AFGHANISTAN'S CLASSIC DISH - PALAU

By Humaira & Katie

Nothing is more important at the Afghan table than the rice. An Afghan woman’s reputation as a good cook can hinge solely on how well she prepares her rice. Indeed, the number of rice dishes served at a particular wedding and the skill with which the hostess executes her palau can be fodder for gossip amongst a group of Afghans.

Palau is serious business in Afghanistan and nobody does it better than Humaira’s mom, who is fondly known by her grandchildren as “Jeja.” No matter how well our palau may be, it’s never quite up to Jeja’s standards. Most important is not to overcook the rice. Each grain should be distinct from the next. Sticky rice just will not do in a good Afghan kitchen.

Afghan cuisine uses short grain and long grain rice.  It's very important to buy the best and least processed Basmati rice.  Jeja only shops in the Afghan store where she buys rice for her palau. She always has her finger on the pulse of what the latest, best rice in the market is.  When I'm shopping for rice I always call her from the store to get her recommendation for the best brand name. If you don't have access to an Afghan, Indian or Iranian store,you can still make a fine pilau.  We do find that many brands in American supermarkets are overprocesses and tend to break in the cooking process.  This would probably horrify Jeja, but in our test we found even the broken rice quite delicious.

The recipe for Palau may look daunting but it's not difficult.  We have tested it many times to simplify it and retain the flavors.  There are two methods to cooking long grain rice. 

Afghan Rice with Chicken

Palau e Murgh

3 cups basmati rice

5 skinless chicken legs

5 skinless chicken thighs

2 large yellow onions, peeled and quartered

½ cup olive oil or vegetable oil

5 tsp. salt

1 cup chicken broth

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 ½ tsp. ground cardamom

½ tsp. ground black pepper

12 cups water

2 tsp. browning sauce such at Kitchen Bouquet (optional)*

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Immerse rice in a bowl of water and drain in a colander.Repeat this step 3 times. 

Wash and dry the chicken.  Set aside.

Chop the onions in a food processor using the pulse button. Don't puree the onions.Choose a sauté pan that is at least a couple inches deep and large enough to fit all chicken.Pour the oil in the pan and saute the onions over high heat, stirring quickly, until brown (5-10 minutes). Don't burn the onion.   

Add the chicken to the pan and sprinkle with 3 tsp. of the salt. Cook the chicken over medium-high or high heat for 6 minutes, turning from time to time so all sides turn golden brown. The onion will start to caramelize and turn into a thick sauce. Add 1/4 cup of the chicken broth, and continue stirring to keep the chicken from burning.  Once that liquid dries add another 1/4 cup of broth and cook until all the broth is used. This process will take around 20 minutes. Once a thick sauce has formed, bring to a boil, turn the heat to low, cover with a lid or aluminum foil and simmer for 10 minutes.Remove the chicken pieces from the broth and set aside. Stir the cumin, cardamom and black pepper into the broth. Continue to cook on low for 5 minutes to allow it to thicken.

Meanwhile, measure 12 cups of water and the remaining 2 tsp. of salt into a large dutch oven or pot with a fitted lid. Bring it to a boil. Add the rice to the water and boil until it is nearly cooked, though still slightly crunchy. This will take just a few minutes depending on the rice you use. You will have to taste it to check for doneness. Do not overcook it. Immediately strain the rice through a colander. Put the rice back into its cooking pot and add the broth. Mix well. Arrange the chicken pieces on top of the rice. Cover the pot with foil and then with a lid.

Bake the rice for 15 minutes at 500  and drop the temperature down to 250 degrees.Cook for another 20 minutes.

Arrange the chicken pieces on a large platter and cover with the rice.Serve with a simple salad and plain yogurt.

Chicken just as it was added to the browned onions in the saute pan

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Chicken after 30 minutes of cooking with the caramalized onions, the brown color is achieved by browning the onions to the right color

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This pan is ready to go in the oven to bake or in Dari it would be "Dam kadan"

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Humaira's rice pot.  You will find one of these in every Afghan's home in the United States.

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

KHALED HOSSEINI: THE AMERICAN DREAM

By Humaira

"And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini, have you heard of it?

