30s (2023)

I really, really, really need to get better about posting and documenting things here before I am two years behind on cooking challenge memories. We're in Week 40 now, so this is probably as on-time as I've been in a while. This set is from the "30s" weeks and anything not covered separately/by the AtWCC.

Week 31: mint

I wasn't feeling very creative when the mint challenge came up, and even after doing some internet research, my best options seemed to be either a sauce with mint (similar to the yogurt sauces we were doing during the Afghanistan AtWCC) or a salad. Since it was the middle of July and I always want salads when it's hot, that was an easy choice. I decided on a summer salad with mint that I saw on The Clever Meal, with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, cucumber, feta, and of course, the starring ingredient for this challenge, mint (both chopped and whole leaves used as a garnish).

I don't often buy mint for salads, even though I know it's great in them, because it just goes bad so quickly, so this was a nice change. The dressing consisted of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, agave (swapped for honey), dijon mustard, salt, and pepper, and it went really well with the salad. Very nice, refreshing salad side dish. The only negative here was that the salad ended up costing around $12, with the cost of feta (since we ran out of our Costco-sized box and I had to get it from the local store) and mint being about 54% of that total. I haven't been doing the cost breakdowns as much as I used to (just not as much time with a little one running around and playing, which also shows in how rarely I get a post up timely), and it was a bit of sticker shock when I finished doing the math. Not the fault of the recipe, but the cost of groceries is just so high right now!

Week 33: Cutthroat Kitchen

I used to watch Cutthroat Kitchen back when we had cable, so when this theme came up, I had no idea how that would get implemented as a cooking challenge. Apparently, a lot of people wondered the same thing, so it was suggested that you basically sabotage yourself in some way. Considering I really hate food waste, and the chances of making something inedible were high if I were to use some of the actual Cutthroat Kitchen sabotages and be surprised by them, I decided to just use two "sabotages" from the start: using the microwave as the only cooking appliance and giving up my usual knives in favor of B's child-safe knives. This did mean I could plan in advance, but neither would have been my go-tos for the meal I chose.

I decided to microwave fish, since I remembered my mom used to do that when I was younger, and adapted a fish recipe from Chew Out Loud. Along with that, I made some microwaved green beans (recipe from Baking Mischief) and brown rice (instructions from Hungry Huy). I was most worried about the rice, because when I used to microwave rice, I had a specialized container that was used for microwaving rice. I wasn't sure how it would do with just a dish towel, but it turned out to be fine. Not as good as the stove or the rice cooker, but fine. I thought the green beans might be a little soft and overdone, but they were actually perfect. Greener than when I cook them on the stove, not overcooked mush, not too crunchy. I think I might do this more. I was pretty confident in the fish, since we'd done that before with other recipes, but I liked this so much that it might become a recurring recipe in our meal plan. I would use my own knives on the onions and scallions though, because these were a bit of a mess with kid knives. Pretty successful partially "sabotaged" meal!

Week 34: chips/crisps

This one was a tough one for me to choose, because I've been trying to choose some healthier meals to make (although the recent week that included both Swedish meatballs and shrimp and grits on the meal plan was a bit heavy...), and chips/crisps don't necessarily lend themselves to that. In the end, I decided to make Frito pie based on a Spend With Pennies recipe. 

A layer of Fritos, a layer of cheese, a layer of meat (used Impossible) mixed with onions, Rotel, tomato sauce. beans, corn, and taco seasonings, another layer of cheese all baked in the oven and then topped with Fritos. I debated counting Frito pie for Texas or New Mexico, but as of the time of the challenge, hadn't found a clear answer on where it originated and whether it started as a walking taco or not, so for now, not part of the AtWCC because I need to do more research (and maybe make it again).

Week 35: Afghan

Usually this type of challenge would lead to its own AtWCC post, but this time, I remade the kebabeh degee morgh that I made from Parwana and already posted about. It was just as good making it from my cookbook notes as it was from the original cookbook page, which felt like a success. Highly recommend this one if you're looking for an Afghan curry.

Week 36: reduction

I was really not inspired when I saw the reduction challenge, as my mind immediately went to sauces, something I don't tend to make much of when cooking dinner. After mulling it over with A, he mentioned making tiny sized versions of foods, and that sparked some ideas. Tiny was probably a bit more work than I had time to do (and no food tweezers), but a reduced size version of chicken pot pie made in a muffin tin? That would work. I used a recipe from AllRecipes and made one with condensed chicken soup, canned chicken, mixed vegetables, cheese, and seasonings stuffed into biscuits. They were delicious, no (reduced) sauce needed.

