THE PEARL THAT BROKE IT'S SHELL - A BOOK

By Humaira

As a little girl in Kabul, I loved playing football (soccer), biking, and jumping off our home's ten foot high wall into a pile of snow. In the two countries where I spent most of my childhood, India and Afghanistan, boys had freedoms that girls could only dream about. Perhaps that is why I decided to take on a boyish persona. Without any labels or criticism, my Afghan parents accepted my eccentracities and accomodated my request for short hair and boyish clothes. 

HG & Baba

Baba and I, 1977 Kabul, Afghanistan

Now, my eldest daugther has the same tendencies. Perhaps the tomboy gene was passed on to her. While fellow moms in San Francisco congratulate me on how I handle this "situation", I delight in her obsession with building a skate board as opposed to shopping for makeup.

It was last year when I first learned about the popularity of a practice called "bacha posh", dresses like a boy. The director of Love In Afghanistan, asked me for cultural advice on the unique play she was directing for the Arena Theatre. The play is a love story, if you didn't already guess it, between an African American rap artist and an Afghan girl who is a bacha posh.  

Prior to this call I was familiar with the term but I thought it was something that came about during the time of Taliban, when women were imprisoned in their homes and needed a man to represent them in the outside world. 

It turns out that Dan Rather's popular documentry, "A Family Secret", brought families dressing their daugthers in boys' clothes is a widely practiced, ancient custom in Afghanistan. My family and I are  not convinced that the practic of bacha posh is "widely" practiced, as the documentry claims.

However, it's a subject that has caught the imagination of the Western Media. Since  2010, there has been shows, articles, interviews and now a book by Nadia Hashimi, THE PEARL THAT BROKE'S IT'S SHELL.

I am thrilled to see an Afghan write about this subject. Nadia's book delves into the world of Rahima, who becomes Rahim while guided by stories of her great aunt Shekiba, who was also a bacha posh.

The book helps the reader get into the story immediately. Within the first couple of chapters, the reader experiences the family's struggle and the mother's desperation, which forces her into the decision of turning her daughter into a boy.

Rahima, reluctant about the transformation to Rahim, quickly embraces his new life as he delves into freedoms bestowed on boys. He covets the higher status in his family and exemption from girl chores. He is the one who rights the wrong of the mother with a cursed womb which can only carry girls.

Rahim eventually has to face going back to being a girl, once he reaches puberty. He has to give up his freedom to freely go outside, save his sister's honor and help his desperate mother, when the prospect of marriage to settle a family debt enters his reality.

I hope this introduction whets your appetite, and inspires you to pick up this book for your summer reading.  When my family left Kabul in 1979, I left my boyish persona behind and re-invented myself as a girl when we reached the United States. Unfortunately not all women have the luxury to freely cross the gender divide as I did at age thirteen. 

NadiaHashimi

Nadia Hashimi was born and raised in New York and New Jersey. Both her parents were born in Afghanistan and left in the early 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. Her mother, granddaughter of a notable Afghan poet, went to Europe to obtain a Master’s degree in civil engineering and her father came to the United States, where he worked hard to fulfill his American dream and build a new, brighter life for his immediate and extended family. Nadia was fortunate to be surrounded by a large family of aunts, uncles and cousins, keeping the Afghan culture an important part of their daily lives. She and her husband are the beaming parents of two curious, rock star children and an African Grey parrot.

Humaira Ghilzai of Afghan Culture Unveiled speaks to Nadia Hashimi about her book, lessons learned and Nadia's challenges as a vegetarian Afghan.

Humaira: How did you get interested in the practice of bacha posh? 

Nadia: A few years back I read an article by Jenny Nordberg in the New York Times about the bacha posh practice.  I had heard of the practice but I started to think about what the tradition meant for girls of Afghanistan.  Most girls in Afghanistan do not experience life as a bacha posh but it is done.  What message does this send to the youth of the country?  How does a young woman cope with experiencing life as a boy and then again as a girl girl in a society with such a gender divide?  I came to appreciate that the bacha posh practice could be a compelling means of taking a closer look at the gender gap and its implications for Afghanistan's daughters.  

Humaira: What did you learn about yourself while researching and writing your book?