If your answer is "No," then you have either been in a coma or off the grid. Every major publication, media outlet, literary site, bookstore and online vendor has written about Khaled's third and much anticipated novel. I have to agree with them, it is a must read with rich characters and exotic setting -- a multi-generation saga which leaves you wanting wanting more. "So, what is left to say?" I pondered this question when I was listening to the audiobook of my friend and fellow Afghan American's latest fiction best seller.  Yup!  I said, “listening” not “reading.” You see, I walk for exercise so I always have a book or two loaded on my iPhone to keep me company.  I love books read by the author, especially if I know them. 

In this audio book, Khaled only reads two chapters; Iranian actors Navid Negahban and Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo skillfully read the rest of the story. The audio book is well directed with haunting Middle Eastern inspired music, which creates a charming ambiance for the listener.  I must admit that the actors’ mispronunciation of Afghan names and Dari words annoyed me. 

I have known Khaled since the early 80's, long before it was fashionable to be Afghan. As newly arrived refugees, cut off from our roots, living in low-income neighborhoods of San Jose, our families flocked together for familiarity and support. Remembering when our families barely had enough money to eat, Khaled’s success is a testament to achieving "the American dream" through hard work, and in his case exceptional talent.  Khaled makes me proud by using his celebrity to highlight important issues plaguing our world today. The Khaled Hosseini Foundation (TKHF), brainchild of Khaled's lovely wife Roya, works with UNHCR to build shelters for refugee families who are still suffering. TKHF also provides support to organizations focused on education, and healthcare for women and children of Afghanistan. For many years, TKHF has been a generous supporter of my non-profit, Afghan Friends Network. 

To bring a little personal touch to this post, I am pleased that Khaled was able to take time out of his busy month to "chime" in, as he puts it, and share his thoughts about audio books and food…

Photographer Joe Hoyt, Humaira (me)  and Khaled Hosseini at opening night of The Kite Runner the play

Conversation with Khaled Hosseini, the author of "And the Mountains Echoed."

Humaira: Do you like listening to audio books?

Khaled: My idea of a great audio book is one that draws you into the story world the way a campfire story can.  I love listening to audio books when I am on long car drives.  I love how I can lose myself in the narration.  I do like it when authors read their own work as it adds a dimension of intimacy between author and listener.  A good example was Michael J Fox's narration of his struggles with Parkinson's disease and Alice Sebold's narration of her book 'Lucky' in which she discusses with painful candor how she survived a rape.  

Humaira: Did you have a vision for the audio book of "And the Mountains Echoed?"  Were you involved in selecting the actors who read the book?

Khaled: As for the audio of my new book the publisher selected the readers.  I read two of the chapters.  Given the multi-perspective structure of the novel, having multiple readers seemed to me a good choice as well. 

Humaira: Since my blog is about Afghan culture and food, I have to ask about your favorite Afghan food.

Khaled: My favorite Afghan dish is turnip stew (shalgham with rice).  I like it tinged with ginger and I love to squeeze a little sour orange on it. 

Humaira: Who is the cook in your house you, Roya jan or is it a team effort?

Khaled: Roya cooks. I grill!  I can't cook Afghan food but she is great at it.  

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

THE WORLD IS A CARPET - A WOMAN'S JOURNEY IN AFGHANISTAN

by Humaira 

I am hooked on Facebook .  I have met some cool people through FB who I would have never met otherwise.  Anna Badkhen is one of those people.  Anna has authored four books, and writes for the New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, the Boston Globe, and others.

She reports on people in extremis which has landed her in the Middle East, Central Asia, East Africa, her native Russia and the Caucasus.   She has been reporting on Afghanistan for over a decade. Last week, Penguin Books released her latest book, The World is a Carpet: Four Season in an Afghan Village.  I was lucky enough to get an advance copy.

As you might imagine I constantly read about Afghanistan, but Anna’s book exposed me to an Afghanistan that not many have written about before.  Anna weaves in Persian poetry, history, sex and at times humor to engage the reader in this world which she personally experienced.  Anna spent four seasons in northern Afghanistan visiting a remote rural Turkoman village, which is exactly how long it takes one woman, Thawra, to make a carpet. Anna chronicles the difficult lives of Baba Nazar, Thawra her sex obsessed husband Amanullah, and other colorful characters in an opium infested village where time has stood still for centuries.