Week 38: wartime

I first learned of Depression cake (aka war cake) from B's preschool when discussing egg-free cake alternatives. I knew about rationing during the war and shortages during the Great Depression, but not specifically this type of cake which didn't include any eggs, milk, or butter. I wasn't sure what to make for the wartime challenge, but A suggested this immediately, and it seemed like the perfect idea. I followed a recipe from Budget Bytes, and overall it turned out good, except it completely stuck to the pan on the bottom and came out a bit messy. Not sure what I did wrong. Maybe slightly too much oil? The cake parts itself were fine, and the frosting wasn't bad, but it wasn't as "presentable" a cake as I was hoping it would be. At least taste and texture were good!

Another set of successful challenges!

Our Next Parwana Dinner

Our next experiment with Parwana recipes was also on Eid (last year), a couple hours after the khetayee fail. We hoped that we would have better luck with these two recipes: kebabeh degee morgh (chicken kebab) and naan flatbread.

The chicken recipe was really easy, especially since I adapted the recipe to use ground spices and omit the mortar and pestle. Just brown 1-2 pounds of chicken thighs, then make a sauce with all the other ingredients (tomato sauce, salt, ground coriander, ground cumin, crushed fenugreek, nigella seeds, ginger paste, minced garlic, cayenne, and Greek yogurt). The sauce then gets added to the chicken, coating it completely, and the whole thing simmers for about 15 minutes until the chicken is done cooking and the sauce is thick. Very, very simple instructions. I knew we had eaten fenugreek and nigella seeds before, but it was my first time buying them, and I was curious what specific flavors they would lend to the dish.

The finished dish reminded me of chicken curries we had previously ordered at Indian restaurants (and less of the one we used to order at our favorite Afghan restaurant), and we really, really liked it. It was the best of the three Parwana dishes we made that day. The flavors were deep and nuanced, and I wondered if some of the dishes we made before could have used the fenugreek and if that was the missing piece. At the time, I was excited to try more dishes with fenugreek and nigella seeds, but I don't know if I've touched them in the year since making this, so maybe it's time to find some more new recipes to try.

The cookbook recommended serving the chicken over naan flatbread, so trying out their naan recipe alongside the chicken was a no-brainer. This was my third attempt at Afghan naan. The first time I made it, it was relatively soft, a little buttery, a little fluffy, and pretty good, even if not that similar to the bread we had previously had at Afghan restaurants. The second attempt didn't go quite as well, but the best/salvageable parts of that one were still on the soft and fluffy side. This time... Well, let's just say my Afghan naan-making skills seem to be on a downward trajectory.

This naan was a yeast bread, so I made the dough, kneaded it, and then set it aside to rise using our usual warm microwave method. Once it was ready, I followed the instructions to divide the dough in half and spread it into the baking pans with my hands, evenly spread out and filling the entire pan. It seemed okay at that point even if not perfectly even. They were supposed to bake for about 15 minutes "or until the naans are golden brown and baked through." I ended up doing it for longer than 15 minutes because they weren't golden brown, but I guess I should have stopped earlier because they came out like a brick. (There was unfortunately a lot of brick bread in 2022...) The tops were softer, but that still meant most of the bread was barely edible because of the texture. It also didn't taste like anything special, just kind of a generic bread that was mostly hard as a rock. 

I was so disappointed with how the naan turned out, and it was the same day as the khetayee, which made it even worse. Thank goodness the chicken curry turned out good, because that saved the entire day from being a complete failure. Considering both the khetayee and naan didn't work, I started to think that maybe I should stick to cooking from Parwana and skip baking from Parwana, since that would still give me plenty to choose from.

Khetayee

After two great recipes from the Parwana cookbook (the meat kofta sauce and the bolani), I was really excited to try something sweet. I had bookmarked two different cookie recipes, one that was traditionally eaten around Nowroz (new year at the beginning of spring) and one called khetayee that was traditionally eaten for Eid. So to celebrate Eid (last year), I decided to make khetayee on our day off from school!

The recipe seemed pretty straightforward. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, milk powder, baking powder, confectioner's sugar) and then slowly add the oil while mixing everything together. Then shape the dough into balls, flatten them a little, make thumbprints where the ground pistachios would be added (side note: the pistachios in the recipe photo were bright green, but ours weren't - where do the bright green pistachios come from?), and then bake until lightly golden.