Nadia: Great question!  The biggest realization for me was that I am more outraged, than I thought, with the injustices suffered by women and girls in today's world.  I've always believed that women need to stand up for our rights because injustice reaches every corner of the planet. even a progressive country like the United States.  

The process of writing this story, however, channeled my energy.  I want others to be as outraged as I am at gender inequality in any form.  Sometimes it's subtle, like a salesperson sidestepping a woman to address her husband, the assumed "decision maker" in the family.  Sometimes it's blatant and brutal, like rapes dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders because "boys will be boys."  I've realized also that I need to be very conscious of how I raise my daughter and what I teach her.  

Though she is only three years old, I encourage her to stand up for herself around other children (including her four year old brother!) and that sometimes she will need to raise her voice.  It is equally important to me that I raise my son to respect a girl's personal space and opinion.  As parents, it's our responsibility to model this behavior in the home and deliver clear messages to our children if we want to see a change in the world around us.  

Humaira: I believe you've been there once with your parents. Is that right? What were your impressions of Afghanistan the first time you visited? 

Nadia: My trip to Afghanistan in 2002 was both heartwarming and heartbreaking.  I was so happy to meet cousins, uncles and aunts and to walk through the neighborhoods I'd gotten to know through my parents' stories.  I was thrilled to see school children lining up excitedly in the school yard at the start of the day and meet Afghan physicians staffing a new hospital for patients with tuberculosis.  

On the other hand, it was disheartening to see an overflowing maternity hospital with laboring women in hallways, courtyards and unsanitary beds.  My mother's family home had been reduced to rubble, recognizable only by a curved railing that once led to their backyard.  

Hope and despair coexisted on the same street, in the same home.  The country has suffered greatly with decades of violence and instability. On the other hand, Afghan youth were particularly anxious to get an education and nearly every young person I spoke with had admirable, professional aspirations.  My hope and belief is that optimism will trump despair and that the nation will recover.

Humaira: What are your favorite Afghan dishes?

Nadia: I am, as my husband says, a rare Afghan in that I am a vegetarian (though in the last couple of years I've started eating fish as well).  For those familiar with Afghan food,meat is a huge part of our cuisine but there are plenty of yummy vegetable dishes as well.  Just this past weekend, my sister-in-law cooked vegetarian mantoo (dumplings) as a special treat.  Both my sister-in-laws are intuitive and creative cooks and I'm lucky that I get to enjoy their talents!  For my favorite rice dish, I would have to go with mosh-palow, rice with mong beans,  It's so hearty on a winter day!

Humaira: Do you enjoy cooking?  Do you cook Afghan food?

Nadia: I don't cook every day so when I do cook, I really enjoy it.  I make Afghan food regularly but I also find it fun to try new dishes and ingredients outside my comfort zone. With warmer weather here, I get to do some of my most enjoyable kind of cooking - grilling!  Our household loves grilled eggplant and it's wonderfully easy (as long as you don't get distracted).  I also like to do chicken kebabs.  I marinate them in yogurt and spices for a few hours and they seem to be a favorite with the family.  In the winter, I bring out the slow cooker for dishes like vegetable stew or soups that warm the belly with lots of flavor.

Of course, there's nothing like making good old fashioned cupcakes with the kids.  They love helping me measure and mix the ingredients, a good introduction to practical skills. I try to stick with dishes that are fairly uncomplicated because I want to enjoy my time in the kitchen.  Food is so important to our health. It plays a major role in our social lives and it's a daily necessity.  The more ways we find to enjoy it, the better!  

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AFGHAN ICE CREAM SUNDAE - FALOODA

By Katie

Here in San Francisco we spend the better part of July and August in a blanket of fog, sweaters and close-toed shoes firmly in place, waiting for “our” summer to arrive.   This usually happens come September, just as the rest of the country is pulling out their woolens.  When temperatures moved north of 90 degrees here last week, there was only one thing to do:  eat ice cream. 

Humaira and I told the kids we’d be getting together after school one day to make sundaes.  They were over the moon.  But their visions of hot fudge and whipped cream came to a screeching halt when they learned we’d be making Afghan sundaes (falooda), with nary a maraschino cherry in sight.

