Afghan Potato Salad

When trying to figure out what should accompany our chicken kebabs, I chose not to go with bread or rice. I had already slotted in the bread for a different Afghan meal, and it's hard for B to eat a ton of rice since he's a little toddler (wrote this post in June 2020; now he just likes to make rice "rain" so it's still not the easiest), so I try not to make rice every single day. (I try to look at it from his perspective. If I was working on my spoon skills and rice were difficult and sometimes frustrating to eat, would I want someone to make it every single day instead of also giving me something easier to eat?) After looking around at more recipes on Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found the answer - potato salad! The Afghan potato salad, shor nakhod, was egg-free and mayo-free, and it seemed like something our family would really enjoy. I don't know if it's remotely traditional to pair potato salad with chicken kebabs in Afghanistan, but grilled chicken and potato salad do make for a quintessential American BBQ, which is probably why it was so easy for my brain to accept the pairing.

The ingredients for the potato salad were:

- 3 large Russet potatoes ($2.37)
- 2 cans of chickpeas ($1.75)
- 1 bunch of scallions ($1.29)
- 1 bunch of cilantro ($1.99)
- about 1/2 cup white wine vinegar ($0.54)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.03)

The cost for the potato salad was about $7.97, which isn't that much considering it was half of our dinner and it did make enough to have a bowl left over for lunch.

The steps for making the potato salad were:

1. Prep potatoes. Wash, peel, and chop the potatoes into bite-size pieces. Put in large pot, bring to a boil, and cook until fork tender. Drain potatoes and allow to cool. [I was busy doing other things, and the potatoes cooked too long. They were beyond fork tender.]

2. Prep scallions and cilantro. Chop both as finely as possible. [The original recipe makes the dressing in a blender or food processor. I really hate lugging those out, plus the noise, plus the lack of space for it on the counter while making other things, plus the noisy mini food processor scares B, so I just chopped them by hand. Took a little longer, and not as fine as a blender would get it, but it worked out just fine. Probably didn't even need to be as finely chopped as it was, although in the recipe photo, the food-processed version pretty much turns the potatoes green instead of seeing the herbs themselves. Much harder to do that without the processor.]

3. Make dressing. Combine scallions and cilantro with white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Season to taste. [Given that I used more potatoes and chickpeas and scallions than the original recipe, I needed more vinegar than the recipe, and probably could have used even more S&P.]

4. Drain chickpeas and rinse. Add to large bowl with the potatoes and the dressing. Mix well and season to taste.

The potato salad could be served warm or chilled. We had no room in our fridge to chill it, and I didn't make it far in advance, so I just left it under a fan for as long as it took to make the chicken kebabs. It tasted good, but so many salads work even better once the flavors have time to meld together and chill. We did have leftovers though, which I ate for lunch the next day, and the flavor of the dressing came through much more, which I really liked.

Overall, the salad was good, even if it was 75% of the way to mashed potatoes given how long I boiled the potatoes. Since it was vinegar-based, the sour flavors were predominant in the dressing, along with the strong bite of the herbs. I personally liked that a lot, but not sure B was that into it since he would normally eat more potatoes than he did. Despite being full of heavier ingredients like potatoes and chickpeas, the dressing gave the salad a lightness that I really liked. I would make this again, although I have a very long list of potato salads to try first!

Afghan Chicken Kebabs

Going out to Afghan restaurants, we often got kebabs, eating delicious pieces of grilled meat over rice and with bread. If we were going to explore Afghan food, it only seemed right to include a kebab, and the yogurt-marinated kebabs I found on Afghan Culture Unveiled, kebab-e-murgh, looked and sounded delicious. The big issue we faced was that we don't have a restaurant-quality grill or any grill at all, and we needed to use our grill pan. But I was hopeful we would at least get close and have some tasty grilled chicken kebabs.

The ingredients for the kebabs were:

- 2 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts ($8.98)
- 2 cups of whole milk Greek yogurt ($2.75)
- garlic powder (a lot) ($0.05)
- about 1 tsp ground coriander ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- salt ($0.02)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- grapeseed oil for brushing grill pan ($0.20)

The cost for the kebabs was about $12.32, the majority of which was the chicken. We probably could have made less chicken or frozen chicken and reduced the cost, but didn't feel like defrosting the frozen chicken when we could get fresh, better-quality chicken on our grocery trip.

