One of the world’s most isolated regions brought to life in cookbook, with foreword by Prince Charles

Written in three languages – English, Dari (in Arabic script) and Tajik (in Cyrillic) – With Our Own Hands: A Celebration of Food and Life in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan and Tajikistan (2015) is a fascinating intro­duction to a remote, historically rich part of the world that many of us have viewed only in news broadcasts.

The foreword is by Britain’s Prince Charles, who writes, “The Pamir Mountains have long held a particular fascination for me, as they have for so many people of the world. From Alexander the Great, who marched through them, to George Nathaniel Curzon, who found the source of the Oxus in their folds, many have held in awe this distant and isolated range of peaks.

“But those peaks have tended to obscure the world that goes on a little further down, in the valleys, foothills, and slopes below. It is an extraordinary world – an ancient and dignified human culture living in a diverse environmental ecosystem – all too often obscured from view. I am delighted to see the publication of this landmark work […] which describes in rich detail the life and landscape of the Pamirs, its people, its culture and its environment.”

The authors, surprisingly, are not from within any of the communities covered in the book: they are Dutch ethnobiologist Frederik van Oudenhoven and Swedish scientist and PhD candidate Jamila Haider, who had been doing research in the region for many years.

In their hefty tome (named Best Cookbook of the Year 2016 by the Gourmand World Cookbook Award), they write in the introduction that they are trying to maintain a culture that is in danger of being lost. “Many travellers to the Tajik Pamirs will leave again without ever having tasted its traditional foods. The food they eat in the restaurants in Khorog or along the roads, or even in people’s houses, may taste like overly greasy Russian food.