I was excited to make these for a bunch of reasons. First, I didn't really make any desserts for Afghanistan the first time around unlike all of our other geographic explorations. Second, B doesn't get much pistachio in his diet other than some ice cream, and I thought this would be a good way to increase exposure (for prevention of allergy purposes). Third, I had never made anything with milk powder before, and I was curious to see how that would affect baked goods.

Unfortunately, the cookies I made were not good. I think that's likely user error, because these cookies would not have been passed down for generations in Afghanistan if they had this texture. They were incredibly dry and hard to eat, so stick-to-your-mouth dry that I couldn't even think about giving them to little B for safety reasons. At least I was able to give him a spoonful of ground pistachios before I made the cookies.

So, what may have gone wrong? First, I used nonfat milk powder instead of whole milk, because I was able to get a big bag of that at Whole Foods. The specialty store had whole milk powder, but I wasn't sure that packet was going to have enough for the recipe in it, and I didn't want to run short. Looking online before buying, it didn't sound like there would be a dramatic difference between the two in baking, but maybe I got that wrong. Second, I had to keep adding flour during the mixing/shaping step, because it was impossible to shape the dough I made into balls. It just kept spreading and would not keep the shape until I added a fair amount more of the flour. Third, maybe I baked them too long. I added a minute or so to the time because they weren't golden on top, but I didn't think that would turn them into bricks of chalk.

Who knows what other missteps I might have made, but the cookies were not good. Edible, but not good. I'd say the best parts of the experience of making these was being able to give B some pistachios and just how soft the dough felt when mixing it. I probably won't make them again after the disappointing results, but I'm glad I tried.

Gandana Bolani

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I love, love, love garlic chives. In reading the Parwana cookbook, I learned that in Afghanistan, there is a type of leek called gandana that is often used as a filling for bolani, and that outside Afghanistan, it's often substituted with garlic chives (similar taste and texture). That sounded delicious. I had made bolani once before for the 52 week cooking challenge, and since we already revisited one dish for the AtWCC from this cookbook, why not do another (and another and another)? In addition to the gandana bolani, I also decided to do kachaloo bolani, which was bolani stuffed with potato.

The first step for bolani was to make the dough. This version consisted of flour, yeast, water, oil, and salt. This was different from the last version which was not a yeast dough. After proofing twice, the dough is rolled out into circles, then filled and sealed. Unlike the last time, where I got mostly strips and ovals, I did get a few circles this time and other almost-circles or shapes that somewhat resembled circles. I guess over that two year span, I got a little bit better at that.

For the filling last time, I made mashed potatoes and mixed them with scallions, spinach, and seasonings. For the potato one this time, I added onions (from the recipe) and scallions (because I had extra), and I will confess that I used instant mashed potatoes. There was enough to do with the dough rolling and making two fillings that I just didn't think I had the time to peel and mash potatoes too. (I was right.) The filling was fine with instant. Instant mashed potatoes are so underrated.

The chive filling was the one I was most excited about. It called for 2 cups of finely chopped garlic chives, along with a bunch of cilantro, scallions, onion, and seasonings, so lots of chopping, lots of time-consuming prep. This filling was fantastic, even eaten alone by the spoonful, so I was at least relieved that even if the bolani didn't turn out that well, the filling would be good. Our bunch of garlic chives was gigantic (wish I had taken an ingredients picture, but I was short on time and space), but it was far more than 2 cups of garlic chives. I guess I should have found a second recipe to use them in, but instead I used them all here. The leftover filling was amazing mixed into oatmeal for breakfast. I could eat that all the time if I had a daily-replenishing bowl of chive filling.

The last time I made bolani, I baked them, but this time, they went into the air fryer. That process took a little longer since the air fryer could only fit two or three at a time, but I think we liked the results better. The last time, the outside was crispy like a cracker, and everything was kind of bland, which was not the case here. It still didn't look like a thin flatbread, but it was just like eating a stuffed bread roll. The potato filling here was also a little on the blander side, but the chives one was wonderful. I have no idea how the bolani in the recipe photo (or what we had at the restaurant) were so flat while ours were huge, but at least these were tasty.

The last component was a chutney for dipping. A few days before I made these, Eater had published an article about bolani (talk about timing). In it, they profiled a refugee in Albania (funny coincidence, we were in the Albania part of the AtWCC as well when we made this) who started an Afghan restaurant that served bolani. I didn't want to make two days of bolani, so I decided to try the chutney recipe from the article even if I didn't make the bolani itself. The chutney was a blend of tomatoes, jalapeño, garlic, vinegar, salt, and sugar.

