazakh foods, but gives a rich linguistic foundation for his works, from important terms to proverbs of the type so important in Kazakh life. Similar works Paul D. Buell, E.N. Anderson, Montserrat de Pablo Moya, and Moldir Oskenbay - 9789004432109 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 07:05:35AM via free access 206 Chapter 5 are now appearing in the other Turkistanian republics and in Mongolia, show- ing a new attitude to food history and past culture. 1 Afghanistan’s Food Louis Dupree, an anthropologist who spent many years in Afghanistan and loved the country and its people, provided a thorough ethnographic account of the food in his comprehensive book Afghanistan.1 Afghan food is typical of a much broader area and shows the influences that have repeatedly swept over the region. Dupree’s book represents the traditional foodways of 50 years ago. Little had changed at the time Anderson studied them in 1974, and as Helen Saberi recorded much more in the 1980s (see below). Over 40 years of civil war have now altered conditions completely, and chaotically. It seems worthwhile to record the old ways before even more has changed or been lost. Dupree’s book is, unfortunately, now rather hard to find, and deserves thorough coverage, so we will quote and summarize extensively, with our own ob- servations added. For the record, Dupree gathered information for the U.S. government, and if that government had listened to him, the horrific last 40 years of Afghanistan wars might have been avoided. Afghanistan’s dismal history needs no recounting here; it is too well known to the world. The country might not even exist, but for old imperialist rivalries. Suffice it to say that the usual problems with food supply—short-term policies, urban sprawl, water mismanagement, pollution and all—add themselves to the country’s endemic violence. Dupree begins with bread: “The Afghan does not live on bread (nan) alone, but he comes mighty close to it. At least eleven terms for bread exist in Pashto. Throughout much of Afghanistan, the term nan refers to food in general. Hot nan…is one of the world’s great foods.”2 This remains true today. Afghan chef Said Hofiani has recently written: “Bread is considered sacred and you shouldn’t abuse it or step over it.”3 This is true throughout much of the Middle East and Europe. The importance of bread in the Bible is well known. Bread is also made from mixed grains, including barley. In Nuristan, millet and maize breads are made. Dried mulberries and pulses find, or used to find, their way into bread; mulberries were a staple food in many areas before recent scorched-earth warfare eliminated the trees. Breads with potato or leek stuff- ings baked into them (bolani) resemble Indian stuffed parathas. 1 Dupree, Afghanistan, 224-238. 2 Dupree, Afghanistan, 224. 3 Hofiani (2008), Afghanistan Cuisine, 147. Paul D. Buell, E.N. Anderson, Montserrat de Pablo Moya, and Moldir Oskenbay - 9789004432109 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 07:05:35AM via free access Food by Country 207 Bread is usually baked in a tandur, a conical pottery or earth oven that rang- es from a couple of feet high to a vast room-sized underground village oven. A fire is built in the bottom and allowed to burn to coals. Then the breads are slapped against the wall, where they stick until they are done—at which time one must move fast to get the bread before it falls into the fire. It takes great skill with a long peel-board to get the breads off the walls of a deep earth oven. Besides tandur breads, chapatis, as in India, are eaten. They are usually cooked on a tawa (the “tava” of nearby regions), an iron sheet or griddle, often convex. A chapati-like tandur bread is lawausha (again familiar in Iran and Armenia as lavash; that a to au, i.e. short o, conversion again). The Indian paratha appears as a leavened griddle bread, naun-i-parauta.4 Hofiani,5 and other Afghan chefs,6 give recipes for rot (rhymes with “coat”).

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