By Humaira Ghilzai
Who can forget the scene in Khaled Hosseini’s second beloved novel, A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, when Maryam excitedly tells her father that she made Sabzi and he praises her for it. We all felt her pride in this achievement but knew that this joy was not going to last long for poor Maryam. This may be why Sabzi is the second most ordered dish in Afghan restaurants or, it could be that it’s so damn delicious.
If you’ve ever cooked spinach, you know that it reduces down to nothing in an instant. In Afghanistan, cleaning, chopping and handling enough fresh spinach to feed our large family was a morning’s worth of thankless work for my mom, Jeja. Once we moved to the US, she adopted frozen spinach as a respectable alternative and has never looked back.
Over the years, I’ve included a variety of sabzi recipes in this blog — Slow Cooker Sabzi, Lamb Sabzi, Qorma e Sabzi — so it’s about time that I add Instant Pot Sabzi, to this menagerie of recipes. Instant Pot is a pressure cooker that doesn’t scare the lights out of me and it cooks food quickly with all its great flavors intact. My twist to this recipe is rhubarb, yup we use rhubarb in savory dishes, which adds a tang that will tickle your taste buds. If you don’t have rhubarb, just add 2-3 tablespoon of lemon juice.
You can serve this dish as a main with rice, quinoa or pita bread with a side of plain yogurt. It can also be a side with any kind of meat.
Instant Pot Sabzi Rawash
Braised Spinach with Rhubarb
2 pounds frozen, chopped spinach, in a bag, not a box
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups green onions (white and green parts), chopped
1/4 cup dried dill
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 Jalapeno pepper (optional)
1 cup chopped cilantro (optional)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 stalks rhubarb
Follow the directions for this recipe on my youtube video : INSTANT POT AFGHAN SABZI RAWASH
If you’re interested in getting an Instant Pot, I recommend this basic version on Amazon, where I purchased mine.