The Director of the Azerbaijani Cuisine Center, Tair Amiraslanov, has given an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza. He spoke about special feature of Azerbaijani cuisine, its development during the post-Soviet period, eutrophy and many other things associated with cookery in Azerbaijan. We publish the first part of the interview, touching upon the idea and process of establishing the Azerbaijani Cuisine Center.
- How did you come to the world of cookery and become the main culinary specialist of Azerbaijan?
- I graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Soviet Trade, from the faculty of organization and psychology of public catering. I had good teachers. Thanks to them, my future life has been successful. For example, I owe much to the late Nikolai Ivanovich Kovalev in my personal development. Having graduated from the institute, I came back to Azerbaijan and started to work in the Ganja public catering trust. I established the Club of Culinary Experts. In 1985 I set myself the aim of establishing the Association of Culinary Specialists of Azerbaijan. At that time this branch was insufficiently explored and it offered wide prospects for development. There was a need to study Azerbaijani ethnic cuisine and cuisines of the world for the introduction, development and propagation of our cuisine all over the world. I was a founder of the Association of Culinary Experts of the USSR, initiated by the editorial board of Food and Society magazine. I became the trustee of the Association and headed the publicity department. In addition, there was a scientific organization called «Trade and Public Catering» in Azerbaijan, headed by Jusif Alekperov.
We started to develop this branch together. In 1987 the AzSSR Ministry of Trade raised the question of establishing a culinary center in Azerbaijan. Soon the Minister of Trade of the AzSSR, Agasalim Bagirov, considered it necessary to transfer me from Ganja to Baku. I have headed the public catering department at the introduction of scientific achievements in trade and public catering of the Ministry of Trade and started to establish the new organization. In 1991, for the first time in post-Soviet territory, a professional center for Azerbaijani national cuisine was created. The establishment process was full of difficulties - there was the war and many officials put forward counter-arguments. They said it was a bad time for establishing such organizations, because the people wouldn't understand it and it would look like a feast during the plague. However, thanks to the foresight of prime minister Gasan Gasanov and minister of trade Agasalim Bagirov, the Cabinet of Ministers authorized the establishment of our organization.
The presentation of the Association of Culinary Experts took place in 1990 in Baku. In 1991 we held Nowruz celebrations in Moscow’s Hermitage Garden. 10,000 people visited the celebrations then. We have managed to break the information blockade around Azerbaijan and show who Azerbaijanis are. We tell the truth about Azerbaijan as well as the cuisine. In 1992 Azerbaijan became the first of the former union republics accepted into the world Association of Culinary Unions.
- What is the difficulty with joining international culinary unions for the former union republics?
- In 1993 a cookery championship was held in Malta. That was our first culinary competition. There we received awards, though the competition was tough. Even the culinary thesaurus used in the USSR differed from the one commonly accepted in the world. Culinary vision and thinking in Soviet Union developed in a different way from the rest of the world's. Russia was not accepted in the Association then. I helped the Russian culinary experts to enter it. In 1993 I was elected vice-president of the Russian Association of Culinary Experts. I still hold this office. As the vice-president of the Russian association I have prepared Russia's documents. This helped Russia to enter the world association. Later I helped Ukraine and Uzbekistan - I prepared their teams, brought them to Malta and trained them there. Then I favoured Belarus, Serbia, Kazakhstan and Moldova. I brought Turkey to the championship in 2008. Now we support Georgia in its aspiration to enter the world association.
- What is the difficulty with joining international culinary unions for the former union republics? How is the exchange of international experience in the cookery sphere going?
- In general the exchange of cuisines between the peoples is a normal phenomenon. In Azerbaijan, people cook borsch and shchi in every village. However, we always thank the Slavs who invented these dishes. The situation is the same with the "Capital Salad", which come to Azerbaijan directly from Russia. However the situation is not always that simple. For example, in 1989 I already noticed that Armenian culinary experts have started to ascribe in one way or another all Azerbaijani dishes to themselves. They have adopted our dolma (a dish made of ground meat, wrapped in grape, mulberry or quince leaves). However, they say that dolma was invented by Armenians, who then taught Azerbaijanis to cook it. We sent warning letters to the Ministry of Trade of the USSR, the Food Institute and Food and Society magazine.
Recently our articles "Dastan about khash", "Dastan about chigirtma" and "Dastan about choban bastırma" have been published in the Russian magazine "Food and society". Such materials help to stop Armenian propagation among the experts. Khash (thick soup from legs and heads of cattle and small cattle can't be an Armenian dish. Armenians say that Turks threw away these extremities and poor Armenians picked and cooked them. There are facts in our articles that legs cost more than meat. Genghis Khan and sultan Mehmet II liked khash. Besides, the dish is linked to Islam. Early in the morning after the prayer Muslims ate khash and then went to work. Formerly Turks and Azerbaijanis ate soup every morning, because then they worked hard in fields. When sun reached its zenith, the work was stopped. The dinner was more modest, because it was very hot in the afternoon. 38 scientists have gathered in Russia, discussed all these articles and concluded that khash is an Azerbaijani dish. Azerbaijan cuisine is rich, so there is much to steal from it. Azerbaijan has shared its oil rices and economic potential, as well as culture with all peoples.
To be continuedInterview by Ramin Naziev, Baku. Exclusively for VK
