Eating dangerously: The axis of evil cookbook

A roadside lunch in Iraq. Recipes from Iraq and its so-called 'axis of evil' partners Iran and North Korea are detailed in a new cookbook. Photo / Lonely Planet Images

We are what we eat, and understanding people's eating habits helps us evaluate international relations. So get to know your Iraqi kibbe or your North Korean spicy cucumber before you deploy your troops.

This is the message of a new book, Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations - a political commentary wrapped in a cookbook, or vice-versa. Think Nigella Lawson in a burkha, or Jamie Oliver in a flak jacket.

Chris Fair is a leading political analyst on south Asia, a former field officer with the UN and an obsessive cook.

The book was inspired by dinner parties she held after US President George Bush labelled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil" in January 2002.

It reveals much about the population of the three axis states plus seven others, including India, Israel and the US, through what people eat.

"I'm obsessed with food," she says.

"Everywhere we'd go I'd be looking out for food, driving my husband nuts. I cook to manage stress. I like the logic and timing of it."

The State of the Union speech in which Mr Bush identified the axis was one of the defining moments of international relations so far this century.

The apparently random grouping - two bitter enemies living side-by-side in a potentially explosive region and one isolated, impoverished but militarily bristling country - as a philosophical basis for expanding America's "war on terror" puzzled many commentators. Ms Fair found the formulation particularly unsavoury.

The idea for the book began to germinate in this self-described "wonkette" after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Once her two brothers, both members of the Indiana National Guard, were called up in autumn 2002, it took on a more serious tone.

She sprinkles her analysis with elements of humorist P J O'Rourke's vicious irony and food guru Elizabeth David's sense of flavour. But this is not a frivolous book, and makes a valuable point about the insights food can give us into what nation states consider important.

Food and politics have long been connected. To break bread together is a symbol of reconciliation, and the best way to poison a political opponent was always at a banquet. By reading about Pashtun cardamom tea and Israeli carrot salad we can learn a surprising amount about the political situation on the ground.