Country 1: Afghanistan

Afghanistan is not a country I know much about. Geographically, if I thought about where it is on a map, I don’t know if I could even tell you the countries that border it. I know roughly where it is, and could probably point it out on a map, but that’s about it. I know it’s had a turbulent history, but I don’t know enough about it to consider myself even an amateur in general knowledge about the country. Don’t call me to be part of your pub quiz!

Alphabetically, Afghanistan falls first on my country cuisines. I was excited, eager to crack on and jump into the project. I’ve got a little notebook that I’ve been writing down recipes as I come across them online – obviously, the project takes a fair amount of research as I have absolutely no idea about the vast majority of the world cuisines. My Google search history at the moment looks very much like “Afghan cuisine… Afghan vegetarian dishes… Afghan vegetarian recipes… nut-free Afghan vegetarian recipes” – like I said, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I actually found 4 or 5 different recipes that I was excited to try for Afghani meals. I was explaining the project to my mum over a video call and was going over the dishes I was going to try before she stopped me and exclaimed, “you can’t cook all that, it’ll take you an entire day! There’s only the two of you, you’ll explode!”

When I was 18 or so, I wrote a list of advice that I would have given to myself throughout my life. From about the age of 12 or 13, for every year I had written “listen to your mother.” Even having been aware that mum is often more right than wrong, however, I didn’t tend to listen myself and usually completely disregarded my mum’s advice. What can I say, it was the beginning of my independence and I like to learn from my mistakes.

That being said, after careful consideration and looking at the monumental task that would be to cook 5 different dishes in one evening, I decided that mum was probably right. I definitely did not need to cook that much food. So I narrowed it down, and closed some tabs on my phone, leaving Afghan naan, bouranee bounjaun (eggplant with yogurt sauce), and boowlawnee (friend leek pastries) as my choices.

I then promptly forgot about it. It’s lockdown, and even though we’re allowed out of our homes to get groceries, it’s almost impossible to find everything that you want. I needed flour, and after pasta, flour is the most difficult thing to find. I’d found eggplants which I had collected, but was ready to change my entire recipe structures as I had no idea where to get flour. I’d lined up for the shops, wasted an hour waiting to get into Asda (who didn’t have flour), Tescoes, Co-op and Waitrose were all empty too. I’m not surprised – baking and bread-making are all great things to do when you’re not able to socialise. So flour was a no-go. There was none.

AND THEN! I was out for a mid-morning walk, and thought I might just pop into Asda to double check. Maybe today would be the day. Nope, the line stretched around the entire carpark and I’m not patient at the best of time. So I walked on, until I spotted a small Nisa at the end of a nearby road. Bingo! I walked out with two bags of self-raising flour, very happy. I needed plain old regular flour, but self-raising would do.

Then: there I was. A sunny Sunday afternoon. I’d played Sims all day and was definitely ready for something new to do. It was time.

Oh boy. Let me tell you. Making naan is not easy. I didn’t bother kneading it, the instructions said 25 minutes and I was not down for that. Out came the electric beaters, which promptly got completely covered, with the dough rising up to the top of the beater so that it was swirling around the bit where you stick it into the mechanism. It got to the point where I had to keep my hand there to ensure it didn’t actually go into the machine!

I had many tantrums. The dough didn’t rise properly (I had to use expired yeast which probably isn’t recommended), and then the pastry for the boulawnee was either too dry or too wet. I’m not the tidiest cook at the best of the times, and this time my entire kitchen was absolutely covered with dishes, flour, or both.

Overall, I was cooking for about two and a half hours. While I was letting the dough rise, I was preparing other bits and pieces, or sweating the eggplants, or preheating the oven, or chopping and peeling, or wrapping the pastry around the leeks for the boulawnee, and deep-frying them. I blame the dough (it’s an unfair accusation, but I have to blame something!). I definitely had low expectations, and didn’t even think my naan would cook.

Well I couldn’t have been more wrong! For my first attempt I was completely delighted with everything. The naan was fluffy and bready, the boulawnee were crunchy with light pastry, and the bouranee baunjaun was braised to perfection. I whipped up some chakah (garlic yogurt sauce) and sat down to eat, laughing with how well everything had turned out. The boulawnee were a bit too salty for me, but apart from that, everything was absolutely gorgeous. Even with self-raising flour and expired yeast. And the best bit is that I’ve got vast amounts of leftovers – someone would think I had been cooking for a village. Let’s just say that I’m very relieved to have followed mum’s advice and only cooked the three dishes!

The final (somewhat beige) finished product! 

Recipes 

The below recipes are taken from foreignfork.com who is a much more informed resource on this sort of thing than I am! The original recipes are from The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook by Tess Mallos. I adjusted the recipes slightly, substituting ingredients for what I had available, and have written down the best way I think it should be made.