I had the opportunity to ask Anna a few questions, which I hope will give you some insight into the mind of this prolific writer who compassionately shares stories of people who are far from our reality.

Interview

with Anna Badkhen, author of The World is a Carpet: Four

Season in an Afghan Village

AnnaBadkhen-MariBastashevski-250x375

Humaira: Do you have an Afghan carpet?

Anna: I don’t have an Afghan carpet: I’m not a big collector of things. If I were to own one I probably couldn’t ever look at it as an objet d’art, let alone a household object. I would think of the history of the Afghan carpet—prehistoric artisans upon these plains were spinning wool and plaiting it into mats as early as seven thousand years ago, and Alexander the Great, who marched through the Khorasan in 327 b.c., is said to have sent his mother, Olympias, a carpet as a souvenir from the defeated Balkh—and also of the history of the carpet in my possession: who wove it? Was she healthy? Was she happy with her marriage? How many children did she lose to disease or malnutrition while she was at the loom? It would become too intimate, almost painfully so.

Humaira: What do you think makes the various types of carpets woven in Central Asia different from an Afghan carpet?

Anna: There are many kinds of Afghan carpets, but those woven by the Turkomans are the most valued. For their rich palette of reds—mahogany, terracotta, liver, and the atrorubent of the fratricidal blood that soaks their land—the Turkomans are called the Rembrandts of weaving. Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, lauded Turkoman weavers for producing “the best and handsomest carpets in the world.” Six hundred years later, Francis Henry Bennett Skrine, a retired commissioner of the Indian Civil Service, and the London linguist Sir Edward Denison Ross wrote that Turkoman carpets were “unrivalled in Asia for beauty and durability.”

Humaira: Do you have a favorite Afghan dish or two?

Anna: Mantoo. The incredible paisleys in which the three sauces—the yogurt, the chickpeas, and the tomato sauce—feather around the dumplings. I remember the first time I helped prepare mantoo, in the house where I was staying in Mazar-e-Sharif: four women at the counter, preparing lunch for forty. At first, the other women watched me very suspiciously: were my untrained fingers a match for the filigreed, stuffed beauties they were making? After my second mantoo, they said: “Good, you can do this,” and stopped watching. I felt as though I had been accepted into a tribe.

Humaira: What did the people of Oqa make for a wedding celebration? (Note: There is a great wedding scene in the book which I really enjoyed reading.)

Anna: In Oqa, the wedding meal was palau. It was a poor man’s wedding, so the palau was simple: onions, lamb, and rice. The chef cooked it in an enormous cast iron vat he had lowered into a dugout fire pit at the edge of the village. He stirred it with a shovel. After a village elder seasoned the rice with salt, the chef’s apprentices laid serving trays upside down to cover the rice, spread a bed sheet on top of that, covered it with patu blankets, and then with a black tarp. They tucked in the blankets with their fingertips and patted them down with the flats of their palms. The way a mother might tuck in a child.

Humaira: Do you cook for your son? Has he tried Afghan food?

Anna: Definitely—lobia or red beans is a staple, as is borani kaddo, stewed pumpkin with yogurt and garlic sauce. Lamb korma, sometimes. Firni, the dessert pudding. We eat a lot of rice at home, and I season it with the Badakhshani cumin my Mazari host mother gave me. Bamya, the okra stew with tomato sauce. Mantoo is very labor-intensive, but I did prepare it once (I cheated and used wonton wrappers instead of making my own dough). My son loved it of course. Who wouldn’t?

Humaira: Did Afghans treat you differently when they found out your were born in the former Soviet Union?

Anna: I was born in the Soviet Union, and carry an American passport. So one could say I represented two occupying powers. But in twelve years of traveling to Afghanistan I never have experienced distrust. I am very fortunate. Instead, I met a lot of Afghans who had studied in the Soviet Union and wanted to practice their Russian. I met a lot of Afghans who wanted to know more about the United States. When I first came to Oqa, in 2010, the introductions went like this: “This is Anna, she is an American journalist. This is Baba Nazar, he is a hunter.” And Baba Nazar said, “welcome,” and I said, “thank you,” and he took me inside his mud-and-straw home so I could meet his wife and son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren. In Afghanistan, this is how you welcome a stranger.

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