Introduced, compiled and prepared by MALIK MERCHANT

After an abnormally mild December across much of Canada, winter is finally coming with a bang across most regions of the country starting Wednesday, January 10, 2024. Temperatures in Edmonton, which has not seen any snow, and Calgary are expected to plunge to lows ranging between -16C to -32C!

The centuries-old apricot soup (Bataring Daudo) from Hunza is what you want on your dining table to warm you up during the winter season, and for that we have turned to Aysha Imtiaz’s special feature article on the BBC website. Aysha writes: “The deceptively simple soup, has been nourishing Pakistan’s Hunza community for centuries and is perhaps the purest celebration of the fruit and the Hunza ideology.”

PLEASE CLICK: BBC: A centuries-old recipe for apricot soup

Shahzadi, who runs the Hunza Food Pavilion in Karimabad, Hunza’s capital, says: “The Hunza diet is instinctively reliant on fruit — fresh in the summer and dried in the winter. Simple, fuss-free food [means a] simple, fuss-free life.” She adds: “This soup has been used for centuries because it wards off colds and is nutrient dense.”

To read the BBC article that includes the recipe, pease click BBC: A centuries-old recipe for apricot soup.

Note: Dried apricots, one of the 3 ingredients mentioned in the recipe, are easily available from small and large grocery stores across Canada, the Bulk Barn being one of them. You will also find large varieties of organic dried apricots in ethnic stores around the country.

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The Apricot

The cure for a weakened heart is apricot,
The medicine for a bad mood is apricot,
Fresh or dried, don’t eat too much,
Drink its juice when you don’t feel well.
(ode from With Our Own Hands, page 245).

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IN THE PAMIRS, THE APRICOT IS A SECOND FRUIT FROM PARADISE

The following piece by Tahmina Saodatkadamova is excerpted from the beautiful volume With Our Own Hands by Frederik van Oudenhaven and Jamila Haider. The unique award winning book was featured in Simerg a number of times, and reviewed by Nairobi’s Shariffa Keshavjee. The book was a sell-out on our website when we offered it to our readers on two occasions.

By TAHMINA SAODATKADAMOVA
Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Khorog State Univeristy

Also from paradise according to local lore, the apricot is the Pamirs’ second fruit [after mulberries]. Where mulberries speak of necessity and ‘bread’, the apricot is the luxurious topping, very much a sign of wealth. Not very different from its role in the diet of the people of Hunza who use the fruit, its seed and oil in many different dishes and who attribute the near-mythical age to which they live to its many qualities, apricots play a very significant role in the food of the Pamirs.

More than 300 varieties, many of the unique to the Pamirs, have been identified by scientists.

Judging from wood fragments found in Stone Age graves, it is possible that the first apricot trees that arrived, thousands of years ago, took root as wild trees and were eventually brought into cultivation by the farmers of the Western Pamirs. Even now, groves of wild apricot trees can be seen on dry mountain slopes among enormous boulders. Of all the fruit trees in the Pamirs, they are best able to withstand drought.

In the Pamirs, apricots grow at altitudes of 1,600 to 3,000 metres above sea level. Here, the strong rays of the sun, the stark cold, the dry air and soil, and the care of many generations of farmers have made the apricot unique. Like mulberries and other fruit and berries growing in these mountains, the apricots are filled with flavour and are rich in vitamins and antioxidants. This is why local fruit varieties play such an important part in Pamiri folk medicine.

Date posted: January 10, 2024.

Featured photo at top of post: Apricots left to dry in the sun. Photograph: © With Our Own Hands, page 245.

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