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There are many casualties of war, the immediate and personal, but other losses go unnoticed until later. As culture is decimated amid global violence, food and culinary traditions can be the last remnants when everything else is left behind. Michael Shaikh , who has investigated war crimes for the UN's Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights , looks to those preserving their heritage after experiencing so much loss in our modern world. His new book is The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found.
Evan Kleiman: The book takes its title from a poem by former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo . Tell us about the poem and the work you did for the better part of a decade.
Well, the poem is something that I have kept on my desk, Miss Harjo's, poem for a very long time. It is called, " Perhaps the World Ends Here ," and it's about a kitchen table. It's about the myriad things that happen at a kitchen table. It becomes, it's a metaphor for life.
The poem gets into how life revolves around a kitchen table, families, gossip, life, death, good times, the bad times, how it acts as shelter in times of storm and just places where beauty takes place. It reminded me a lot of the many people that I have met throughout my human rights career investigating war crimes and genocide for different human rights organizations and the tremendous efforts they went through to preserve their food traditions in times of crisis.
You quote historian Aanchal Malhotra , "Partition is not yet a thing of the past." Would you share the story of your family, specifically as it relates to your father's side?
One of the roots of this book lies in the Partition of India and Pakistan . For the longest time, as a child, I really wondered why my father hadn't taught us Sindhi , his native language. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, we went to a lot of parties as a little kid, and my dad speaks multiple languages. I always thought he had these magic powers, and I kind of wanted them. I would ask my dad if he could teach me Sindhi. He would always say, "You don't need it. You're an American kid. You're not really going to speak it here. It's tough for me to teach it to you because I'm too busy being a physician and your mother doesn't speak it." It was an honest brush back. It was tough but I understood.
It wasn't until later on, as an adult, that I really started to understand the impact of the Partition of India and Pakistan on my family, and particularly my father. He was around 13 years old when the British cleaved India and Pakistan into two separate countries, and the violence was brutal, genocidal. Three million people, perhaps more, were killed, and huge amounts of people were displaced and moved across a brand new international border overnight.
As an adult, I started having conversations with my dad about our family history. It's the first time he kind of opened up to me about his experience with Partition. Long story short, I started to pry again with my dad about the language issue, and he told me, "Even if I could teach you Sindhi, I physically couldn't. Even if I wanted to, I physically couldn't." It was too painful for him. In many ways, the violence that he had witnessed with the splitting of India and Pakistan and losing so many friends and moving, having to move homes, that pain kind of fused on to parts of his culture and the things that he loved, and it just became painful for him to teach it to me.
Fast forward, I'm in Afghanistan, working for Human Rights Watch . I had been in the country for several years at that point, and I'm getting ready to leave and come back to New York City. A dear friend of mine, Tamim, has dinner for me, and there are these dishes on the table that I had never seen before. One, in particular, this Afghan chickpea stew called Saland-e Nakhod, but I hadn't seen it, I hadn't eaten it in my years in Afghanistan.
I asked Tamim if this was Afghan. The reason I asked Tamim if it was Afghan was because Tamim, like many Afghans, had been a refugee multiple times. He had been displaced from his home from Afghanistan. He had been in Pakistan, he had been moved to Iran, he was in Europe, then in the United States, and had come back during the American occupation of Afghanistan to help rebuild the country, like many Afghan from the diaspora did.
Tamim, he's a beautiful cook, and I thought that this meal, and this dish in particular, was some sort of fusion from his different life experiences. But when I asked him if it was Afghan, he said, of course it's Afghan. He explained to me that the reason I hadn't seen it before is because it was, in some ways, disappearing. Because of the war, families had forgotten how to make it or ingredients had been lost and memories had been lost and it just got very hard to make. It was just kind of falling out of the center of the cuisine.
In that moment, at Tamim's house for dinner, I saw the same kind of tentacles that had reached down through generations, that had stolen language from my family and my brother and sister and was doing that to Afghans, one recipe at a time.
