By Humaira
Maash Palau is a vegetarian and gluten-free rice and mung bean dish, cooked with an assortment of dried fruit. Traditionally this dish is made without meat and seasoned with browned onions and char masala (four spices). Char masala is Afghanistan’s answer to India’s garam masala or Chinese five spices.
Every family has their own char masala recipe to flavor their palau dish. For this recipe, I’m using cumin, coriander, black cardamom, and pepper. I’ve recently taken to using black cardamom which has a strong minty, earthy scent compared to the mild-mannered green cardamom, which I frequently use in many of my recipes.
In addition to the great flavor, it adds to this dish, according to this WebMD article, cardamom helps with digestion and has antioxidants that helps improve blood circulation throughout the body.
I have to admit, I was not familiar with maash palau before, but I knew of it. Somehow it didn’t make my mom’s cooking repertoire and therefore I never learned it until just a couple of months ago when Khala Mayen, my aunt, suggested making it when I told her that I mainly eat vegetarian now.
Khala Mayen is an excellent cook who likes to experiment with traditional recipes to make them her own and it was she who gave me the idea of adding eggs to the recipe. She recalled eating maash palau topped with an egg at someone’s house in the 70s when she still lived in Afghanistan but since she’s allergic to eggs, she had not made it a regular ingredient in her recipe.
I was excited to learn a new recipe and stood guard with a pen and paper to write down what was about to unfold in front of me. But I quickly realized that Kahla Mayen’s kitchen action was much quicker than my pen, so I resigned myself to jotting down the ingredients she was throwing in the pot while using shorthand to describe what was happening.
Needless to say, once I got home and looked at my notes, I had no idea what I had written and had to make several inquiry calls to my sister Nabila, who was also cooking with us. Between her COVID memory and mine, we managed to put together a straw man instruction which became a full-on reliable recipe after several test sessions.
After eight months of COVID video making hiatus, Brandon Chaves, my director, videographer, editor, and photographer came over for a socially distanced filming session. In this video, I cover the cooking methodology and the tricks I use to make this beautiful dish, so I won’t go into that detail in this post. As you know, during COVID quarantine you have to cook with the ingredients you have on hand rather than what is listed in the recipe and that is why I’ve suggested many substitutions and tweaks to the recipe so you can get the right flavors without having to run to the store.
I hope you love this unusual dish as much as I have loved creating the recipe for you. Also, let me know if you found the video helpful. I’m hoping that the COVID numbers stay low in San Francisco so Brandon and I can make more videos this winter.
I hope you enjoy cooking and sharing this wonderful maash palau recipe with your family. In the spirit of trying new things, if you have discovered new family recipes during the pandemic, I would love to hear about it. I encourage your thoughts and comments.
Mung beans are hight on protein and fiber.
Maash Palau
Rice, Mung Beans and Dried Fruit
1 1/2 cups green or brown mung beans, rinsed and soaked in cold water for 1-2 hours
1/2 cup olive oil plus 2 tablespoons, separated (you can substitute vegetable or avocado oil)
2 large red or yellow onions finely diced, yielding around 3 cups
1 cup tomato, finely diced (substitute canned diced tomato or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste)
2 cups long grain basmati rice rinsed until the water runs clear and soaked for 1-2 hours
2 tablespoons salt + 2 teaspoons
Char masala, Four Spices:
1 tablespoon ground black cumin
1 tablespoon ground black cardamom
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1 cup mixed dried fruit (quartered apricots, deseeded & quartered dates, green raisins or cherries)
4 -6 eggs (optional), uncooked
Bunch of cilantro and lemon for garnish
Bring 10 cups of water to boil in a large cast-iron pot or heavy casserole with a lid. Add the mung beans and 2 tablespoons of salt. Boil until the mung beans are half-done, around 10-12 minutes. Drain the rice into a colander and add to the pot with the mung bean. Boil for 2-3 minutes until the rice is al dente. Don’t cook the rice all the way, you want to have a little crunch in the rice. Take the pot off the burner, let the mung beans & rice settle to the bottom, ladle around 1 ½ cups of the liquid into a small bowl before drain the mung bean and rice into a colander. Set aside.
In a large saute pan, heat ½ cup of olive oil on medium-high heat. Add onions to the pan, stirring every few minutes. After ten minutes, add the diced tomatoes and ½ of the char masala to the onions, stir for a minute or two until mixed well. Saute’ for another 10 minutes, until the onions are a rich, dark brown color. Add the reserved mung bean and rice water to the pan, bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and let it simmer until the sauce is cooked down and thick, around 5-7 minutes. Yields a little over 2 cups of browning sauce.
Return the rice and mung beans to the casserole, add the browning sauce, the remaining char masala, the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and the 2 teaspoons of salt to the pot. Stir well. Dig a shallow ditch in the mung bean & rice by moving it to the side, place the eggs in the hole and pile dried fruit on one side of the pot, over the rice.
Wrap a clean dishcloth around the lid of the pot. It will soak any moisture that would otherwise make the rice soggy. Place the pot on the stove on low heat for around 30-35 minutes until the rice is fragrant and cooked through.
Yields 4-6 servings. Serve with a side of fresh salad and a dollop of plain yogurt.