I could relate.  When I first heard about falooda, I was similarly perplexed.   I couldn’t wrap my mind around the dessert’s combination of crushed ice, noodles and ice cream.   How could it be edible, much less tasty?  But a few spoonfuls into my first falooda  at Salang restaurant in Little Kabul and I was sold.   

Falooda is a South Asian specialty served during the warm months in Pakistan, India and Iran, and among others.  Each country lends its own twist on the dessert.  In Afghanistan, this means shaved ice is topped with rosewater- or cardamom-flavored handmade ice cream , rose water-flavored simple syrup, vermicelli noodles, plenty of Afghan cream (called qaymaq), and a generous measure of chopped pistachios.  Afghan ice cream is very rich, almost dense, and made in a unique way, which Humaira wrote about a while back.  You can read about it here.

As for our afterschool sundae fest, the kids seemed genuinely surprised by how good the falooda was.  That’s not to say they’d opt for an Afghan sundae over a banana split.  But the bowls were licked clean and nobody asked for the chocolate syrup.

Afghan Sundae

Falooda

2 ounces thin rice vermicelli or glass noodles

¼ cup simple syrup*

1 ¼ tsp. rosewater

3 cups ice

1 quart premium vanilla ice cream

¼ cup unsalted, chopped, toasted pistachios

Cook the noodles according to package directions and cool to room temperature.  You can do this by running cold water over the noodles.

In a small bowl, mix together the simple syrup and rosewater. 

Put the ice into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and process until the ice is finely chopped.

Set out four serving bowls.   Put ½ cup chopped ice into each bowl.   Set 1/3 cup cooked noodles over the ice in each bowl.  Top the noodles with 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream.  Drizzle 2 teaspoons of the simple syrup over each bowl of ice cream.  Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of nuts over each sundae.  Serve immediately. 

*To make your own simple syrup combine 1 cup water and 1 cup granulated sugar in a small saucepan.  Bring to a bowl, stirring regularly, and boil for 5 minutes.  Set the syrup in the refrigerator to cool.  Refrigerate the leftover syrup in a jar with a fitted lid.  It will keep for a month and is useful as a sweetener for cold beverages such as iced tea and lemonade. 

Serves 4

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

MY AFGHAN RECIPES WITH CARDAMOM

Saveur Magazine Article

By Monica Bhide

When I was a child in Delhi, India, cardamom was as familiar as the air I breathed. Its sweet, woodsy perfume regularly filled the house when my parents were cooking. But it took me a while to appreciate the spice's flavor. "Too strong for me," I would say as I picked the pale green cardamom pods out of any rice dish or curry that was placed before me. It wasn't until I got a bit older and started drinking masala chai, India's ubiquitous brew of tea, milk, and spice, that I began to come around. Each Indian home has its own version, its own mix of flavoring spices. My father's chai was spiced only with cardamom, and plenty of it. He'd use a mortar and pestle to crush the pods and release their flavor before steeping them with the strong black tea. Perhaps it was the richness of the milk that made the difference: it seemed to both soften and deepen the flavor of the spice. All at once I was able to discern the cardamom's penetrating warmth and the way its complex flavor of pine, sweet musk, and bright citrus was awakened by the bitterness of the tea.

CupofTea

Afghan Cardamom Tea

After my family moved from India to Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, I discovered gahwa, the fragrant Arabic cardamom coffee, and loved nothing better than sipping it along with a square of cardamom-spiced baklava. It was Arab traders who first carried cardamom from India to Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and today the Arab countries still consume more of it than any other place on earth.

It's still a precious commodity, too—nearly as costly as saffron and vanilla because, like them, it must be harvested by hand—and when I was a teenager, in our house as well as at our neighbors', serving cardamom to guests was understood as a gesture of respect. Often, that would mean producing an extravagantly spiced biryani made with nutty-tasting basmati rice, quite possibly the best vehicle for cardamom ever discovered. Sometimes, after a big meal, we'd follow my grandmother's custom and pass around cardamom pods to chew. In the ayurvedic system, cardamom is as much medicine as it is food; the same aromatic compounds that give the spice its flavor and warming properties also aid digestion.