Everywhere I went after that, I started asking people how the violence that I was investigating as a human rights researcher was affecting the culture around them — the music, the politics, the art, the architecture and the food.
Everyone had these amazing stories and tragic stories, sometimes about how the food was disappearing. Food became a real window into how violence really affects so much of our broader culture and our broader humanity than just the physical toll it takes on us as individuals and families and communities.
Michael Shaikh (left) and his father. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
Let's talk about some of these people you met and the stories. Let's start in the Czech Republic, where you heard from countless chefs that "Communism killed our cuisine." Talk a little bit about how collectivization changed what was farmed and therefore what was available.
Collectivization was this process that happened throughout the Soviet republics, and in Czech Republic, in particular, they collectivized farms, meaning that the government came in, or that the Communist Party came in and took over farms and made small family farms, big, gigantic, industrial farms. They basically told everybody the animals they could raise and the crops they could grow. It basically homogenized the cuisine.
Just imagine, every household eats differently in some ways, but because of collectivization, everyone only had access to the same ingredients all the time, so everything became standardized. Collectivization, that process was reflected in a series of cookbooks the Communist Party issued. They basically standardized the entire cuisine of what you could eat outside of your home. So every restaurant was basically cooking from the same cookbook, every canteen, every government cafeteria. Food was seen as calories only and not culture because everyone was supposed to be working in service of the Communist Party.
Tell us about Roman Vaněk and how he's working to modernize Czech cuisine by very purposefully reflecting on the past. He has this archive of over 14,000 cookbooks and menus.
Prague, at that time, the cuisine there was on par with some of the bigger culinary capitals in Europe. At the time, people would travel from other parts of Europe to eat in Prague. It was really a fashionable place, and the Nazis, when they occupied the Czech Republic and split it up, they really did a lot of damage to Czech cuisine and that First Republic high culture, and the rest of the cuisine as well. Then the Communists that took over after World War II further degraded the cuisine.
I love talking about Roman Vaněk. He is just this incredible guy. In the Czech Republic, he's kind of this Julia Child character, half-Anthony Bourdain character, and super lovely, very gregarious. He has this fizzing curiosity about food and life. He has one of the largest collections of old Czech cookbooks.
What he is trying to do, along with a variety of other chefs, he's not the only one, they're kind of these archeological chefs. They're going back to the future, in the sense that the period between World War I and World War II in the Czech Republic was called the First Republic, and it was seen as the high water mark of Czech cuisine.
Roman and a variety of other younger chefs are looking back to this First Republic period, this high water mark of Czech cuisine, and trying to recreate it, modernize, and take it forward. It's like this bit of a "back to the future" food, and it's really wonderful. I actually find that Prague is one of my favorite places to eat in Europe today because of some of the stuff that they're doing.
Roman Vaněk and other chefs look to the past to recreate and modernize Czech cuisine. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
Very interesting. Where did you meet Rajiva who, with other Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, made kanji from sea water instead of coconut milk as an act of resistance?
Yeah, this is a really tough story but a really beautiful one, in some ways. Rajiva, she is from the north of Sri Lanka. There was a roughly 30-year civil war that ended in about 2008, 2009 in Sri Lanka that was fought between the dominant Sinhalese South and the Elam Tamil North. The Tamils in Sri Lanka refer to themselves as the Elam Tamils to distinguish themselves from Tamils in Southern India.
This brutal civil war ended basically on a beach called Mullivaikkal . It's a beach no bigger than Central Park in New York City. For days and days, Tamil civilians were shelled by the Sri Lankan military from air, land, and sea. They were pinned on this beach and they didn't really have much to eat. They had a few handfuls of rice that they brought with them as they escaped onto this beach for safety, which turned out to be one of the most dangerous places in the world at the time.
Usually, this dish, kanji , is something that many Tamils eat on a daily basis. It's really a comfort food. People eat it for breakfast, they eat it whenever. But because there was nothing else to eat on the beach, they were forced to use seawater to boil their rice. So today, many of those survivors and their families, in the middle of May to commemorate their loved ones who died on that beach, will eat kanji made of rice and salt water. And it's not just Tamils in Sri Lanka, it's Tamils across the world, in refugee and diaspora communities that do that to commemorate that day.