The steps we followed were:

1. Combine the yogurt, garlic powder, coriander, cumin, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Slice up the chicken to desired size and cover with the marinade.

2. Put the chicken and yogurt marinade into sealable bags, and marinate chicken in fridge overnight.

3. Take chicken out of fridge about 30 minutes before grilling. [That was the plan, but it turned into an hour. The chicken seemed fine.]

4. Put chicken into a colander to allow yogurt marinade to drip off. If any marinade remains, wipe off as much as possible before grilling so the yogurt doesn't burn. [Writing this out, I just realized that maybe I was supposed to put it in the colander for at least part of those 30 minutes instead of just letting it sit out on the counter?]

5. Heat a grill pan and brush with grapeseed oil.

6. Grill chicken pieces until cooked through on both sides. [I am definitely not an expert at grilling. I never know when they're done and always worry about undercooked chicken, so it ends up overdone 80% of the time. Since the time I wrote that in July 2020, we have gotten an instant read meat thermometer.]

7. Once chicken is done, wrap in foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.

I also made a small portion of yogurt dip using the same recipe as the previous aushe burida, bolani, and borani banjan, but this time using dried mint. I think it turned out fine, although the fresh mint (and fresh garlic) gave the first version of the dip a much stronger flavor which we really liked. But for an everyday sauce, where you may not have fresh mint on hand unless you grow it since it goes bad so quickly, dried mint definitely works.

How were the kebabs? Not as good as they would be on a real grill. Not as good as they would be if made by someone who doesn't have a habit of overcooking chicken. Some pieces were kind of juicy, but others were dry. Probably because I also sliced them up rather unevenly given the shapes of the chicken breasts. The flavor was good, but it mostly just tasted like grilled chicken without any strong spice flavors. We haven't made a lot of yogurt-marinated meats but thought the yogurt was supposed to tenderize the meat, and these just seemed texturally like other grilled chicken we've had before. [Note: I learned when making Lebanese shish tawook later in the year that plain yogurt instead of Greek yogurt might make all the difference.] They made for a good dinner, but we might have to keep working on it to see if they improve with better grilling technique!

Borani Banjan

This post is almost exactly as written back in June 2020, which explains why the recipe is written and priced out, something I've stopped doing in the interests of time these days...

My initial plan for the Afghanistan section of the AtWCC was just the three dishes we previously posted about - aushe burida, kidney bean curry, and bolani. I was researching our next destination (Alabama, since I decided to mix the states in), but found I kept coming back to Afghanistan. I didn't feel done with it, especially since I didn't attempt even a simplified version of the national dish, kabuli pulao. (There will be some countries, I already know, where our style of cooking or dietary requirements aren't going to work with some of the national dishes, but that wasn't the case here.) As I kept reading, I kept finding more and more things I wanted to try to make, so I expanded our list for Afghanistan, planning out an entire week's worth of new recipes. Of course, the grocery store didn't cooperate and didn't have in stock very basic things like cilantro, so a lot of the recipes got postponed.

The one thing we were still able to make with what we got at the grocery store was borani banjan, a dish of Afghan eggplant with yogurt sauce. I modeled ours after the version I found on Honey & Dates, mostly because the eggplant there was baked and not fried. (We've already covered how I feel about frying.) The ingredients for our modified version were:

- 2 large eggplants ($10.25) *
- olive oil (probably at least 1/2 cup) ($1)
- 1 onion ($0.94)
- small bunch of fresh mint ($0.95)
- 28 oz can of diced tomatoes ($2.29)
- ground ginger ($0.10)
- ground turmeric ($0.10)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- small spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)
- about 1 cup of plain yogurt ($1.48)
- rice ($0.50)

* The eggplants should have only cost $5.11, but Fairway charged us for some organic Italian eggplants instead of the plain basic eggplants we got. We had mostly stayed at home before the day we went there, but decided to combine a grocery trip with some dentist appointments. Being in the store with their poor social distancing enforcement and lack of any visible ongoing sanitizing (compared to other stores that will do things like cleaning your cart - remember, this was June 2020) was the least safe we felt all day, and we just wanted to get out, plus the only place the prices were listed was on the screen behind the cashier and we were keeping our distance, so we didn't notice the massive overcharge until it was too late. They also charged us for the wrong onions, but that was far less egregious of an error. On top of having to scrap 70% of our shopping list/meal plan because the store selection had gone way downhill, this was very aggravating.

