Afghan Independence Day, celebrating their full independence from Britain in 1919, is on August 19 so last month (yes, I'm still a month behind on posting these) I made their national dish, kabuli palaw. Although it may seem like it's named after the capital city of Kabul, kabuli or quabili means "excellent" in Persian. Its name therefore means "excellent rice." Palaw can be found in many different countries; it can also be spelled pilau, plov, pilav, or--as most Americans would recognize it--pilaf.
The cooking process usually starts with sauteing onions, then adding lamb, then water, and cooking until the lamb is done. Since I didn't use real meat, I just cooked the onions, added spices, and then vegetable broth. I think the idea of cooking the lamb in water is to create a broth. The spices used are salt and pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and cumin. The recipe I used called for garam masala, but garam masala is basically the same exact spices listed. Their recipe included an original recipe that they tweaked which didn't include the garam masala, so I'm not sure what they thought they were doing adding it in.
Once the onions and spices cooked and the broth added in, I then added the rice. It's probably pretty important to use basmati here, since it cooks a little differently from regular rice. A lot of the recipes I've used basmati in have been ones where you cook the rice with other stuff, rather than just steaming it in water like you normally would. Basmati is probably my favorite rice, so I'd be cool with having to use it in every recipe to be honest. Also, not sure why my spell check thinks basmati is not a word and that I actual mean baptismal.
While the rice simmered for about 20 minutes, I started working on the garnishes. The carrots are fried for a few minutes with a sprinkle of sugar to caramelize them a bit.
And then the raisins are cooked for a few minutes until they plump up.
And finally the almonds are blanched and toasted. I had never blanched almonds before, and it just sounds so pretentious I just assumed it was difficult. It is not. I always forget that blanching is just quickly boiling then quickly cooling things down. In the case of raw almonds, blanching them is how you get the skins off. You boil these bad boys for exactly 60 seconds, then drain and rinse them with cold water to cool them down, then you can pinch each one to get the skin off. It's rather satisfying.
The rice is done when 1) it smells amazing and 2) has soaked up all the liquid.
It's then transferred to a casserole dish with the "lamb," in this case chunks of seitan, on top. At that point it goes into the oven for another 20 minutes or so. I'm not sure what this step accomplishes, maybe to dry out the rice a little bit? Or to cook the lamb a little longer so it's not just straight up boiled meat? No idea. It did give my seitan a great texture though.
Then, it all gets transferred to yet another dish. This one is pretty because the end result is supposed to be kind of pretty (or at least fairly impressive).
The meat gets put into the dish first, followed by the rice in a mound on top. It was really satisfying getting that rice lookin like a savory baked alaska.
Finally, all the little accoutrements are placed on top. The carrots are all nicely laid out, and the almonds and raisins are just kind of thrown on there wherever they stick. While I was spending time making sure it looked nice, I had the thought of "what's the point? We're just going to ruin it by eating it anyway." But then I realized you could say that about any pretty food. Birthday cakes are meant to look all nice too and nobody complains about those. I would imagine a dish like this would be served at a fancy event like a wedding, so it makes sense that you would spend time layering everything nicely.
I served the palaw with another Afghani dish called qorma-e-sabzi, which is basically stewed spinach. I don't really have any pictures of the process because it was super simple. You saute some onions, add a box of frozen spinach, wait for it to defrost and start boiling, then add some herbs--dill, cilantro, parsley--with a bit of lemon juice, and let it stew until the spinach breaks down and it starts to thicken. Delicious? Check. Healthy? Check. Easy? Check.
The palaw might be one of my favorite dishes I've made, just because I love basmati so much and it was pretty easy to make. I definitely could have added more of the spices--I didn't realize how much rice I would actually be making. But in all it was an interesting and filling dish that wasn't super difficult to make, which makes it a success in my book.
Recipes Used: Quabili Pilau // Qorma-e-Sabzi
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