As I began to spend more time in the kitchen, I learned that there is more than one type of cardamom and that each brings its own qualities to a dish. Green cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), the most highly prized kind, is a bushy herb of the ginger family native to southwest India. It's cultivated extensively there and in Guatemala, now the world's largest exporter; Costa Rica, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka are the other top producers. The plants grow in clusters of slender stalks about 10 feet tall with large, lance-shaped leaves. The spice pods, which grow on shoots at the plant's base, are picked when they are just ripening and then dried under the sun or in a kiln. These small, oval pods and the tiny black seeds within contain the various compounds we experience as sweet, floral, and eucalyptus-like. That unique balance works as well in savory dishes as it does in sweet ones. 

IMG_6193

Qabili Palau, Afghanistan's National Dish

Black cardamom (Amomum subulatum), a spice native to the Himalayas and cultivated today in Nepal, India, China, and Bhutan, has larger, deeply ridged pods that are dried over wood fires. As a result, the pods take on a dark brown color and a bold, smoky flavor that would overwhelm a sweet cake or pudding, but in a spice rub for roasted meat or in a full-flavored stew it imparts a smoldering depth no other spice can. Used together in a single dish, such as my family's chicken curry, green and black cardamom can harmonize beautifully. I've learned, too, about similarly fragrant relatives of cardamom, including delicate, floral Thai cardamom (see Expressions of Cardamom) and peppery West African grains of paradise.

CarrotHalwa

Afghan Cardamom Flavored Halwa

Since I moved to the United States 19 years ago, cardamom has been both a link to home and a bridge to other cuisines. The Scandinavians, it turns out, are second only to the Arabs in their hunger for cardamom, which the Vikings discovered in Constantinople a thousand years ago. Nordic cooks grasped early on that the fat-soluble spice blooms when baked in butter-laden sweets and breads. It's the keynote in the luscious Swedish cream puffs known as semlor and in Finland's yeast-risen, braided pulla bread, among many other baked treats.

AfghanBaklava

Afghan Baklava with Cardamom

In the cooking classes I teach, I advise students to buy pods of green cardamom with a vibrant color and a strong fragrance; ones that are dull looking and shriveled will almost certainly have lost their flavor. The product labeled "white cardamom" is really just green cardamom that's been bleached for purely aesthetic reasons, and—to judge from the kinds I've tried—robbed of most of its taste and aroma. And since the flavor evaporates very quickly from the seeds once they're removed from the pod, and especially once they've been ground, it's best to buy the spice whole. If you want to cook with just the seeds—I like to fry them in oil to create a flavor base for all kinds of dishes—just use your fingers to pop open the pods and remove the seeds; keep the empty pods for steeping in coffee or tea. When I'm making desserts, I'll grind the seeds to a powder using a mortar and pestle or an electric spice grinder. As for black cardamom, it's almost always used whole and then discarded after cooking. I've never seen it for sale already ground.

I'm happy to say that my children have loved cardamom from the start. When I make the cardamom-spiced rice pudding called kheer, I tell them the story of how, once upon a time, I was a young engineering student who had just moved to the States. Everything was unfamiliar; nothing seemed to taste quite right. Finally, I borrowed ingredients from my neighbors and set about making my mother's kheer. When the milk, sugar, and rice began to simmer, I broke open a few pods of cardamom and dropped them into the pan; soon the kitchen began to radiate the spice's familiar scent. As I leaned over the stove to taste the kheer, the doorbell rang. Standing outside was a handsome young man who said he lived in the building next door. He was an MBA student from Mumbai; on his way to the library, he'd caught the scent of cardamom and, himself a little homesick, couldn't resist following it to its source. At this point my kids usually chime in. "That's when you met Daddy!" they cry, and my husband grins. Then we eat the kheer together, and the cardamom tastes just strong enough.

More Recipes on Afghan Culture Unveilved with Cardamom:

Afghan Tea and Hospitality

Afghan Creamy Tea, Qaymaq Chai

Semolina Halwa, Sojee Halwa

Afghan Cutter Cookies, Kulch-e- Birinjee

Quince and Yogurt Trifle

Creamy Cardamom Rice Pudding

Cardmom Almond Brittle

Afghan Sundae

Cardamom Pudding With Pistachio

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