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!
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