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Author goes beyond borders with dishes

Cookbook shows just how much people from the Mediterranean have in common

LAURA BREHAUT Recipes excerpted from Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

Stretching the boundaries of what a cookbook can be, Yasmin Khan's latest, Ripe Figs (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021), leaves a mark.

Through sharing stories of connection, compassion and resilience, the London-based food and travel writer puts a face on the Eastern Mediterranean refugee crisis.

Khan's accounts of people who fled to Turkey, Greece and Cyprus in search of safety, as well as locals organizing on a grassroots level, are heartening.

Scribbling down notes while meeting with migrants or cooking in community kitchens, she started with the stories. Upon returning home, she tapped into her travels to develop recipes inspired by the food culture of the Eastern Mediterranean and the refugees who have landed there.

As with her previous two books — Zaitoun (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019) and The Saffron Tales (Bloomsbury USA, 2016), focusing on Palestinian and Iranian, respectively — Khan uses food as a means of promoting understanding.

Her aim with Ripe Figs, she says, is to “try and get beyond the stereotypes and show the human side of migration and also, the stories behind why people move.”

Khan arrived at the idea of focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean after reading the novel Exit West (Riverhead Books, 2017) by Mohsin Hamid, in which migration is a central theme.

“It was so powerful and so moving as a work of fiction. And I remember putting it down and thinking, `Wow, this is really going to be one of the issues that defines the next century,'” recalls Khan.

Simultaneously, she had been noticing a heightened focus on borders around the world — including former U.S. president Donald Trump's “Muslim ban.”

After a string of crowded boats capsized in the Mediterranean Sea and an increasing number of migrants drowned, “it all just came together to really motivate me to want to write a book about this theme.”

The Eastern Mediterranean was an ideal place to explore issues of borders and migration, she adds. Not only because of the record number of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants arriving there, but the fact that its shifting frontiers have been disputed for more than a millennium.

However, “if the regional border politics can leave you confused, it is strikingly easy to understand the food culture of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus,” Khan writes.

Each country has its own distinct cuisine — and within it, regional and village-to-village specialties — but in Ripe Figs, she focuses on similarities: “And you see so many on the Eastern Mediterranean table.”

Mezze — small shared plates featuring seasonal, locally grown produce, washed down with anise-flavoured spirits — is one such culinary tie that binds. As is a love of grilling meat over hot coals, whether it's souvlaki in Greece, kebabs in Turkey or sheftalia in Cyprus.

And then there are fresh herbs, olives and olive oil, legumes, flatbreads and abundant dairy (especially yogurt, sheep and goat cheeses).

“There's just so much similarity in the region's cuisine. When we're exploring what borders mean in today's world, sometimes it's really useful to imagine a place without these lines that we've decided to draw on them,” says Khan. “And perhaps look at the culture being more of a thing that connects people in a place rather than these artificial borders.”

Though the majority of the recipes in Ripe Figs were inspired by the native cuisines of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, several serve as a nod to the movement of people through the region. Khan's exchanges with migrants from places including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen are reflected in dishes such as chana masala and Rakhine chicken curry.

“Food can have such meaning to migrants,” says Khan, “because it connects us to feelings of home, feelings of comfort, feelings of safety.”

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2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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