Afghan Food Recipes Biography
Source(google.com.pk)
Haleem is a delicacy mostly enjoyed in the cold winter months of Afghanistan. It’s considered a warming dish, usually made with protein, oats and wheat. In Afghanistan, due to the high price of chicken, Haleem is made with beef. Traditionally it’s served in a bowl with brown sugar and topped with a generous dollop of hot cooking oil. Haleem lovers in the Afghan diaspora, mostly use chicken and they substitute butter for oil.
I didn’t grow up eating Haleem, since Jeja, my mom, can't stand the idea of protein in her oatmeal. Truthfully, I only learned about the dish a few months ago at an Afghan dinner party. I was immediately obsessed with finding the right recipe. My sister Nabila reached out to her network of accomplished Afghan cooks. We found many variations in people’s techniques. Some people use whole chicken, others use short grain rice instead of oatmeal. In many cases people added milk before baking the dish in a dutch oven overnight
After much testing and tasting, we came up with an easy recipe which makes having a hot bowl of Haleem very easy. You can wake up to the scent of cardamom.
Place chicken breast in a heavy pot, add five cups of water, a cinnamon stick and salt, bring to boil. Cover top, reduce heat to low, simmer for 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and soft. Remove pot from heat, let it cool for half hour.
Discard cinnamon stick. Add chicken breast and two cups of broth to a food processor. Save the rest of the broth if there is any. Pulse the chicken and broth five to eight times until it becomes a thick mixture.
In a large crockpot, add oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, chicken mixture, left over chicken broth, cardamom and 5 cups of water. Stir well. Set crockpot on low for eight hour.
Serve in a large bowl with a generous spoonful of powdered sugar and a knob of butter. Stir well and enjoy. I usually add almonds milk, chopped dates and walnuts to my bowl of Haleem.
For many years I hosted an Afghan dinner as an auction item for my daughter’s school fundraiser. I found myself slaving over the meal for many days and at the end there was nothing to show for my hours of labor except for a kitchen full of dirty dishes. After someone mentioned that they wanted to learn how to cook Afghan food, a light bulb went on. Why not do a “Cook Your Own Afghan Feast” auction item? That is exactly what I have done in the past two years and I must say it has been lots of fun sharing the cooking with my guests.
Jeja, my mom and all her friends would be horrified to find out that I have my guests cooking the whole meal. It is against all the rules of Afghan hospitality. So, when I told Jeja about this dinner party, I left out this minor detail. Instead I focused on my mantoo dish, which is a conglomerate of various recipes that I tested over and over until I got just the right flavors. Normally, Jeja is my source for recipes, but she prefers aushak to mantoo and rarely makes this dish. The basic difference between the two dumpling dishes is that the aushak is boiled and served with a meat sauce on top while mantoo is steamed with the meat mixture inside the dumpling. You would think this is not a big deal but the meat is cooked differently in each recipe, which of course makes the dishes taste very different.
I tinkered with this mantoo recipe until it ended up tasting like the dish I was served in in Ghazni, Afghanistan two year ago when a warlord brought dinner for us on the NATO forward operating base (a story that will be revealed in a different post).
My conclusion after various versions of the recipe is that lamb meat is key in getting the best flavors with mantoo. I have said many times that I don’t like lamb but what can I say, it is the only way to go with mantoo.
When I was little girl in Afghanistan, my relatives from Ghazni would have an aushak and mantoo making party in the spring. It was an all day event, we would arrive at Boboa Jan’s house in the early afternoon, our mothers would stuff fresh dough cut into thin square wrapper with various stuffing. They would gossip, laugh and pass the afternoon away. The servants would steam the stuffed dumplings and serve it on a distarkhwan on the floor where we would all gather to feast on these mouth-watering dishes. Maybe it was the memory of those afternoon which inspired me to have my own “Make Your Afghan Feast” party.
Heat the olive oil in a deep saucepan on medium-high, and add garlic. Sauté for two minutes until golden. Add all the ingredients of the sauce to the pan, stir well, and bring to a boil. Once the sauce is boiling, turn down the heat to low, cover with a lid and simmer for an hour until the beans are soft and the sauce thickens.
In a large frying pan, sauté the diced yellow onions in olive oil. When the onions are golden brown add the lamb and coriander. Mix well; make sure the lamb does not clump together. Cook over medium heat for around 30 minutes. Remove from heat; place the meat in a colander until all the juice is drained. Let it cool.
While the meat is cooling mix the sour cream, yogurt, salt and garlic powder in a bowl. Stir with a fork until creamy. Set aside.
Add the meat, cilantro and the diced white onions in a bowl and mix by hand until all the ingredients are evenly distributed. On a large clean surface, set out as many wonton wrappers as you can.
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
Afghan Food Recipes Food Recipes for Dinner For Kds with Pictures In Urdu Desserts Pinoy In Hindi in Sinhala Language for Kids to Make in Sri Lanka
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