I should have known better than to go to listen to a travel writer on a summer evening in Edinburgh. No sooner had Caroline Eden begun her slide show of vast steppes and snow-capped mountains, soaring mosques glittering under a sun I’d not seen in weeks, brightly coloured clothes in stark contrast to the gently steaming anoraks around me, than I felt dissatisfied with my lot. By the time the first market appeared on screen, with ripe fruit and veg spilling from the tables and bundled-up babushki selling bread the size of drain covers from old prams, I was already pondering the visa situation.
Central Asia and the Caucasus, the subject of Eden’s recipe book Samarkand (Kyle Books), co-written with Eleanor Ford, aren’t known for their food. The region isn’t well known for anything over here except, perhaps, its huge size and the odd (very odd) dictator.
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