But Rajiva, she was an Elam Tamil who survived that beach, and she escaped through the compassion of a Sri Lankan Navy officer who turned a blind eye and let her get on a fishing boat to cross the Palk Strait that separates Sri Lanka and India, where she became a refugee at the end of the war. I met her in Southern India, in Tamil Nadu,
An act as simple — and as complicated — as rolling out dough can tie a community together because sharing food is a "form of social cohesion," Michael Shaikh explains. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
A reminder that the act of one individual can have rippling, good repercussions.
Indeed, indeed.
Tell us about Maryam, who fled Myanmar in 2017 when she was pregnant and ended up joining nearly 800,000 refugees in Bangladesh.
Maryam is a very special person. I have known her family for quite some time. I met them when I was working for the UN in Myanmar, investigating the early stages of the genocide and the final act of that of that genocide in 2017 . She and her family were forced to flee Rakhine State in Myanmar, where the majority of Rohingya used to live in 2017 when the Myanmar military just basically razed entire villages. She fled across Bangladesh into these gigantic refugee camps where about a million Rohingya live right now.
She is a wonderful, wonderful cook who is using food and her cuisine, and she sees it as a love language, but more of a duty and a responsibility to help her children, and also her neighbor's children and others hold on to their Rohingya culture.
Rohingya food is really special. It's a cuisine that I don't think many people in the world, if they have never heard of the Rohingya people, would understand their food. I don't think there's a Rohingya restaurant in the United States at the moment. But their cuisine is spectacular. It kind of straddles South Asia and Southeast Asia, and there's these beautiful fish curries and beautiful beef curries and really incredible salads .
For many Rohingya, eating well from the land was basically their motto. Everyone had their own farms, they had their own ponds, rice fields before they fled. Now, in the refugee camps, they have been completely isolated from their food culture. They can't garden anymore. They can't farm anymore. They're not pulling fish out of their ponds. They are almost exclusively relying on humanitarian aid, and that food often doesn't reflect the food from their culture.
So while there are informal markets in these camps that do have food that resembles much of what they've eaten in Myanmar... and for your listeners, the refugee camps in Bangladesh are not very far away, only 30, 40, miles away from the border of Rakhine, so the ingredients can grow on that land but because they're in the refugee camps, they don't have access to it. While there are markets in some of these camps, they can't afford the food that is sold in these markets because the Bangladeshi government doesn't allow them to work. So they're relying heavily, almost exclusively, on handouts from humanitarian organizations, which are being cut drastically as a result of the USAID cuts and the cuts to US funding for humanitarian aid across the world.
The US was one of the largest funders of Rohingya relief in Bangladesh, and because of DOGE cuts, it's been quite dramatic what's happening. Even before those cuts the pressure on the Rohingya to be able to cook their own food was really incredible. And a woman like Maryam basically fought every day to figure out how she could make food that was close enough to what she cooked at home in order to keep a connection to that land and to that culture for her children and others, and it's incredible.
People come to her little shanty and ask her to cook, because she is the one that somehow magically can take these ingredients and turn them into things that taste like people can remember from home in Rakhine State.
A woman prepares food in Kutupalong, the world's largest refugee camp. Located in Bangladesh, it is inhabited mostly by Rohingya refugees from nearby Myanmar. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
That's very special. What is goru ghuso and the significance of its distribution and reinforcing family and political relationships?
Great question. Goru ghuso is a Rohingya dish. It's a beef curry. If there was a dish that defines Rohingya cuisine, it would be this beef curry because that beef comes from the cattle that graze this beautiful land. Oftentimes, during Muslim feast days, the wealthy and the well off in the community would make beef curries, this Goru Gusso, and hand it out to the less fortunate. One of the main tenants of Islam is caring for and being compassionate to your neighbors and those less well off. So it was a way of when political leaders or community leaders would pass this food out on these holidays, it would reinforce the societal organization of their community.
