AND WHY AFGHAN FOOD?

By Katie

I spent the weekend at my college reunion catching up with folks I haven't seen in years.  I found myself stumbling over my words as I told friends who remember me as a beer swilling English major that I was writing an Afghan food blog. It sounded so obscure coming out of my mouth. I can understand the quizzical looks; I’m truly the least exotic person I know.

But then again, why not Afghan food? After all Julia Child wasn’t exactly French, nor is Paula Wolfert Turkish. They were captivated by the food, and so am I. But it goes beyond that. I’m also touched by the Afghan cooks themselves; the immigrant women who fled their country in the 1970s and took nothing with them: not their recipe books, beloved clay cooking vessels, or teapots.

Take for example Jeja, Humaira’s mom. She lived a privileged life by Afghan standards. She had servants to shop and cook for her family, rarely setting foot in the kitchen. That all went away when she walked across the Afghan border into Pakistan, ultimately arriving in the U.S. with no English and no cooking skills.

Over the past 30 years Jeja has found her way in the kitchen, relying solely on memory to recreate the dishes of her homeland. She is a wonderful and generous cook, but writes nothing down, which is, in large part why Humaira and I started this blog in the first place.  So the hard work of Jeja, and other immigrant women like her, can find a permanent home.

This is Jeja today cooking a qurooti, a savory bread pudding, in an American kitchen with all the modern conveniences

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SAFFRON ORANGE PUDDING - HALWA-E-NARANJ

By Humaira

In Afghanistan Halwa is a mildly sweet pudding made with any number of ingredients from apples to carrots. My mother Jeja recently went to an Afghan funeral where she ate Halwa e Ard, a version of the dish that is traditionally served at such occasions. This recipe is lightly flavored with orange and saffron and is mostly made as an alm in memory of the dead. It is also handed out to the poor on Fridays and religious holidays in Afghanistan.

Saturday marked the beginning of the month of fasting, Ramazan. Muslims around the world refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and indulging in anything excessive from dawn to dusk. Fasting is meant to teach patience, spirituality and purification through self restraint.

Halwa e Ard is a favorite dish for Sahar, the meal before sunrise. It's filling, sweet and good source of energy to sustain you throughout the day.

There is a superstition that if one craves Halwa they should make it right away and satisfy their craving otherwise they will be attending a funeral in short order. Needless to say I associate Halwa with death, but that should not take away from this sweet delicacy.

Despite the fact that Halwa is a starchy dish we eat it, as we do most things, with Afghan flat bread or pita bread. In America Afghans fill half of a pita bread with Halwa, which makes it really easy to hand out at large gatherings. 

Halwa e Ard

1/2 cup thinly sliced orange peel, around 2 small oranges

2 cups of sugar

2 cups boiling hot water

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 cups all-purpose white flour

1 1/2 tsp. saffron dissolved in 2 tbsp. hot water

1/2 cup whole, blanched unsalted pistachios

1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds (optional)

1 tbsp. ground cardamom

Immerse the orange peels in a small pot of water. Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes, drain and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar with the 2 cups of boiling hot water and stir until the sugar dissolves. Set aside. 

In a large, preferably non-stick pot with a fitted lid, heat the oil on high heat. Once it's piping hot, add the flour and stir for 2 minutes. Bring to a boil and then remove the pot from the stove and put it in the sink. 

Add half of the sugar mixture to the pot, being careful that it doesn't splatter on you. Stir quickly and return to the stove. Set over medium heat, and stir as you add the rest of the sugar mixture. Keep stirring for 2 minutes, the halwa will start to thicken. Reduce temperature to low and add the remaining ingredients. Stir for 3-4 minutes more, being sure that the bottom doesn’t burn. The saffron will turn the halwa into a beautiful yellow shade and by now the mixture will be thick.

Reduce the heat to low. Wrap a dish cloth around the lid and set it on top of the pot. The towel will absorb the steam as the Halwa continues to cook. Let it cook for another 15 minutes. Make sure that the heat is low so the bottom doesn't burn.