Usually, we would try to tone down the spice of these dishes for B, but he hadn't been very into dipping or sauces, so we just made it the same way but with one jalapeño instead of two and removing all the seeds. We were right in our prediction, and he had no interest in the chutney, but we really liked it. It was such a good match for the bolani. It reminded us a little bit of the salad dressing at our favorite Yemeni spot which we have always loved, and now we have the recipe for something close to that!

Even though they didn't turn out looking like the photo, we deemed our second Parwana experiment a success, and couldn't wait to see what else was in the cookbook!

Parwana

I've mentioned the Parwana cookbook here before, and besides the pizza, it was a big reason why we revisited our exploration of Afghan cuisine. The cookbook existed back when we cooked the first time in 2020, but somehow, in all my googling, I never found out about it until early 2022. I usually like including recipes from a cookbook in the challenge when I can, so it didn't feel right to leave it out just because I didn't find it in time. Looking through the cookbook, I found a recipe for a meat kofta sauce which accompanies aushak, and it sounded remarkably similar to the one we had tried at Ariana. I wondered, even though that was meant to go with the aushak, if I put it over noodles, would that actually get a little closer to what we remembered about aushe burida?

The first thing I noticed about the Parwana recipe was that the meat sauce included chana dal, a component that I remembered from Ariana but didn't have in our previous version. It also included pureed tomatoes, onion, garlic, ground lamb (which I substituted with Impossible), turmeric, curry powder, crushed coriander seeds (I used ground), tomato paste, and white vinegar. The spices were a little different from the first time, but the general flavor profile was very similar.

The third component to the dish, after the noodles and the meat sauce, was the yogurt topping. I had forgotten when I made this that the Ariana description specifically included mint in the yogurt sauce, so I decided to try out a yogurt dressing in the Parwana cookbook that just consisted of plain yogurt and garlic powder. This came from a recipe for aush, a thick soup with hand-rolled, knife-cut noodles and seasonal vegetables. That also reminded me a lot of the dish from Ariana since it included the noodles, the same meat kofta sauce, and the yogurt dressing, but it was in more of a soup form with additional vegetables. Could it be that this dish is more common in this form, and maybe that's why I couldn't find any recipes for the dish we got at Ariana itself? B doesn't really eat soup still, so I stuck with just trying to replicate the noodle dish by itself, but I was certainly intrigued by the (possible) connection.

The sauce was wonderful. At the time we had this, it had been even more years since we had the original dish, so it was even harder to compare, but we were very happy with this kofta sauce over some fettuccine (because I still didn't have time or space to add on a pasta-making project to this one). The yogurt sauce didn't add as much as the last one with the fresh garlic and the mint, so I think in the future, we'll probably mesh the two recipes together and make the meat kofta sauce from here plus the yogurt sauce that we had before. Whether or not that's authentic, and even close to what we tried originally that made us fall in love with this sauce, we're happy with what we have now!

Afghan Pesto Pizza

A few days after the kofta pizza, it was time for our second Afghan pizza! I used the same recipe page from Afghan Culture Unveiled, this time for the pesto pizza. I hadn't been sure originally if I was going to make both or just the kofta one, but we had a bunch of cilantro laying around, which was a main ingredient in this pesto, so it made a lot of sense to make this too.

Instead of making my own pizza dough or even using a ball of pre-made pizza dough, this time I opted for some prepared pizza crusts from Trader Joe's. That saved a lot of time and effort, since I didn't even have to let the dough sit or roll it out. I had never tried these before, and they barely fit into our reusable bags and our fridge, but now having tried them, I am a fan since they are incredibly convenient.

The pesto consisted of a bunch of scallions, a lot of cilantro, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. In the 1.5-year span since we first did our Afghan food exploration, we became proud owners of an immersion blender, which was perfect for making this (and which I probably would use in the future if we were making something like the shor nakhod again).

The last component (besides the cheese topping) was a combination of yogurt and feta cheese designed to mimic quroot, since I had no idea where to find that and the recipe recommended this combo as a substitute.

The yogurt sauce went on top of the crust, followed by the pesto, and then the whole pizza was topped with mozzarella cheese. Everything together was amazing. I was so impressed by the combination that I knew immediately that I would want to make this again sometime. The pesto just had so much flavor, and it was different from any other pizza or flatbread we'd had before. Although we were eating a lot of pizza in a very short time, I was glad that we had expanded the AtWCC to add a pizza for each place, because we had already had two great pizzas!