In the camps, that can't happen, again, because of restrictions on Rohingya being able to work. They can't afford beef. There's not actually handed out that much in the humanitarian aid package as they do get so they're unable to make it often. Also, the Bangladeshi government restricts people's movement inside the camp, so you can't really travel extensively within the camp to see relatives who live in another part of the camp. You can't do these types of food distributions very readily. So the societal and political leadership and organizational leadership or organization that kept the Rohingya community together has collapsed because they're not able to do these kind of food distributions on these very special days.
So what's happened is, by the weakening of these communal ties that circulate around food and its connection to their faith, it's allowed other types of violence to seep into the community. When the societal fabric frays, like anywhere else, people take advantage of that. It opens up rooms for abuse of young girls. It opens up abuse for traffickers to steal young girls and steal young boys to fight in Myanmar.
It's a really tragic thing, and it shows you just how powerful food can be and our cuisines and how much they tie our communities together because they are a form of identity and a form of social cohesion.
"The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found" explores cuisine in conflict zones. Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House.
Let's talk about the Uyghurs. Mutton is the bedrock of their cuisine. How are policies pricing them out of their own food culture?
Uyghur cuisine is really wonderful . The Uyghurs are a Turkic nation in western China. Many follow Islam, but their cuisine is more central Asian than it is mainland Chinese. Whether all noodles, for sure, there are big rice dishes like pulau that feel a little bit more Central and South Asian than Eastern Chinese. The bedrock, as you mentioned, is lamb.
What has happened in western China is that the Chinese Communist Party since the days of Mao and even before, actually, they started colonizing, bringing Han Chinese from the East into into the West to dilute Uyghur nationhood and culture, because the Communist Party has been very sensitive and anxious about Uyghur nationalism.
In the 1920s and 30s there was a period of Uyghur independent states. Since then, they've been very anxious about it, and have, over the course of decades, become extremely brutal in suppressing Uyghur nationalism and the Uyghur identity out of fear of separatism.
In that process, Han Chinese have brought with them their cultural traditions, their food traditions. The Communist Party has appropriated a lot of Uyghur farmland to raise cattle, which take up a lot more land and use a lot more water, a lot more grass, than lamb do, and sheep. So the sheep have been pushed off of this land. More importantly, the farmers have been pushed off this land. They've lost their livelihoods, and therefore the lamb that does exist is incredibly expensive, and it's pricing the Uyghurs out of their own food.
Uyghurs, I'm told through reports of people who have been there more recently than I have, are being forced to replace lamb with beef in some of these dishes. Not only that, from a cultural perspective, the Communist Party is even forcing Uyghurs to eat pork in some cases, and pork is anathema to Islamic culture and Uyghur culture, so it is quite dramatic and profound what's happening to Uyghur cuisine in China.
That being said, the Uyghur diaspora, and there's a quite a large one in California and here in the United States, have been like many other diasporas, like the Tamil diaspora and the Rohingya diaspora here in the US, the Uyghur diaspora has been a really profound source of inspiration and preservation for their food cultures and other parts of their culture here.
It really is testament to the role that diasporas play in keeping food cultures alive. In some ways it kind of falls to them and shouldn't. I really believe that cultures should be able to decide on their terms how their cuisine and their culture changes, not on the terms of an invading army.
Yeah, because often doing that, the cuisine becomes set in amber, a moment of the past, rather than being able to organically shift and change.
Yeah, and that's one of the things, I'm not trying to make an argument about authenticity in this book. There are a lot of chefs that I've met who understand, and home cooks understand, that your cuisine is going to change when it comes in contact with other cultures. That's natural and it's beneficial in a lot of ways. But again, that should happen organically and not on the terms of, say, the Communist Party of China or an invading army.
