Yasmin Khan recalls a family vacation on the western coast of Turkey that, in her words, “will stay engraved on my heart forever.”
The sunny days of swimming in turquoise seawater and feasting on lemon-doused fish kebabs and syrup-drenched pistachio baklava, she writes, felt a world away from the industrial English city where they lived. Yet the entire family found comfort in a culture similar to the one they’d left behind in their native Iran.
Many of their relatives and friends had embarked on harrowing journeys to escape the political turmoil in their homeland. Some took temporary refuge in her parents’ West Midlands house. Those memories led Khan into activism — first as a human rights campaigner, and later as a food and travel writer. She is particularly passionate about telling stories of people displaced from their communities who use cooking to retain their identity.
In writing “Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus” (Norton, $35), she ponders the possibilities of a world without borders by traveling through the Eastern Mediterranean, where some five million refugees have come through over the last five years.
Scenes from kitchens, community centers and dining rooms catering to migrants and refugees preface chapters organized by course, from breakfast through dessert. The recipes are inspired by those experiences, relying on simple techniques and thrifty pantry staples common to those countries and widely available in the U.S.
I easily pulled off a full-flavored feast of sheet pan-roasted Pomegranate Chicken and Sumac, herb-packed Cypriot Potato Salad, and Broccolini with Red Pepper and Dill. I’m planning another one with elements I can relate to: Black-Eyed Peas with Chard, Spiced Cornbread with Feta, and a free-form Fig and Peach Tart for dessert.
Figs are plentiful throughout these countries. Eating them wherever she goes grounds her in the present, while also conjuring poignant childhood memories of picking figs with her cousins on her grandparents’ farm in Iran. For Khan, ripe figs “remind me of feeling safe.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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