Kofta Pizza

At the end of the last post, I mentioned rounding out our exploration of Afghan cuisine and moving on to Alabama, so it would be logical if you thought the next post in this series was going to be either a summary of our Afghan journey or our first Alabama dish. Surprise! It's another post about Afghan cuisine here.

As the AtWCC has progressed over the past few years, it's evolved in so many ways. We broadened our "walk around the world" to include countries out of order (mostly thanks to the 52 week cooking challenge, but also other things). I originally was only going to do a few dishes for each country, since it's impossible to cover everything from everywhere, but then decided to keep going until it felt "done," like we'd had a good sampling of different types of offerings.

The most recent evolution of the challenge was to include a pizza for every location. I had already been aiming to spotlight bread for each location (whether making it myself or just focusing on bread, now that the bread-baking height of the pandemic has passed), but considering one of B's favorite foods is pizza, that seemed like the next logical addition. Pizza or flatbreads or similar foods exist in so many places, but even where they don't, making a pizza with ingredients celebrating a particular locale seemed like it would work. Not a great addition for my cholesterol or triglycerides, especially since the whole wheat pizza dough at Trader Joe's seems to have been discontinued, but definitely a fun exploration.

Since the pizza idea didn't arise until spring 2022, and we were already working our way through Albania at that point, that meant going back to the places we "finished" to make some "catch-up" pizzas. The first place we returned was where we started, Afghanistan, but we didn't only return to make pizzas. Earlier in 2022, I learned about a cookbook called Parwana, full of Afghan history, culture, and family stories, written by a family that runs restaurants in Australia. I'm not sure how I didn't find it before in all my googling for Afghan cookbooks, but alas, I did not. I was so intrigued by so many recipes there that I started making those alongside all the rest of our AtWCC projects. With all those additional meals to make, it did feel sometimes like we would never be done with the As, but it's been so worth it. More on the Parwana recipes in future posts.

Back to the pizza. One of the blogs about Afghanistan culture and food that I really enjoyed during the first part of our journey was Afghan Culture Unveiled, and sure enough, they had some ideas for pizzas right there! There was a pesto one and a kofta one, and I decided to go for the kofta one first. The first step was making the meat sauce. The recipe used lamb, but I went for beefless beef, which was combined with onion, garlic, tomato, tomato paste, salt, pepper, paprika, and ground coriander. On top of the meat sauce went some rounds of mozzarella and sprinkles of feta.

This pizza was a great way to kick off our AtWCC pizzas! The sauce was delicious on its own, and it made for a good base for the cheese. I think if I made it again, I would just use shredded mozzarella instead of the rounds so it would be spread and melted more evenly, but that's about it. It reminded me a bit of a lasagna pizza with a meat sauce on the bottom topped with cheese. Despite pizza being one of his favorite foods, B actually didn't eat much of the pizza, but that might have been my fault for giving him too many mozzarella rounds and crumbles of feta before dinner. We ate this with a salad on the side, and it was a wonderful pizza night!

Kabuli Pulao

I had put together an entire list of recipes I wanted to try to make for the Afghanistan portion of AtWCC, but there was one conspicuous absence from the list - kabuli pulao, Afghanistan's national dish. Most of the recipes I had come across for kabuli pulao at that point seemed so complicated, and the last thing I needed was to attempt a recipe that was going to literally take all day. It just didn't seem right, though, to explore Afghanistan's cuisine without making the national dish, especially since it was something we could actually make and eat (i.e., not something with eggs or deep-fried or requiring red meat). I went back and searched some more, and I found what seemed like a doable recipe for kabuli pulao on International Cuisine, so that became the final piece of our exploration of Afghan cuisine.

The ingredients for our version of kabuli pulao (switching the meat to chicken and leaving out the apricots) were:

- 1 cup basmati rice

- 3-4 medium carrots

- 1 large boneless skinless chicken breast (about 0.75 lbs)

- 1-2 tbsp olive oil

- about 1 tbsp cumin

- 4 cardamom pods

- 2 cinnamon sticks

- 1 small box of raisins

- 2 small pinches of saffron threads

- salt and freshly ground black pepper

- 2 tbsp sugar

I intended to follow the recipe closely (since we've made a similar dish, plov, before, which has not always been the most flavorful), but my slowness moving around the limited space in the kitchen, trying to balance this with making naan from scratch, and things on the stove cooking faster than expected led to some unplanned modifications. The steps we followed were:

1. Wash rice and soak for 20 minutes. Drain and cook according to package instructions, but cut the time in half (and then drain and set aside if necessary).