"If there was a dish that defines Rohingya cuisine, it would be this beef curry," known as Goru Ghuso, says Michael Shaikh. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
Maryam’s Goru Ghuso (Beef Curry)
Serves 6
There are two ways to make this curry. One method is known as gaita-style, in which you mix most of the raw ingredients together at the start and cook them all at once. It’s the way very experienced cooks like Maryam make this dish, and it yields a tremendously luscious curry. But it requires constant vigilance and repeatedly fine-tuning the cooking heat; it is hard to get right without a lot of practice.
This recipe uses Maryam’s ingredients but follows the second method of preparation—an easier step-by-step process that should be familiar to most cooks. For this second method, I consulted with Maryam as well as a few Rohingya friends here in the United States, including Sharifah Shakirah, whose organization, the Rohingya Women’s Development Network, has been documenting recipes throughout the Rohingya diaspora.
It’s a recipe that works pretty well. To make this curry, you’ll need Indian bay leaves, which are olive green, longer and narrower than the laurel bay leaf, and have a slight cinnamon flavor. You’ll also need pandan leaf, a long, slender tropical leaf prized for its grassy, buttery, and subtly sweet flavor. Indian bay leaves and pandan leaves can be found in South Asian and Southeast Asian markets or online. Garam masala, an aromatic and pungent blend of warm spices that varies from region to region and household to household, is available in well-stocked supermarkets. If you like to make yours from scratch, Ro Yassin’s family garam masala recipe follows. Finally, this dish is meant to be fiery. I have included a range for the chilies and you can adjust the heat depending on the type you’re using and your own tolerance for heat. I recommend making the chili mixture first and adding it a spoonful at a time to the curry. Always taste before adding more to see if the heat is to your liking. Also, keep in mind that the chili heat will mellow when it cools, so serve this dish warm, not steaming hot.
Ingredients
5 to 10 small dried red chilies, such as árbol or Kashmiri
5 to 10 small fresh green chilies, such as Thai or serrano
Kosher salt
1 to 11⁄2 pounds red or Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 teaspoon red chili powder, such as Indian or cayenne (optional)
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon garam masala
5 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
5 whole cloves
4 or 5 dried Indian bay leaves
1 fresh pandan leaf, torn into thirds
1 tablespoon peanut oil, plus more as needed
2 pounds boneless beef short ribs or 3 to 4 pounds bone-in beef short ribs, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 medium red onions, finely chopped
2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced
5 to 7 garlic cloves, finely minced
Lime wedges for squeezing (optional)
For serving
Fresh cilantro leaves
Cooked short-grain white rice
Lime wedges
Fresh green chilies, such as Thai or serrano
Instructions
Put the dried chilies into a small bowl and add warm water to cover. Let soak for 10 minutes to soften, then drain, setting aside the soaking liquid. Stem the softened dried and fresh green chilies and transfer to a mortar or a food processor. Add 1 tablespoon of the reserved soaking liquid and a pinch of salt and grind with a pestle or process until reduced to a chunky paste. Discard the remaining soaking liquid and set the chili paste aside.
In a large saucepan, combine the potatoes with water to cover by 1 to 2 inches. Add a big pinch of salt and the chili powder, if using, and stir to dissolve. Bring to a boil over high heat, turn down the heat to a simmer, and boil gently until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife but still hold their shape; start checking after 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
In a small bowl, stir together the turmeric, garam masala, cardamom pods, peppercorns, cloves, 1 teaspoon salt, the bay leaves, and the pandan leaf. Set the leaf-spice mixture aside.
In a large, heavy pot, heat the oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Working in batches to avoid crowding, add the beef and sear, turning as needed to color evenly, until browned on all sides. As each batch is ready, use a slotted spoon to transfer it to a plate. Set the browned beef aside.
Add oil to the pot as needed to equal 1⁄4 cup fat. Skip the oil or reduce the amount if there is enough rendered beef fat to continue cooking. Heat the oil/fat over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant, about 3 minutes.
