ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – From the earliest days of civilization, food has been the beating heart of humanity -- the center around which life revolves. Across cultures and throughout history, in war and in peace, the universal experience of eating has brought people together.
Food and the way it is prepared can also provide an understanding of how different cultures around the world have evolved over time to navigate the offerings and obstacles of daily life.
“Food is a way to make sense of things and I’m interested in how people connect with food,” says Naomi Duguid, an internationally-renowned Canadian food writer. She recently traveled to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as part of a larger journey to explore the Persian culinary connection throughout the area, collecting material for her most recent book project.
Often described as a “geographer of food” or a “culinary anthropologist,” Duguid says food is a way to get a three-dimensional feel of the places she travels to.
“Food and agriculture are a way to understand the landscape and how people creatively manage in their different environments. Human creativity is remarkable in how people deal with shortages. And the way people cook is one way of managing shortages, which some traditions have been born out of,” she explains.
Duguid focuses on home-cooking and learns local recipes and cooking methods through cultural immersion, hanging around kitchens and observing people at work.
Before Duguid travels somewhere, she says she verses herself in the regional history and geography, but will not read about food or look through cookbooks. Going in with no preconceptions about local food and cooking makes it easier to recognize subtleties and differences, she says.
“I don’t want to go in with a list of expectations of seeing certain things. I like to go in with no knowledge of food and see what I find once I’m there. After I visit somewhere, and have developed my own conceptions, then I’ll crosscheck with other resources and talk to people. But I don’t want those impressions beforehand.”
Duguid spent most of her time in Halabja and Sulaimani, staying with the family of a Kurdish friend from Canada. She describes the cultural immersion she experienced as spectacular.
“It was completely wonderful, and I feel very lucky being welcomed into the family like that. I learnt an enormous amount about home-cooking and basic food patterns,” she says, “Kurdish hospitality and the generosity of spirit here is truly open-armed and extraordinary.”
Of all the new food she was exposed to, Duguid has a particular fondness for brinji rash, a type of black Kurdish rice, which she says is handled deliciously, and cardoon, the naturally occurring form of artichoke native to the Mediterranean region. It can be prepared several different ways, her favorite being cooked with a bit of egg.
Duguid was also able to visit some of the area's notable historical sites, including Amedi and Lalish, and says that reading about the history of the area while traveling here made the landscape speak, adding another layer to the experience.
The larger area Duguid is exploring for her latest book on the Persian culinary connection stretches from northern (Turkish) Kurdistan to the Caucasus countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, plus Iran in the east. The idea to write about Persian food and its regional influence came to her in the fall of 2012 after the release of her latest book. Duguid says she started researching immediately, and set things in motion in the spring of 2013 with a trip to Georgia.
While countries like Georgia and Armenia are easy to travel to, the difficulty of obtaining visas for countries like Iran and Azerbaijan have presented Duguid with greater logistical challenges than she has experienced in past travels.
Duguid says she would like to return to the Kurdistan Region at some point, but has to get to Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Kurdish area of Iran first in order to wrap up her project.
Duguid has previously co-authored six award-winning books on food and travel in Asia. Her most recent book, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, published in October 2012, won the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) culinary travel cookbook award in April 2013, and has been nominated for numerous other cookbook awards.
Gourmet Magazine, and others, have credited Duguid and former co-author Jeffrey Alford with creating a new genre of cookbooks, which include photographs and stories and are as much about travel and culture as they are about recipes.
Speaking to her unique way of exploring the world, Duguid says, “The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. But you also start to see more.”
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