The Director of the Azerbaijani Cuisine Center, Tair Amiraslanov, has given an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza. He spoke about special features of Azerbaijani cuisine, its development during the post-Soviet period, and many other things associated with cookery in Azerbaijan. We publish the third part of the interview, touching upon the development of cuisine tourism.
- What is the most ancient Azerbaijani cuisine, which is still cooked today?
- If we speak about antiquity, there was no writing in remote ages; that is why, it is difficult to say what cuisines existed. In ancient written sources, for example, the book “Kitabi Dede Gorgud” contains such cuisines as yakhne, buglamach, sagra. They exist in our cookery today, either names or technologies.
Oguzname says about khingal. Once upon a time Bora Khan decided to visit his soldiers. All soldiers starved because the fortress’s siege. They had only flour. Bora Hang take flour, added water, stir dough, tore it in pieces, boiled it and put on it yogurt from horse milk and gave it to the soldiers. They liked it and called the cuisine Khan Gel (Khan, come), i.e. “Khan, come again and cook the cuisine for us.” Perhaps, Bora Khan had many times eaten this cuisine, for he was fast to cook it for the soldiers.
In XVII-XVIII centuries in Gabala distillatory still was found, which was used for making alcohol drinks and floral attar. Kitabi Dede Gorgud describes an alcohol drink made through distillatory. There is a way how make distillatory still out of kettle.
Archeologists found the most ancient boiler in Egypt. It is more than 2000 year-old. Khoga is a Chinese boiler, it is 1000 year old. In Sheki, Azerbaijan, a boiler was found which is 3700 year old. Creation of boiler is a crucial moment in the history of cookery, and it was created by our grandfathers.
If we visit Gobustan which is 40 000 year old, we can see mountain goats with lines marking their bodies on cave drawings. These drawings show partition of carcass meat. It means that in Azerbaijan there was a cookery school, where pupils were told how should be cooked this or that part of the carcass. These facts witness that Azerbaijan is a cradle of cookery culture of the world. We can be proud of it.
We like sharing, because the centre of the Azerbaijani cookery philosophy is a guest. Hospitability is in English and gonagperverlik is in Azerbaijani. This word means friendship, welcoming, nursing, taking care, moving about and pleasing. This is our ancient spiritual legacy. We have always had separate rooms for guests in houses. The legacy reflects in the sphere of tourism today. In our country a tourists feels a resident, he or she doesn’t differ from local people, as we speak Russian, Azerbaijani and English. We have Russian universities, schools, kindergartens. People from the former Soviet Union can come and rest in the country.
- How does cookery encourage development of tourism?
- In 2000 the World Tourist Organization held the conference which analyzed 82 countries in the sphere of cookery. It appeared that 80% of tourists remember the country because of cookery. A tourist should eat three times a day. If food is vapid or a tourist suffers food poisoning, he will have very negative memories about the country. Tourists prefer to taste the country. Our ministry of culture and tourism and our president are following carefully development of tourism, that is why we have to be ready for an inflow of tourists.
I think cookery tourism in Azerbaijan will develop as a separate branch.
To be continued
Interview by Ramin Naziyev, Baku. Exclusively to VK.
