Book on Local Cuisine to Revive Culinary Heritage

An illustrated glossary of Iranian local dishes was unveiled on the sidelines of a conference in Kashan late last week on the role of food in tourism.  It took Nasrin Salehi, a tourism researcher, three years to complete the volume which presents 830 lesser known local recipes gathered from all across the country, ISNA reported.
"The goal of the book is to help revive and preserve Iran's almost forgotten culinary heritage while helping modify the dominant eating habits that are not by any means adjusted to today's climate," Salehi said. Traditional dishes, according to her, better suit the climatic conditions.
"It's not wise, for instance, for the people of arid and semi-arid areas to use water-intensive crops like rice for most meals," she noted, emphasizing that this is the case in Isfahan and Kashan cities, which are struggling with serious water scarcity. 
Collecting information on traditional recipes was difficult for Salehi, for most of the dishes were on their way to sink into oblivion.