Kurdish cooking sites lend a helping hand to food lovers

By Élena-S. Eilmes

COLOGNE, Germany – Ten years ago, when she met the Kurdish man she would marry, Londoner Tanya Rashid wanted to cook him the dishes he remembered from childhood. But when she could not find the recipes she wanted in books or online, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Rashid, whose mother is English and her father Bangladeshi, grew up around the Indian restaurants her brother ran in the United Kingdom. She had always loved cooking and found it easy to adapt new techniques. After two trips to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2008 and 2011, Tanya got to work: she began to recreate dishes she had tasted from memory, tweaking them until she was happy with the outcome.

As she coped with the challenges of a new,  mixed marriage, she started her Facebook page, “Kurdish recipes.“

“Today, the page hosts hundreds of recipes, all with photos and detailed instructions, and both an Instagram and Twitter account have been added. Every recipe that goes up has been tested by Tanya herself first.

“I like to make my recipes user friendly and as easy to follow as possible,” she explains.

For her family, she cooks both classic Kurdish dishes and others that are more fusion style -- and she is not alone in this.

Home cooking in Kurdistan has changed quite a bit: with more ingredients available nowadays, countless cooking shows on TV, recipes online and relatives who have lived abroad and brought back new twists to traditional dishes, Kurdish housewives have broadened their culinary horizons.

Kurdish cuisine is developing rapidly, and the same same goes for Kurdish cooking in Europe.

Tanya remembers that at the beginning of their marriage her husband had to bring suitcases full of spices and special ingredients back to the UK from his Kurdistan trips.

“Today, you can just go out and buy most of what is needed, either in Indian shops or small Kurdish supermarkets which have been opening all over the country,” she told Rudaw.

Most Kurdish girls learn cooking by watching their mothers and grandmothers, taking on small tasks early on. Tanya wants to help out those without a chance for hands-on lessons.

“Most of the people frequenting my site are not necessarily Kurdish. Some are already brilliant cooks in their native cuisines and just want to add something new to their repertoire. Others have not cooked much before and I hope I can help them with cooking.”

She advises beginners to start with the basics, like simple rice, which Kurds like to mix with roasted vermicelli for added texture, and uncomplicated dishes like lamb and okra stew to accompany the rice dish. “After a while, the rest will fall into place,” she promises.

While the interaction with others is mostly pleasant, Tanya has had her share of unedifying encounters.

“There has been the occasional Kurdish home cook who blatantly told me that my food was not Kurdish, and that as a non-Kurd I had no business running a Kurdish recipe site anyway.”

Like Tanya’s themed pages in English, other Swedish, German and Sorani groups have been founded that allow members to not only enjoy a vast array of recipes, but to interact and exchange recipes.

Azad Efrin, a Kurdish student living in Berlin, founded his German language Facebook group “Kurdisches Essen –XwarînenKurdî” last February. While he enjoys cooking as much as eating, his motivation was not purely food related.

“I found that even with the most random groups, politics still played a major role. I became fed up with the constant fighting and propaganda when all I wanted was to find a recipe for, say, homemade village cheese.”

In his own group, which Azad runs with two co-admins, he tries to keep things strictly food related, not allowing political posts at all.

“We also have a rule to please post in either German or Kurdish. Not everyone understands Turkish,” he explains.

Group members – numbers quickly reached thousands – are a colorful mix of Kurds from all four parts of Kurdistan and Germans. Even Azad’s own mother participates: “I sometimes check what she has been cooking before stopping by my parents’ house,“ he reveals.

Members range from Kurdish students missing their mothers’ food over new wives trying to learn new dishes, to Germans who have been introduced to Kurdish delicacies by Kurdish neighbors.

Conny Friedli, a professional chef from Switzerland, utilizes the group to learn more about Kurdish cuisine for private reasons: “My fiancé is Kurdish and I use the group to gather ideas.”

Inspiration can also be found in another medium: slowly, Kurdish food is also conquering Instagram.

A quick search results in several accounts showcasing Kurdish dishes, from collections of quickly-snapped family meals to carefully styled shots that look as if they are taken from the pages of a magazine. Several are open to contributions from everyone who is willing to share their meals, while others are the creative outlet of their owner only, or linked to either a blog or a professional catering business.

Loyce Were, who is currently graduating with a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Bonn in Germany, sums it up: “If you are not familiar with a cuisine and how things are done a certain way, you can get lost easily. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Kurdish mother, friend or mother-in-law, so the visuals provided by a video would certainly help.”