The increasingly indispensable Roads & Kingdoms blog has a wonderful new piece that takes a look at the Azeri tradition of cooking up khash, a hearty though labor-intensive stew made using a sheep's head, hooves and stomach that have gone through various processes in order to render the final product. What I found particularly interesting about the piece, written by Mark Hay, was its suggestion that for Azeris, cooking khash was as much a political act as a culinary one. From the article:
Staking out a claim on khash, naming it as something uniquely Azerbaijani, is a far weightier thing to do in the Caucasus than it is for Florida or Massachusetts to claim key lime or Boston cream pies, respectively, as their own though. Naming a food here is a political act, filled with fire and vigorm, as the contest over foods has been imbued with the long-simmering tensions of regional border disputes.
During the Soviet era, the Caucasus was a site of mass expulsions of ethinc groups. Afterwards, it was wracked by violence over ethnic-historical land claims and slippery borders. The last decade has been, in contrast, calm. Yet the accusations still fly, especially between Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia (who technically remain at war): the other side is a destroyer of culture, usurper of history and identity. While total war stays on the table, both nations now assert their claims through an all-pervading cultural war. This includes Armenia’s boycott of the Eurovision song contest in the Azerbaijani capital Baku. Or the implicit Azerbaijani threats to shoot down commercial planes that try to land at airports in Nagorno-Karabakh. Or the protests at the start of the year against former Azerbaijani politician and current novelist Ekrem Eylisli for sympathizing with Armenian claims in his novella “Stone Dreams.” But spend any time eating khash in Mardakan and it will become clear: in Azerbaijan today, food is the real front line.
Of course, as chronicled on this blog, khash is not the only dish that has led to food fights in the Caucasus, with the origins of keshkek, dolma and wine all being contested regionally. We can now, it seems, add khash to the list of dishes who pack as much political power as flavor.
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