Parwana: Recipes and Stories From an Afghan Kitchen

Afghani-born restaurateur Durkhanai Ayubi honors her parents, Zelmai and Farida Ayubi, and Farida’s home cooking in this loving and deeply personal memoir/cookbook featuring classic Afghan recipes from Farida’s kitchen. Fleeing their troubled country in 1987, the Ayubis settled in Adelaide, Australia, where they eventually opened Parwana, a restaurant offering traditional Afghani cuisine. Rice serves as the foundation for various kinds of palaw (pilaf): studded with almonds and pistachios, paired with maash palaw (mung beans) or blended with seared chicken breasts and tart, dried cranberries. Jelabi—squiggly, deep fried ropes of dough drenched in saffron-cardamom sugar syrup— summon family memories of ’Id celebrations, while roasting eggplant for bartah (the Afghani version of baba ghanoush) preserves excess sup- plies of the abundant, summertime crop, in accordance with Farida’s dictum that nothing should go to waste. Sections on Afghan history and family stories of resettlement add dimension to this culinary chronicle, “driven by commemoration … tinged with a mixture of loss and hope.”