Boolawnee (Fried Leek Pastries)

Makes 24 pastries 

There are only 5 ingredients in these bad boys, and they’re all easy to find as well. That was another important aspect for my project – it had to be ingredients that I didn’t need to trek over London to find! Boolawnee are appetizers, but I just added them to my main meal instead.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

·      2 cups self-raising flour

·      ½ tsp salt

·      ¾ cup cold water

Leek filling:

·      2 leeks, chopped

·      1 tsp salt

·      ½ tsp chilli powder

·      3 tsp sunflower oil (my recipe used vegetable oil but I just used whatever I had on hand!)

To finish:

·   Oil for deep-frying

Instructions:

1. Sift flour and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour water into the centre. 
3. Use an electric beater and knead for about 5 minutes until elastic. Wrap in cling film and place into the fridge for 30 minutes
4. Cut the green tops from the leeks and set aside (save them for a vege soup or something!). Wash the rest of the leeks to remove all leftover dirt. Chop into thin rounds.
5. Add salt and chili powder to leeks and hand knead until soft. Stir in oil. 
6. Roll bits of dough into thin rounds, about 4-inches by diameter. If it's easier, put a little bit of oil on your hands to keep the dough from sticking to you! I recommend placing each round onto a tea-towel so they don't stick to the counter.
7. Fill each circle with some leek filling, fold pastry in half and stick the edges together with your fingers. If your pastry is dry you can wet the edges with water, but mine was quite gloopy so it didn't matter so much. 
8. Heat oil in a pot.
9. Fry three or four dumplings at a time in hot oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towels or a tea towel and serve hot or warm. 

Boolawnee drying out on the tea-towel

Bouranee Baunjaun (Braised Eggplant) with Chakah (Garlic Yogurt Sauce)

Serves: 2

Out of the three I cooked, this was by far the easiest. Time consuming for sure, but mostly passive - I had to let the eggplants sweat for an hour so I let that happen in the background while I worked on everything else. 

Ingredients

• 2 eggplants
• salt
• oil 
• 1 bell pepper (I used yellow, but you can use whatever colour you like)
• 1 large tomato, sliced
• 1/4 tsp chili powder

Chakah (Garlic Yogurt Sauce)

• 2 cups plain, unflavored yogurt (I used Alpro soy yogurt to make it vegan)
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• salt to taste

Instructions

1. Cut eggplants lengthways into slices about 1/2 inch thick
2. Spread on tray and sprinkle slices liberally with salt. Leave for one hour, then dry well with paper towels. 
3. Pour enough oil into a frying pan to cover base well. Fry the eggplant until browned on each side but not cooked completely. 
4. Place onto tea towel to soak up the oil - press tea towel or paper towels into slices to remove excess oil
5. Add onions to pan and fry until translucent. Remove to another plate.
6. Place a layer of eggplant back into the pan. Top with some onion, pepper, and tomato, and then sprinkle with salt and chilli powder. Repeat until ingredients are gone. 
7. Add 1/4 cup water, cover pan, and let simmer for 10-15 minutes. 
8. Combine chakah (yogurt) ingredients. You can spread this onto the plate before topping with the vegetables, or put it on top of the vegetables instead. 

Delicious braised eggplant, bouranee baunjaun

Afghan Naan Bread

Serves 4

I made a few mistakes in this, like not following the recipe exactly, but it turned out okay so I've just typed it up the way that I made it because it worked out well. 

Ingredients

• 1 tsp instant dried yeast (you could use activated yeast instead if you have it)
• 1.5 cups self-raising flour (it should be whole-wheat but I had to make-do)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• oil

Instructions

1. Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup tap water.
2. Sieve 1 cup flour and salt into bowl, stir a little to mix with the liquid to make it a bit thick.
3. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for 10 minutes, until the liquid is frothy.
4. Stir in remaining flour and beat for about 15 minutes with an electric mixer. If you don't have one then knead for about 25 minutes with your hands. Either way, it needs to be elastic by the time you're finished.
5. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius.
6. Cover the bowl and leave the dough in a warm place to rise until it has doubled in size, about 30 minutes to an hour. Mine didn't rise too well (I blame the yeast), but don't worry too much about it.
7. With oiled hands, divide the dough into 4 equal portions.
8. On a baking tray, push the dough into a tear or oval shape about 1/2 inch thick. Leave for 15 minutes. 
9. Dip a finger in oil and then use a finger to press three parallel grooves into each loaf that run from the top of the dough to the bottom. The one in the middle will be the longest. 
10. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 15 minutes or until loaves are lightly browned and cooked. 

My naan straight out of the oven