Written by: Mahnoor Fatima
Posted on: March 04, 2020 | 
| 中文
Eating Ghate Wereje Dish in Charsada with the Chef
Food mapping is a simple yet enlightening concept: use everyday food to narrate a history of home. It looks into ingredients, cooking preparations and local cuisine as a gateway through a region’s histories and priorities over time. According to anthropologist Lidia Marte, “Even though food mappings are concerned with localities, tracing those immediate relations, it reveals the global connections of personal histories, households and neighborhoods.”
Ms. Nilofer Afridi Qazi seeks to introduce this innovative concept with her web series, “Pakistan on a Plate (PoaP)”, the first food mapping endeavor to take place in Pakistan. Since November 2018, she has traveled to different areas in Pakistan to uncover the hidden in the familiar, and the familiar in the unknown. Her main goal has been to showcase Pakistan in its different hues and shades, and to celebrate a land filled with history and different identities through its cuisine.
A Village in Thar
“I’m curious about Pakistan, that’s how it fundamentally starts. When you’re curious about the place, you look into the details, and there is not a more intimate way of getting to know a place, a people and its culture than through food [sic].”
Lotus Roots Sold on the Streets of Peshawar
Nilofer believes that food is an encapsulation of who people are, through their everyday priorities. Food is often taken for granted when exploring an area’s history, and is often cast aside by researchers, who prefer looking at monuments or texts. For her, food has been the easiest entry point to gain people’s trust, and to allow them to speak about their home and personal histories through culinary conversations. Whether their oral histories match written texts or facts, is not the point; for Nilofer, the point is to record these oral histories and traditions for future use and examination.
She started her journey in her hometown of Pishin, Balochistan with Landhi, an ancient method of curing meats, which relies on the freezing temperatures of the Pashtun Belt of Balochistan, to dry the meat without spoiling it. Many of the places which she covers are places that are familiar to her, but may not be familiar to the average viewer. But she explains that she does thorough research on places she chooses, and often revisits multiple times to find exactly what she needs to complete her story. Nilofer acknowledged that while she can narrow in on particular dishes, she cannot capture the entirety of an area through one dish.
Landhi Meat
“The preliminary (part of my research) would be, who are the oldest families, who are the indigenous, the tribes, the locals, the notables, the foodies etc.? I engaged with them and talked to them about food.”
What she found was that the kind of food available depended on the political and economic conditions of the time. The preparation and cooking process often tells the story of a region’s agriculture, socioeconomic conditions, trade with other empires, seasonal harvest, topography of the land and even the gendered division of housework. For instance, fluffier roti may indicate the abundance of wheat, milk and clarified butter, as opposed to the tougher roti that would historically come about during hard times.
A Sheep Hearder in Mianwali
But on a deeper level, the long and winding networks of culinary practices are a testament to the ethnic diversity of Pakistan, which must be acknowledged for us to grow as a country. It challenges ideas which are often taken for granted, such as the supposed nativity of Mughal cuisine, which was actually introduced in the 16th century, or the erasure of KPK’s rich Buddhist legacy.
Nilofer with Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur
Nilofer does not just focus on local histories, but also histories of religious communities, along with their food culture. One of her most popular videos is “In the Footsteps of Guru Nanak”. It traces those parts of Punjab most important to the Sikh community, and how the people of the area (not just Sikhs) keep Guru Nanak’s teachings alive in their everyday practices. Even her episode on Islamabad (where she is based) shows the capital’s multi-religious communities which lived there before 1965, when the capital was conceptualized.
Granti Gee at Rori Sahab Gurdhwara
As a series, PoaP’s videos keep innovating on its structure, mixing informative graphics with one-on-one interviews, and ending the video with a recipe from each region. There is an unpolished quality to her videos, and that’s quite the point. She wishes to invite the viewer into her conversations with the locals, under the assumption that the viewers may have the same stereotypes or confusions as she does. Her goal is to allow locals to speak for themselves, and share her excitement about how a simple dish can say so much about their homes and roots.
Wooden Bowls from the Northern Areas
Her advice for anyone who wishes to take up food mapping is to look into one’s own home and local community, as cuisines hold so many tales of tradition and culture. While culinary conversations are fun and interactive exercises, they allow people to speak to communities and build connections with each other. What is important to her is the “Qadar” or regard and compassion for their legacies, and those of their countrymen.
“Be proud, be curious of your own. It also gives you self confidence because you know where you come from, and the legacy which you carry within you as a Pakistani.”
Orange Rind for Kitchdi and Other Rice Dishes in the KPK Belt
As for Nilofer, the ultimate goal is to compile a food map of all 150+ districts of Pakistan, culminating into a well-researched book. PoaP will run till August 2020, with a new episode every two weeks. All of them are currently available for all to watch on YouTube. One can also follow Nilofer on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram.
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