[I added the amount of water the package said to, and cooked it for about 12-13 minutes instead of their recommended 20 (got sidetracked working on other prep). When I opened the pot, the rice had absorbed all the water, and it was fully-cooked instead of being half-boiled rice. As a result, I could skip the steps of draining it and setting it aside, and I didn't have to time the final simmering.]

2. Prep work - peel and grate carrots, cut chicken.

[I seriously estimated wrong for timing on this step, because I forgot just how long it takes to grate carrots!]

3. In a large skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil, and then cook the chicken until golden brown.

[The next step after this was supposed to be adding a cup of water and some salt, and letting it simmer until the meat became tender, but I was already being splashed with hot oil when I stirred the chicken and had no desire for it to become worse. Also, chicken is already more tender than lamb, so a long, tenderizing simmer wasn't as necessary. Plus, it was so much later in the night than I was expecting when I got to this point, so I didn't feel like doing that.]

4. Add the carrots, raisins, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, salt, and pepper. Stir well. Add about 1/2 cup of water, cover, and cook for a few minutes.

[The cumin was supposed to be added with the rice while it cooked, but I forgot. I added about 2 tsp here and more in the next step.]

5. Add the rice and saffron, and stir well. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.

[This was where I added some more cumin and also some black pepper.]

6. Heat the sugar in a small pan over low heat until it melts, and then add 1/2 cup of water, and mix well. During this process, add (regular) water (not the water from the first sentence) a couple tbsp at a time to the rice mixture in the skillet if it's starting to stick.

[I added water a lot, at least 5-6 times, probably more. It kept sticking to the bottom of the skillet, but at least the browned bits added flavor. This step took much longer than expected, and if I were to do this again, I would start this much, much earlier. I had never melted sugar before, so when it wasn't working, I looked it up where it said it could take as long as 5 minutes, so I went to work on the naan dough, and before I knew it, it had burned, so we had to do it again. This time, it seemed to refuse to melt so we added the water early and then mixed it up. Seemed fine.]

7. Add the sugar mixture to the rice and stir well. Cover and simmer for 5-10 minutes to let the flavors meld.

[I didn't actually count the minutes, but just left it there until the naan was done.]

We really liked this! In contrast to some of the plov I've made before, this one just had so much more flavor, maybe due to the whole spices used or the saffron threads. Outside of grating the carrots and figuring out the sugar pan, none of the steps were especially time-consuming, so I could see this being something we make again (although maybe not with from-scratch bread-making at the same time). Very happy that this was how we rounded out our exploration of Afghan cuisine!

Afghan Naan Take Two

I don't remember how I got there, but in looking at Afghan recipes, I ended up on one for naan on My Ginger Garlic Kitchen. I had already made naan during our Afghan food exploration, but since it didn't come out that similar to the one we liked at our favorite Ariana, and the one on this site looked much closer, I figured, why not give it another try? At the time, we had one last meal scheduled for the Afghan part of the challenge (the kabuli pulao in the next post), so I decided to make the naan to accompany it.

The ingredients for this bread were very similar to the last one, just in different amounts:

- 3 cups + 1 tbsp flour

- 1 tsp salt

- 2.25 tsp yeast

- 1 tsp sugar

- 2 tbsp olive oil

- about 1 tbsp butter

- 1 cup + a few tbsp warm water

I had intended to do a cost comparison of the two, but over two years later, that's not going to happen, because I have no idea where my old pricing list is and I can't look up any current prices with all the inflation that has happened since then.

I followed the recipe fairly closely to make the naan, and the steps were:

1. In a small bowl, combine 1 cup of warm water, yeast, and sugar. Let it sit for about 10 minutes. (It should look foamy.)

2. In a large bowl, combine 3 cups of flour, salt, and olive oil. Mix well.

3. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture, and mix well.

4. Knead for about 5 minutes until one big dough ball that's not too sticky.

5. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, and let sit for about 2 hours for the dough to double in size (or close to it).

6. Gently punch down the dough after the proofing time.

7. Preheat oven to 400 degrees while rolling out the dough.

8. Divide dough into two balls. [See below about a possible step before this one.]

9. Create a mixture with the remaining flour and water, and apply it to your hands.

10. Using your hands, flatten out the dough balls into ovals about 1/4 inch thick. Use a fork to make patterns and lines.

