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Food chat
Prepared By : By Qassim Khidir and Eleni Fergadi
The Kurdish Globe NO. 145 Feb. 06. 2008

Legume-based dishes, dairy, tea, and veggies define us.
Chatting about traditional Kurdish food and a yearning to return to old-style dishes is bound to leave readers starving for more.

Many like meat, others love fish, and some can't live without their coffee every morning. Food is important for everyone, not only because it fills the belly, but also because it is a matter of chemistry. What people generally do not pay attention to is that food is also part of a culture, an identity which either we have assumed or have been raised into; in a way, food designates who we are.

In all of Kurdistan there are a variety of vegetable and grain or legume-based dishes, some meat-based ones, and only a few of fish, which are always accompanied with bulgur. Raisins and grape jams are also particular to the areas where grapes are grown. Dairy products are very popular; yogurt is often served on the side and there are a variety of cheeses either made with cow's or goat's milk. Unlike the general perception, meat was not part of the daily diet of the Kurds and has only been introduced as such with the expansion of restaurants and corner shops. Of course one should mention tea, which accompanies every meal of the day; although it is difficult to find good tea being served, it is traditionally brewed with cinnamon and/or???. Dishes of the area include spinach leaves with eggs, wheat and lentil soup, sweet turnip, red-lentil soup, beef and meat soup, stuffed milk lamb (otherwise known as kaburga) with rice, almonds, and raisins.

Seventy-four-year-old Halima Ahmed and her daughter, Sabria Majeed, age 49, live in Erbil. They told The Globe that what people see in restaurants is not traditional Kurdish food. "People at home, ordinary people, eat rice with chicken, kfta (a type of kuba) and dolma," said Mrs. Majeed. "When I was a child," said Mrs.

Halima, "people used to eat what they produced, mainly wheat-based dishes like sawar. We call the dish sawar when we grind wheat into some shape; when we boil special wheat, good quality wheat, we call it ganma kuta. We also made pir xani, which we later learned is very popular with the old people who have difficulty chewing.

Ordinary people ate meat only on special occasions or during the Kurban. Dishes like rice with meat, dolma, chicken, and beef soup are also served on special occasions. Soups are very popular in the area; during Muslim feasts the classic dish is apricot soup and at weddings and funerals cabbage or dried bean soup. "Old dishes were very healthy," said Mrs. Halima. "They were natural, not like the ones young people eat today, full of chemicals and oil. People today eat too much meat and that is not good for them." Mrs. Majeed added, "Unfortunately I rarely cook these old dishes. When I do cook them, I only do so just for me and my mother since the rest of the family does not eat them because they complain that they're tasteless."