Return the meat to the pot, then add the reserved chili paste and leaf-spice mixture, stir to mix well, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 to 3 minutes. Add water just to cover the meat and bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Turn down the heat to low, cover, and simmer gently, stirring occasionally and adjusting the seasoning with salt and a few squeezes of lime if needed, until the meat is fork-tender, 1 to 2 hours, but start checking after 45 minutes.
Add the reserved cooked potatoes to the pot and stir gently to mix them into the curry. Using the back of a spoon, break one or two potatoes against the side of the pot to release their starch and help thicken the curry. Cover and cook over low heat for a few minutes to rewarm the potatoes.
Remove the curry from the heat, uncover, and let cool for about 10 minutes before serving. Serve the curry from the pot or in a serving bowl. Top with the cilantro and serve with the rice, lime wedges, and whole chilies to nibble on for extra heat.
The Afghan chickpea stew Saland-e Nakhod is disappearing because ingredients are unavailable and families have forgotten how to make it. Photo by Michael Shaikh.
Tamim’s Saland-e Nakhod (Afghan Chickpea Stew)
Serves 3 to 4
This is Tamim’s recipe for saland-e nakhod, the richly spiced chickpea dish I ate at his Kabul home in the summer of 2007 that sparked the idea for this book. Here I am serving it with rice, but on that evening, I scooped up the stew with pieces of Afghan naan. Wheat is among Afghanistan’s largest cereal crops, and stacks of wheat naan appear at nearly every local baker and sit alongside dishes at nearly every Afghan meal. Although Afghan naan is made in a tandoor like other versions in Central and South Asia, it differs in shape, texture, and taste. Afghan naan is long, sometimes up to two feet, and slightly thicker than most other versions in the region. It’s crusty on the outside and chewy inside with a delicate smoky flavor from the masala of salt, sesame seeds, and nigella seeds. Most Afghans purchase naan from their local baker. Rice is the second most important cereal crop and is the basis of not only the national dish, qabuli palaw, but of many other rice dishes, from orange-scented narenj palaw to sweet-and-sour zereshk palaw.
Basmati rice goes really well with Tamim’s saland-e nakhod, but feel free to substitute it with naan; a good Afghan restaurant will have fresh stacks on hand. And if you live near San Diego, Kabul Kabob House in El Cajon has the best naan (and Afghan food) I’ve tasted outside Afghanistan. However, if you’d really like to make your own bread to go with this dish, there’s a recipe for an incredibly delicious Afghan sourdough (see page xxxiv).
Ingredients
2 cups dried chickpeas
1 cup plain full-fat Greek yogurt
2 or 3 garlic cloves
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 fresh green chili (such as Thai or serrano), stemmed and finely chopped, plus a few whole chilies for serving
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 small tomato, very finely chopped
Fresh cilantro, whole leaves or chopped, for serving
Cooked basmati rice for serving
Instructions
Pick over the chickpeas and discard any with shriveled or broken skin and any bits of grit. Place the chickpeas in a large fine-mesh sieve and rinse well under cold running water. Transfer to a large bowl, add water to cover generously, and let soak overnight.
The next day, put the yogurt into a small bowl. Finely grate two garlic cloves over the yogurt and add a pinch of salt. Stir well and then taste. You want to taste the garlic, so don’t hesitate to grate the remaining clove if it is needed. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the yogurt.
In a medium, heavy pot, warm the oil over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the onion and chopped chili and cook, stirring often, until the onion is lightly golden and the chili is softened, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric, and pepper and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the tomato and 1 teaspoon salt and mix well.
Drain the chickpeas, add to the pot, and add water to cover by 1 inch. Stir well and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat so the mixture is at a gentle simmer. Cover partially and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chickpeas are tender and the liquid has reduced to a thick soup consistency, 45 minutes to 1 hour (but start checking at 30 minutes).
Remove from the heat, taste, and adjust the seasoning with salt if needed. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the garlic yogurt. Taste and add more yogurt if desired. Transfer the stew to a serving bowl and top with cilantro. Serve immediately, accompanied with the remaining garlic yogurt, warm rice, and whole chilies to nibble on for extra heat. |