11. Bake until browned, about 10 minutes. Melt butter while baking.

12. Brush with butter, cut into pieces, and place on a plate under a foil tent to keep warm and soft.

The results of this naan experiment were puzzling. The first ball rolled out so much better, but then didn't rise. The second ball had holes everywhere when I tried to roll it out, so I ended up rolling it back up into a ball, kneading it a little more, and then trying again. I couldn't get it as thin as the recipe suggested, but sort of gave up, but that one turned out better and actually rose.

When I went back to the recipe page and watched the demonstration video (which I probably should have done before I made it), I noticed that nowhere in the instructions did it say to knead the dough again between punching it down, dividing it, and rolling it into a ball, but in the video, there was another kneading step. I ended up kneading the second ball again because of my poor rolling, so was that why it turned out better? I'm not experienced enough at bread baking to know, so if anyone has any ideas on why they turned out differently, I'm all ears (or, I guess, eyes).

From the picture, I really thought this one was going to turn out more like the Afghan bread we were used to getting at restaurants, but it was fairly similar to the other one we made (well, at least the second oval that actually rose was). Both were soft and fluffy, but the other one seemed a little more consistently fluffy and would probably be the one we'd go back to again since it turned out more successfully in our kitchen.

Qorma-e-Sabzi

The last component of our Afghan dinner, accompanying the chapli kebab and the naan and tomatoes, was qorma-e-sabzi, a slow-cooked, stewed spinach. I had been trying hard, despite the pandemic, to make sure we got enough vegetables in our diet, and a bowl of tomatoes just didn't feel like it would be enough to offset all that "meat" and bread. I wasn't sure how B would like it, since it's a little harder to eat spinach with your hands or rudimentary fork skills (wrote this post in 2020 too...), but at least it would be good for the adults. I liked the recipe I found on Mom's Kitchen Handbook because it looked simple and because it could be made in a pot without any extra equipment like a slow cooker.

The ingredients for our adapted version were:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)
- 1/2 of a big bunch of scallions ($0.64)
- 1/2 of a small bunch of cilantro ($1)
- 1 bag frozen spinach ($1.49)
- 1 tbsp dried dill ($0.10)
- 2 tsp ground coriander ($0.25)
- a couple dashes of cayenne pepper ($0.03)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- about 1.5 tbsp lemon juice ($0.29)
- water ($0)

The total amount of the spinach recipe was approximately $4.03, which when added to the other components (chapli kebab - $11.72, naan - $1.97, and a box of grape tomatoes - $2.69), resulted in a grand total of $20.41.

The recipe said that prep time would take 4 minutes and cook time 36 minutes, so it seemed like a simple enough recipe. I know I take a long time with prep, possibly longer than most amateur cooks, but I don't understand how 4 minutes is enough time to wash scallions, chop scallions, wash cilantro, pull cilantro leaves off the stems, and chop the cilantro, even for an experienced chef. What am I missing in terms of technique? We didn't even have the scallions and cilantro washed in 4 minutes. Anyway, the steps for our version of the spinach were:

1. Prep - chop scallions and cilantro.

2. Heat olive oil in a pot over medium heat. [I used too big of a pot for one bag of spinach. Learn from my mistake!]

3. Add the scallions, and cook for a few minutes until softened.

4. Add the frozen spinach, and let it cook until you can break up all the frozen chunks.

5. Add the dill, coriander, cayenne, and about 1/4 cup of water. Stir together and cook for 20 minutes on medium low heat. Keep stirring regularly, and add water, a tbsp or so at a time, to keep it from drying out. [This worked well until my focus shifted to rolling out the naan, and the spinach dried out a little while it was neglected. Didn't seem to hurt it that much though.]

6. Add the cilantro, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, stir, and let cook for another 10 minutes.

The recipe was fairly straightforward and simple, other than the need to keep monitoring the spinach to make sure it didn't dry out. It seems like a good recipe to make if you're actively cooking something else on the stove for that half-hour and can just give it a good stir and water replenishment every so often. That said, for a spinach side dish, the prep time for us with the scallions and cilantro (really, the cilantro more than anything) took too long to make this very often. I did like the flavors a lot, and it was delicious with the naan. But as predicted, B was not much of a fan, and got a little frustrated by it even after we helped him eat some of it. Maybe we'll revisit this when he's a little bit older because the flavors are great. (2023 note: Spinach is one of the few green vegetables B eats now, but only contained in other things, like spinach pie.) Maybe we'll also be faster at prepping cilantro by then (but probably not).

