Good to see national stereotypes at work. Two Kabul-based French
journalists are giving a different image of war-scarred
Afghanistan "by showing it at its best" through a cook book. "When a
country has a cuisine then it has an identity, a culture," says
Patrick Denaud, who co-authored the book with Beatrice Gitton.
Afghan eating is a manner "of communion with others and of finding
one's proper place in the universe." They quote Afghans stressing
that it is important to eat with one's fingers because "there
are tastes that cannot be experienced with a fork."
Entitled "Saveurs Afghanes, la cuisine de Gandhara" ("Afghan
Tastes, the Cuisine of Gandhara"), the book goes back to the
conquest of Alexandria the Great to suggest that a cuisine that
combines "the sweetness of Persia, the refinement of China, the
colors of India and products from the Greek pastoral civilization."