The total cost for dinner was approximately $17.81, almost entirely due to the ridiculous cost of those eggplants. It did not feel like great value for the money, since we know how much it should have cost. Thanks, Fairway.


The steps for making our modified version of the dish were:

1. Prep the eggplant. Wash and slice into rounds (not too thick but not paper thin either; the recipe said 1/4 inch but I didn't measure). Line baking sheets with aluminum foil and spray with canola oil spray. Lay eggplant rounds flat on the baking sheets and brush with olive oil so the tops and sides are coated. Bake for 30 min at 350 degrees and flip halfway through.

2. While the eggplant is baking (or in our case, since the eggplant didn't fit on two baking sheets, and I had to fill a third while the first two were already in the oven, leading to some delayed and scattered timing), start prep on the tomato sauce and the yogurt sauce by chopping the onion and the mint.

3. Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened. Add the diced tomatoes (with only a little of the juices), ginger, turmeric, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and minced garlic. (I didn't measure any of the spices, so maybe a tsp of ginger and turmeric, a few grinds of S&P, and a lot of garlic? Season to taste, of course.) Mix well and cook (occasionally stirring) until the sauce has thickened. Add about 1/3 of the chopped mint, cook for another minute, and then remove from heat.


4. Add yogurt to a bowl with the remaining 2/3 of the chopped mint, a little salt, and a liberal amount of garlic powder. Mix well, and let sit until the rest of the components are finished.

[Side note on the yogurt sauce: This is basically the same yogurt sauce I've now made three times for our exploration of Afghan food, but we love it. This time, we used plain yogurt instead of plain Greek yogurt because it was what we had, but we prefer it with the Greek yogurt. The first time we made it with some fresh garlic added was, of course, the best. Many of the recipes talk about using dried mint, but we've used fresh because we haven't found any dried mint yet. One day, we'll find out which one we like better, because I doubt this will be the last time we make this yogurt sauce.]

[Also, a prep note: If the eggplant is finished baking (so that they're soft enough to eat) but nothing else is done (which was, of course, our situation), put the eggplant on a plate under aluminum foil to keep it warm and let it soften some more.]

5. Layer the dish with the eggplant on the bottom, the tomato sauce in the middle, and the yogurt sauce on top. Serve with rice on the side.


I don't actually remember if we ever tried this at the local Afghan restaurant in our old neighborhood, so I can't really compare, but overall it turned out okay. The tomato sauce and yogurt sauce were really tasty, and they worked well together, but the weakest part of the dish was the eggplant. I haven't made much eggplant before (I actually didn't remember ever using the big eggplants before, only Japanese eggplant or baby eggplants, but reading old posts, I was wrong about that, having made it very differently for escalivada), and I'm not sure if I baked them for too little time, too much time, or with too little oil, or what, but they were just not as soft and juicy as I would have liked them to be. I think if the eggplant texture had come out to what I envisioned in my head, that combined with the tomato sauce and yogurt sauce would have been delicious. We'll definitely keep this dish in mind if we ever see good (and affordable) eggplant at the store, and it'll give me another chance to get it right!

Kidney Bean Curry

I wrote at least part of almost every single post about our exploration through Afghanistan back in 2020 except for this one. The second dish we tried was a kidney bean curry since we had gotten a variety of curries during our orders from Ariana and they were all delicious. I have no idea what recipe I followed or what adaptations I made because I didn't take any notes. I don't even know exactly what went into the curry because I didn't take an ingredients picture.

Edit (May 2023): I found my notes for this dish! Apparently the curry included 2 cans of kidney beans, onion, garlic, zucchini, mint, ground coriander, turmeric, ground cumin, and tomato sauce. I still don't remember much about this, but at least it's no longer a mystery as to what was in it.

