Landing in Kabul, you could’t help thinking you’re landing within the uppity slum. This is Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar. Appropriate since’s in which Delhi’s massive Afghan ex-pat community is centered, and that’s where my first publicity of Afghan cuisine started. The factor of the journey was to evaluate Afghan food compared to Indian, given that tons of Mughlai delicacies allegedly have their roots in Afghan, Turkic, or Persian originals. But that’s wherein matters begin going awry. When we find out that the fake Indian food and Afghan Chinese are the staples here. Every restaurant well worth its monosodium glutamate has a ‘sweet corn soup,’ miles less fit to be eaten, which you get in India bolstered through double the cornflour, plus chowmein and achari hen. Bleh! Ok, this should be an aberration, I say to myself, and boldly cross onto the kababs and Kabuli law.
There’s almost nothing to differentiate it from the Iranian Kebab, coming across to my horror that the Lajpat Nagar Kababs are fake, given their marination in heaps of ginger garlic and yogurt that isn’t the norm in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, the Kabuli below, the identical aggregate of meat, carrots, rice raisins, and cumin that I’d had in Uzbekistan the preceding yr (naturally known as the Uzbeki Palow there), is also a lot better in Delhi; the parboiled rice so essential for that fluffy finish being absent in Afghanistan. I put this down to exceed expectations. However, repeated meals in Kabul yield identical disappointing outcomes, be at the eating place of an avenue dealer. The culmination and greens in Afghanistan, alternatively, are quite notable; however, just like the considerable majority of Afghan ladies, they’re kept hidden away at domestic, and make no appearance in any menu anywhere, except in the occasional Western café.
The first large culinary revelation, actual and indigenous to Afghanistan, is available in Mazar -I- Sharif, inside the ancient castle of Balkh. A flourishing Buddhist metropolis, as soon as upon a time named Bactria by Alexander, the desolate but awesome fortress was domestic to Alexander’s wife Roxanne and was also where Zoroaster lived and died. My guide insisted I attempt the “neighborhood specialty,” and so, evidently, as one does in Afghanistan, walked me right into a weed den, the air redolent with the fragrance of smoked cannabis. Given that everybody was puffing from the identical pipe, I gave it a pass on hygiene grounds. Sadly, in this location, your picks are both hash or hash.
Stopping on the beautiful Nau-Gumbad (or nine domed mosques, the primary mosque ever built in that country in the 900s, it is built at the web page of a Buddhist stupa, which changed into in some unspecified time in the future a Zoroastrian fire altar) the charming vintage caretaker invitations us for a “snack” to his residence. Over coronary heart-breaking stories of how he lost his own complete family throughout the civil war, he gives me a desire for both smoked hash or hash cookies. A bit trapped, one is pressured to attempt the latter, which, as it seems, isn’t always an excellent concept. The high units unexpectedly, and the whole lot begins seeming funny, be it the Afghan police and army men coming in to get a hash cookie from caretaker grandpa or maybe the sheer terror of the occasional Taliban checkpoint on our way to Mazar.
A journey to the beautiful rock-cut Buddhist viharas of Samangan tomorrow yields yet some other surprise:
The primary actual Afghan soup. In a city referred to as Aybak, the city from which Qutbuddin, the primary Mamluk Sultan of Delhi and lieutenant of Muhammad Ghori, followed his call. Called chorba genuinely, this turned into a unique Afghan version of Kadhi: a soured yogurt cooked down slowly into a delicious broth flavored sincerely with salt. Into this turned into dunked a few scrumptious hand-crafted noodles and cwastopped off with a paste of tomatoes and onion fried in ubiquitous lamb fats. This is supplemented by way of quite probable the exceptional “falafel” or, as we Tamils name it, “part vada” offered warm from a street vendor. The aggregate is the winner, much like the dumplings in the kadhi, simply higher dumplings and a less spiced kadhi. This first-class dish additionally got here with the facet entertainment of a Taliban truck flying through the city, every so often taking pictures of bullets in the air some hundred yards from us. The Afghans you notice surely recognize a way to install a spread enjoyment lunch show.
The flight to Herat brings a lot of the identical, insipid kababs and plow. But the massive wonder comes at wasteland time. Cardamom is the Vanilla of Afghanistan (and arguably tons of South Asia); even as we bite into a few delightful local cardamom-flavored chewing gum, we anticipate the homemade ice cream called Shir Yakh; this dish is exact. This isn’t soft creamy Italian gelato, nor is it a granular sorbet. It’s now not the semifreddo we name kulfi in India; neither is it the silky smooth Bassani of Iran. Sheer Yakh is Sheer Yakh, and it’s unnecessary to compare it to something else. Green, fresh pistachio paste is blended with fresh milk and frozen in front of your eyes in steel boxes dunked in an aggregate of ice and salt to lower the freezing point, just like the conventional ice cream churner. The difference comes in what occurs after. The Afghans mash it with huge spatulas into a deliciously clean paste that is like no texture you’ve had before. One taste of this manna, and also, you know, it isn’t that horrendous Italian green-colored almond ice cream occurred as pistachio. Oh no, that is richly sweet, creamy pistachio served with a dollop of white cardamom ice cream. Bingo! Hit the jackpot! That ice cream alone becomes well worth the Taliban checkpoints, hair-raising conversations with guys with AK-47s and rocket launchers, and the unnatural 6-hour flight from Delhi.
I’ve always loved food and I’ve always loved sharing my love of food with the world. This love led me to become a professional foodie, opening my very own restaurant called The Great American Cafe and writing a blog called Foodieso.com, where I’ve been able to share my recipes, ideas and thoughts about food.
