SLOW COOKER AFGHAN SPINACH - SABZI

By Katie

This past fall I made a valiant effort to become a fan of the slow cooker. It makes so much sense for a busy mother of three: throw a bundle of ingredients into a pot in the morning, come home to a hot meal at night. Done. I dutifully tracked down a neighbor who lent me her trusty cooker and borrowed a couple of crock pot recipe books from a friend. I spent two weeks working my way through slow cooker recipes, from the traditional to the exotic. I wanted to love it, I tried to like it; neither happened.  In the end, I returned the crock pot and the cookbooks and got reacquainted with my trusty range once again.

So why is it that I am now adapting my beloved Afghan recipes for the crock pot? Because Humaira is making me. No, just kidding. The truth is that even though the crock pot is not my “go-to” kitchen tool, it is a Godsend for a lot of home cooks. I get it. Plus, I’ve found many of our stewy Afghan dishes lend themselves to crock pot cookery. I want to share the good news.    

Take this sabzi: the Afghan spinach dish that is my current food obsession. Done in a crock pot, it measures up just as well as on the stove. Best of all you just have to stir everything (frozen spinach and all) in the pot, turn it to low and let it do its magic. No advance cooking required.  Serve with a dollop of Greek-style yogurt and warm nan or pita bread.

This all has me back on the fence about the slow cooker. I’ve borrowed it again from my neighbor and am wondering if I should have one of my own after all.   

Slow Cooker Afghan Spinach

Sabzi

2 lbs. frozen, chopped spinach, in a bag, not a box

3 tbsp. olive oil

1 large bunch green onions (white and green parts), chopped

1 tbsp. dried dill

2 tsp. ground coriander

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1 ½ cups Greek-style, plain yogurt

Empty the bags of frozen spinach into the crock pot, breaking up any frozen chunks that are stuck together. Add all of the remaining ingredients except the yogurt into the crock pot and stir well. Turn the crock pot to low and cook for four hours.  Serve with yogurt and warm pita or nan bread. 

Serves 6 to 8 as a side dish; great as a leftover.

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

SLOW COOKER TURMERIC BRAISED CHICKEN - LAWANG

By Humaira

I have to admit, many Afghan recipes take time: at least an hour or two in the kitchen, fresh ingredients and planning ahead. But with busy lives, we don’t always have the luxury to cook for hours at a time. This is perhaps why our friends Kristine and Ellen asked us for Afghan recipes using a slow cooker.

We are answering the call for quick and simple crock pot dishes by devoting the next month or so to the slow cooker. Like all of you, as my life has grown busier I have turned to the slow cooker to help deliver warm dinners to my family. I have been using a slow cooker once a week for the past few years: usually on the days when I leave the house in the morning and return around 6pm with hungry children. I usually make beef stew, chili, or raid my fridge for ingredients to throw into the crock pot and see what awaits us eight hours later upon returning home. I also use the slow cooker for entertaining, something I have been doing a lot lately. It allows me to prep ahead, frees up a burner, and sometimes even means one less dish to wash since for more casual entertaining, you can take the crock pot right out of the cooker and onto the table.

Since we love our readers and we know you too have busy lives, we have selected some Afghan recipes that work well in a slow cooker. We plan to share them with you over the next few weeks, starting with today’s recipe for our beloved Lawang. This is a rich and flavorful chicken dish braised with turmeric, coriander and finished with a creamy yogurt sauce. The stove-top version of the recipe was posted last fall. The slow cooker version is delicious, easy and efficient. We hope you will enjoy trying our star dish, Lawang, in the slow cooker version.

Slow Cooker Turmeric Braised Chicken in Yogurt

Lawang

1/4 cup olive oil

2 large onions, finely chopped or pureed in food processor

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pureed with the onions

3 lbs skinless, bone-in chicken legs and thighs, separated

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

1 tbsp. ground turmeric

1 1/2tsp. ground coriander

1/2 cup chicken broth or water

1 ½ cups Greek-style yogurt, room temperature*

1 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped

Wash the chicken and pat dry with a dish towel. Put the chicken in the crock pot.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. Cook the onions and garlic over medium-high heat for 15 minutes until deeply browned. Add the salt, pepper, turmeric, coriander and water to the onions and stir well. Spoon the onion mixture over the chicken, stirring it to evenly cover the chicken pieces. Put on the lid and set the slow cooker on low for 4 hours. 

When the chicken is cooked, stir the yogurt and add it along with the cilantro to the crock pot. Give everything a good stir to make sure the yogurt dissolves in the sauce.

* to bring the yogurt to room temperature, pull it out of the fridge about a half hour before you add it to the crock pot.

Note: If you plan to prep the night before, brown the onions and the garlic. Add the salt, pepper, turmeric, coriander and water to the onions and stir well and keep in a lidded container. Clean the chicken and refrigerate. The next day all you have to do is mix all the ingredients and let is cook.

Serves 4-6

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

ROAST CHICKEN WITH AFGHAN SPICE RUB

By Katie

If you are new to this blog you can probably surmise from the photo that I, of light hair, blue eyes and freckled skin, am not the Afghan in the duo. My experience of Afghan food and culture is borrowed -- largely from Humaira and her family who have graciously allowed me to invade their kitchens and watch them work magic behind the stove.

Unlike Humaira, I don’t have decades of Afghan home life to draw upon for inspiration in my cooking. And Afghanistan isn’t exactly the sort of place to plan a culinary vacation. If I’d set my sights on the likes of Italy or Spain I would happily pack up my young brood and set out for an adventure in food. All of this makes writing about Afghan cuisine an added challenge. I’m an interloper. So when an opportunity presents itself that inspires my sensibilities, I don’t hesitate.

Such was the case recently when my neighbors Luke and Catherine were coming for dinner. Although we’ve shared many meals together, Afghan food was never on the menu. I was hesitant to get too exotic since they would be joined by their two totally delightful, but not especially adventurous (at least food-wise) young boys.

I settled on a roast chicken dinner; it was Sunday supper after all. But with a twist: traditional roasting method, non-traditional seasonings. I set out all of my favorite Afghan spices and concocted a spice rub using equal parts coriander, cumin, paprika, garlic, turmeric, and salt. After squeezing a halved Meyer lemon over the whole bird, I patted it generously with the Afghan spice rub and put it in the oven to roast.

The richly colored spice mix made for a beautifully browned bird with flavors that satisfied adults and kids alike. I served it with a big bowl of sabzi (an Afghan recipe for braised spinach topped with yogurt); pita bread brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and then warmed in the oven; a grated carrot salad flavored with coarse mustard, lemon juice and a dash of sugar; and jasmine rice steamed with bay leaf, and enriched with a knob of salted butter.

The meal came together with ease. Luke and Catherine tucked in heartily to all of the dishes. As for the boys, they didn’t seem to know or care that they were eating anything particularly interesting. As far as they were concerned, it was just chicken, and more importantly, what were we having for dessert?

Roast Chicken with Afghan Spice Rub

1 whole chicken, rinsed and patted dry

½ tsp. ground coriander

½ tsp. ground paprika

½ tsp. ground cumin

½ tsp. turmeric

½ tsp. garlic powder

½ tsp. Kosher salt

1 lemon, cut in half

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Set the chicken in a roasting pan, preferably on a roasting rack. In a small bowl stir together the 4 spices, the garlic powder and the salt. Squeeze both halves of the lemon over the chicken and then stuff into the cavity of the bird. Gently pat the spice rub evenly over the entire chicken. Roast the chicken until done, 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the bird.

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