Food!

Food has always been one of my top priorities. We've always eaten very well at home, thanks to Mum. It was also because we lived in tropical countries where wonderful fruits and vegetables could be found. I often base holiday destination decisions on the local cuisine. When I was a child I would throw tantrums if my parents suggested we have brunch at weekends (I was opposed to the idea of missing a separate breakfast and lunch), if we only had time for a quick pizza/sandwich etc. for dinner (I wanted a proper meal) or if we ordered room service in a hotel (I wanted to go out to a restaurant). When we play golf, Dad will be concentrating on the essentials such as packing the balls and tees, whereas I will be in the kitchen preparing triple-decker, mammoth sandwiches and rummaging around for any other portable foods to take on the golf course. I have a mild phobia of running out of food; I can think of few worse scenarios (perhaps I should work for World Food Programme (WFP)). One of the things that kept me in Japan so long was the incredible cuisine, which is my all-time favourite. A life without sashimi and tofu was, for quite a while, unthinkable!

So I've naturally been very curious to become acquainted with Afghan food. Overall I have been fairly pleased with what I have found, but it probably isn't up there with Japanese or Nepali on my favourites list.

The standard meal - as far as I can gather - is pulao, a rice dish with meat (normally lamb), raisins, nuts and spices (cardamom is most prominent) inside. This is pretty tasty, but is a good example of the the excessive use of oil in Afghan cuisine. It's similar to Uzbek plov, Indian biryani or pilaf  (where's that originally from?), and although the main version here is Kabuli Pulao, there are also Uzbek and Turkmen versions (the latter uses sesame oil, which makes for an interesting change). The downside is the rice is often dripping in oil - how I would love some plain white Japanese gohan! Never have I seen so much oil used in food as here, even in China. It is a commonly heard complaint, even from Indians and Pakistanis, whose diet is not exactly oil-free. Everything here is literally swimming in the stuff, whether it is pulao, meat curries or vegetable stews. The other day I had burani - an eggplant, tomato, onion stew, not dissimilar to ratatouille, that was so drenched in luminescent orange oil that I wish I had taken a photo and sent it off the Guinness Book of Records. I am convinced it would have been listed under 'world's oiliest dish'.

Lamb and beef are the common meats, either in the pulao or separately as a curry. The beef is very tough. I prefer chicken though, and have found the Afghan chickens to be surprisingly meaty (not like Nepal, where surely the globe's scrawniest chickens are found). The cooks at work make the most delicious (of course oily) chicken in a coriander and tomato sauce. Unfortunately they only make it once a week but I am in my element when they do. Other dishes they make are shurba, a noodle soup with indeterminate bits of animal in it, or another dish which is quite bizarre. It's cheap spaghetti noodles submerged in a sort of thin brown juice, with chickpeas and carrots floating in it. On top of this you sprinkle a variety of dried spices and herbs (e.g. mint, cumin and couple of others which I have not got the translation of yet). It's an interesting culinary experience - not one that will earn any awards though - and is fairly tasty.

Fish is, unsurprisingly for this landlocked country, nowhere to be seen. I miss it a lot, given that I prefer it to meat and ate it everyday in Japan. I make do with canned tuna and John West mackerel (which I wouldn't touch in UK but here is a treasure). There are a range of vegetable dishes too, mainly in the form of spicy stews. The dal and chana are fantastic, as ever (I could live on yellow dal), and there is also a great okra/ladies' fingers stew which is gloriously gloupey and green (I'm a fan of mushy and sloppy foods; hence my love of every type of Japanese tofu, konnyaku (jelly made from devil's tongue plant starch) and the manju sweets). I remember my friend Nick used to order an okra dish - bhindi bhaji - at the local Raj Tandoori restaurant that we used to sneak off to on Saturday afternoons, when at boarding school in UK. But these days I no longer eat it together with pints of sickly sweet cider. 

The real treat here is the bread. The Lonely Planet to Afghanistan says "Afghan bread is something of a treat", but this is an understatement. The nan here is just amazing, especially when hot and crusty on the outside. As I can't really handle eating Afghan food more than once a day (due to the grease factor), I often stop off to get a piping hot nan on the way home (I have frequently burned my hands when insisting to the shopkeeper that he gives me his most 'garam' (hot) one in the shop; he literally scoops it out of the giant furnace behind him). The nan comes in various shapes - round, oval, rectangular - and sizes (ranging from a petit one-person size to absolutely giant, family-sized ones, which could easily double as a tablecloth or child's blanket. The round nan often have an ornate stamped pattern in the middle, similar to ones I saw in Uzbekistan (we have the wooden stamps at home). The elongated ones tend to have parallel lines running down them (making them easy to tear apart). There aren't any gigantic ones in this photo, but it gives an impression of the variety.

The fruit here is very impressive. One of the first things I saw on the drive from the airport when I arrived were the melons - gigantic boulders being sold by the roadside. How on earth people without a car carry them home, I don't know. These are both watermelons and honeydew melons, and both are delicious. The latter are slightly more crunchy and nutty than I have experienced before. They are a frequent dessert in the canteen at work and in the guesthouse where I live. We also have grapes, peaches, apricots, apples and imported bananas. I am yet to try the famed anaar (pomegranates), for which Afghanistan is world-famous. Perhaps they are out of season. I remember eating copious amounts of pomegranates in Tehran in 2007, including inside meat stews, which I found to be an acquired taste.

The highlight, though, have been the mangoes imported by truck from Pakistan. Golden, succulent and amazingly sweet, I literally ate two or three a day for about a month. The fact that they often come with some gaudy tinsel stuck to them makes them even more special (see photo). My office colleague taught me a new way to eat them. You cut them in half and pull the two halves apart from each end, remove the stone and then scoop out the inside with a spoon. This ensures maximum consumption/minimum wastage of all the juicy flesh.

Sadly the mango season is now coming to an end and those in the supermarket are mostly rotten. This doesn't stop the supermarket fruit-man trying to convince me otherwise, though, although the other day he handed me one that practically disintegrated in my hands. We both just cracked up at his ambitious but futile attempt to dupe me into buying this mass of rotten fruit. Now I have got the drivers to stop outside certain street-side fruit stalls on the way home, which, for some reason, still stock good ones. I risk kidnap and actually get out of the car (my security manager would not be happy) to get some more stocks. It takes a lot to dissuade me from getting my mangoes...