What I do remember is that we thought the curry was fine, but not very memorable. It had nice flavors, but was also kind of boring. That's probably reflected by the fact that I never wrote about it and remember nothing about it almost two years later. I would have skipped this post entirely since I don't remember anything, but it was our second dish for the AtWCC and I want to record it all.

I remember our next stop a little better - making the bolani, which was also for the 52 week cooking challenge - which was fine but also a little disappointing. I had made all three of our Afghan dishes for the challenge three days in a row, jumping straight into the challenge, and I thought I was done there, but the challenge was going to take another turn...

Kicking Off the AtWCC

The first country we explored for the Around the World Cooking Challenge was Afghanistan, and we started way back in June 2020. I really meant to recap these on time, and I actually wrote many of the posts back in 2020, so why did it take almost two years to get to this point? Because I had wanted to write WorldEats restaurant summaries of our Afghan food exploration first to show what we were modeling the dishes after, but that just never happened because it was a daunting task that I never seemed to have enough time to do. Since we're almost to our fifth stop on our world tour, it's time to get started, with or without the WorldEats recaps.

Aushak

My favorite Afghan dish is probably aushak, leek dumplings topped with a meat sauce and yogurt sauce. I mentioned this in my 2011 favorite food memories list, and we got it often when we went to Ariana, one of our favorite neighborhood places when we lived in Hell's Kitchen. (I've said favorite a lot in this paragraph, but aushak deserves it.) Aushak is a fair amount of work though, and I wasn't so good at making dumplings (still not great at it), so it was not how I wanted to start the challenge. But there was another dish at Ariana called aushe burida that we got a couple of times, which was sliced noodles with a very similar garlic and mint yogurt sauce and meat curry sauce that was kind of like aushak but with noodles instead of dumplings. I decided to start there to try to start off the challenge with a win.

Aushe burida, looks very similar to aushak

I couldn't find a recipe for aushe burida online, and every time I searched for it, I just got brought back to the description of the dish at Ariana, so I'm not sure if that's just one of their family recipes or if it's spelled differently elsewhere or what. So I pulled up an aushak recipe from Tara's Multicultural Table, used that to get some ideas about the sauce, and tried to adapt that from what we remembered about aushe burida at Ariana (which wasn't that easy since it had been years since the last time we had it), adding in some leeks as a nod to the flavor of the aushak.

There were three main components to the dish: the noodles, the meat sauce, and the yogurt sauce. I ended up with a yogurt sauce that consisted of plain yogurt, salt, a lot of garlic powder, a few cloves of minced garlic, and about 1/3 cup of finely chopped fresh mint. The yogurt sauce chilled in the fridge while I made the rest of the recipe. Although the aushe burida at Ariana was made with homemade noodles, I chose to just use dry pasta, because I definitely did not have time to tackle a separate pasta-making project too.

I made the meat sauce while the pasta was cooking using onion, garlic, a meatless crumble, salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder (a lot), paprika, ground coriander, scallions, leeks, tomato sauce, and chopped fresh mint, all generally added in that order with the mint at the end right before taking off the heat. Traditionally, this sauce would be made with actual meat, but I don't cook much red meat at home and opted this time to use the Gardein beefless ground. It would probably work with any ground meat or meat substitute though. The bowls when assembled were layered with the noodles on the bottom, then the meat sauce, and lastly topped with the yogurt.

Overall, we liked the dish, and we thought the taste got close to what we remembered of the aushak and aushe burida at Ariana, but not exactly. We thought maybe it was the richness of the meat stewing in the sauce that was missing with the plant-based meat substitutes, so maybe something like Impossible Burger would be better since it mimics the flavor of beef so much more. Visually, the sauce also looked different from what we had at the restaurant because it looked like there were some yellow split peas in their sauce. Maybe there were also more secret ingredients that we couldn't guess.

We've made this several more times since then, mostly using the same recipe with some minor tweaks until about 22 months later when I tried a recipe from a cookbook I hadn't yet discovered the first time around (not surprising considering I wasn't really browsing library catalogs or cookbook lists less than 3 months into the pandemic). More on that another time!