Serve with pieces of pita bread.

Serves 8-10 people

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SAVORY AFGHAN BREAD PUDDING - QUROOTI

By Humaira

The Ghilzai family’s annual Lake Tahoe vacation revolves around food.  We seem to all have a genetic fear of being underfed and pack the house with more groceries than could possibly be consumed in a week. When my siblings and I cook, it’s usually Western foods on the menu: summery pastas, barbecue, burritos, and so on. But the highlight of the week is hands down the Afghan meals my mom, Jeja, cooks.

Jeja hauls her big pots from home, along with onions, rice, meat and spices from her favorite Bay Area Afghan markets. She doesn't trust us to buy the proper ingredients. The meals she prepares tend to be complicated for vacation cooking, and are often heavier than one would normally eat after a day in the hot sun. BUT, we all love these meals despite the fact that we feel a little portly in our bathing suits the next day.

This year she broke the mold and made Qurooti, a sort of savory Afghan bread pudding.  In Afghanistan this is a poor man's dish since bread is inexpensive and Qurooti is a delicious way to use up stale bread. The dish gets its name from its most important ingredient: quroot. Quroot is a small ball of salted, condensed yogurt that has been dried in the sun, probably developed to preserve yogurt when there was no refrigeration. I loved quroot as a child. To this day whenever I see a candy jaw breaker it reminds me of the quroot that my brother Tamim and I would gnaw on for hours at a time.  

When incorporated into a cooked dish, quroot is first made into a paste. Growing up our cook would soak several pounds of quroot in warm water and then rub the softened quroot against the inside of a clay bowl. The end result was a very thick paste with an intense salty and sour taste used in a number of different dishes. 

In the Qurooti below we’ve substituted Greek yogurt for quroot since it is hard to find in the U.S. We’ve also made it “Kabul style” by adding kofta, seasoned ground meat, to the dish. In Afghanistan this dish would typically be vegetarian since for most Afghans meat is a luxury.

Jeja put up a big fight when she realized that her photo was going to be featured on our blog. I informed her that she is the star of afghancooking.net and it took a lot of pleading to get her permission to use her name and photos from here on.

"Qurooti": Savory Afghan Bread Pudding

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb. ground beef (or ground turkey) 

1 ½ tsp. ground coriander

1 1/2 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. plus 1 tbsp. Kosher salt

½ tsp. ground black pepper

1 tbsp. tomato paste

1 loaf  Afghan flat bread

1 lb. leeks, white and light green parts, finely chopped

2 cups Greek yogurt

1 cup warm water

1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts (optional)

1 tbsp. dried or 3 tbsp. fresh chopped mint

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Saute the onion in olive oil in a medium-size frying pan on low heat until tender and translucent. Add the garlic and sauté another 2 minutes. Add the ground beef and use a spoon to break it up as it cooks so it is loose and separated (like taco meat). Once the beef is browned add the coriander, paprika, 1 tsp. of the salt, pepper and tomato paste. Mix everything well and continue to cook over low heat for about 15 minutes.

You will only use about ¾ of the Afghan bread. Save the other ¼ loaf for another use. Tear the ¾ loaf into large bite-size pieces and arrange half of it along the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Distribute the chopped leeks over the bread and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tbsp. of salt. Arrange the remaining bread on top of the leeks.

In a large bowl mix together the yogurt and water until it is smooth with no lumps. The mixture should be pourable, like a thin milk shake. Adjust the amount of water as necessary to reach the desired consistency.

Pour the yogurt mixture over the bread, covering all surfaces and sides, pressing the bread down gently with your fingers to soak in the yogurt. Spread the cooked meat over the top. If you are using walnuts spread them on top of the meat. Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the mint. Scoop onto serving plates along with a simple crunchy salad.

Jeja is tossing the second layer of bread on the leeks.

Jeja is mixing the yogurt and water making sure there are not lumps.

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Except where otherwise noted, all content on this blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.