Chapli Kebab

Most of this post was written in July 2020. I've chosen to leave most of the text the same and just add some updates.

Reading through my new favorite Afghan food blog, Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found a recipe that really intrigued me: chapli kebab. I had only eaten chapli kebab once before, back in 2009 at the Vendy Awards from the Biryani Cart. It was one of my favorite things from that awards day, but I was never able to get it again because they never had any when I went to the cart for lunches at work. I hadn't realized that they made chapli kebab in Afghanistan as well, but figured it might not be exactly the same as what I had since the folks behind the Biryani Cart weren't Afghan. (I think the main chef was a native of Bangladesh.) Some additional reading online informed me that chapli kebab originated from Peshawar, today northwest Pakistan, located right on the border of Afghanistan, so that makes a lot of sense.

The first chapli kebabs we ever had - a bit more orange/red than any recipes I've found online and have no idea how to make these!

Once I had my heart set on making chapli kebab, there were two hurdles. One, a lot of recipes use ground beef, which I don't really cook with. When I was planning this one out, we made a visit to one of the few stores in the area that sold Impossible Burger (2023 note: what a difference 2-3 years makes. Now in 2023, Impossible is everywhere and we buy it all the time), and I picked up a few packs. We'd tried Impossible Burger at a restaurant before, and it did taste remarkably like beef, so I thought maybe we could give it a try here and see how close it came to the real thing. The second hurdle was the egg being used as a binder. We had heard a lot about flax eggs but never tried them, so this seemed as good a time as any. (We might be on our third bag of ground flaxseed at this point in 2023 - lots of flax eggs have been made since then.) With those changes, the very meaty, burger-like chapli kebab turned into a vegan version in our kitchen.

The ingredients for our version of the chapli kebab were:

- 1 package of Impossible Burger ($8.99)
- 1/2 of a large bunch of scallions ($0.65)
- 1/2 of a small bunch of cilantro ($0.99)
- 1 flax egg ($0.08)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp dried ginger ($0.05)
- about 1 tbsp ground coriander ($0.40)
- a couple dashes of ground cinnamon ($0.08)
- about 1 tbsp of olive oil ($0.20)

The cost of the chapli kebab was about $11.72. It would have been a little over $7 if we had chosen to use ground turkey instead of Impossible Burger, but we really wanted to see how close it would come to tasting like beef. We, of course, finished it all, and it was just one component of a dinner that ended up costing approximately $20 (the final post on this dinner about spinach will have the breakdown).

The steps for making our chapli kebab were:

1. Prep - chop scallions, chop cilantro, chop garlic.

2. Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl. [Apparently, flax eggs take 5 minutes to make, which I didn't know in advance, so I mixed that in last.]

3. Knead the meat for 5 minutes.

4. Heat olive oil in large skillet. Roll the meat mixture into about 8 balls, and cook for a few minutes on each side until browned and cooked through.

I love ground meat dishes, and being able to use Impossible Burger, to not have to worry about various bacteria that hitch a ride on raw meat, to not have to worry about undercooking the meat, and to also know that it's better for the environment, has been great. I had made meatballs with it a couple of weeks earlier as a test run, and the things we liked and were amazed by then were still true here. How do they make soy taste like actual red meat? How do they make the product so that it gets that browning and charring just like actual meat does? Science is pretty incredible stuff.

Anyway, back to the chapli kebabs. They came out so well. The flavorings were excellent. They didn't stay together quite as well as they probably would have with an egg, but they were still really good. We ate them with some sliced up raw tomatoes and the naan (previously written about for the 52 week cooking challenge), just like in the recipe photo, and that was such a great combination. Such flavorful "meat" with refreshing tomatoes wrapped up in pillowy naan, what's not to love about that?

I guess I should ask B, because he ate maybe a third to a half of one kebab and didn't seem to like it very much. I don't know if it's because it did taste like meat (since he hadn't loved eating red meat in the past all the time), if it was because he found it too crumbly, if he wasn't in the mood for the spices today (even though he's had them before), if he was just too distracted by the more appealing (to him) bread and tomatoes, or if he was just being a toddler, but he wasn't a huge fan of it. (2023 note: I've tried it several times since then, and it seems very hit or miss for him still.) A and I really liked it though, constantly marveling at how it could possibly taste just like meat. I would make this again, maybe with Impossible Burger, maybe with ground chicken. (2023 note: It's been Impossible every time.) Happy to have found a good recipe for chapli kebab!

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!