Durkhanai Ayubi On Her New Book 'Parwana: Recipes and Stories From An Afghan Kitchen'

Every once in a while, a new cookbook comes along that inspires you with every turn of the page from the delicious recipes, incredible photography to moving storytelling. This is the case for the new cookbook, Parwana: Recipes and Stories From An Afghan Kitchen written by Durkhanai Ayubi. I caught up with the writer and a contributor to her family’s trio of acclaimed restaurants in Australia to ask about what inspired her to write the book, her moving experience returning back to Afghanistan, the foundations of a typical Afghan meal and her favorite recipe from the book.

Get Parwana’s Delicious Recipe for Dahl here

Interview by Alison Engstrom

Congratulations on Parwana: Recipes and stories from an Afghan Kitchen! The book is stunning—one of my favorites I’ve seen this year—what inspired you to write it? 

Thank you for those very kind words! The idea of a cookbook had been floating amongst us as a family for a few years. We've had our first restaurant Parwana for about 11 years now, and the timing felt right to be able to collate stories of our recipes, experiences and our relationship to food in a book. I see the book as an extension of our restaurants—for us, Parwana has been a means to stay connected to our history and ancestry, while, as migrants to Australia, also being able to share something of that story with those in our new surroundings. The book became a way to take this role of food in our lives, as a conduit to both the act of preservation and of sharing, to an even wider audience. It was also a way to preserve the cultural identity of Afghanistan, that is at risk of being lost after so much disruption to the region and its people. 

For me personally as well, the book arose at a time when I'd had experiences over the years, traveling and meeting people who shared their stories of injustices they faced in their lives. I developed a very deep appreciation for the importance of the role that narratives play in shaping our shared realities. And I could identify the major omissions in the voices and perspectives being represented in our collective narratives—the stories of so many people who have been marginalized by the ideologies and systems that shape our world, are either censored, imposed upon them, or distorted. For me, this was a chance to tell a story of my own ancestry as best as I could, while exploring my own depths and resurfacing a narrative that bypasses the disconnections that now shape our world in increasingly devastating ways. I found that there are far more important and prescient messages. 

I love how you also included a concise history of Afghanistan in each chapter from the past to the present. Can you talk about why you wanted to include this information in the book? 

The answer to this question ties in with the last. For me, so much of this book was about a reclamation of our stories and a chance to extend the narratives of Afghanistan far beyond the superficialities and externalities in which it is presently held captive. I wanted to invite people into our story in a way that first contextualized the region, our food, and the migrant story in a way that was much deeper and more human. This meant writing in a way that hoped to broaden and deepen the narratives of Afghanistan by including an account of its rich and complex history from ancient times to the more contemporary, which is, incidentally, an immense history steeped in the cross-pollination of cultures and identities. Geographically at the centre of the ancient Silk Roads—the world's ancient trade networks—means that the ways of the region now known as Afghanistan has developed alongside extensive trade of goods, ingredients, ideas and philosophies, as well as being host to various civilizations over time. This very history of interconnection has been embedded into Afghan cuisine, from the ingredients used to the rituals and traditions surrounding it. It is exemplified in the traditions of hospitality that surround our culture and prevails unmistakably in dishes like the mantu (dumplings), bolani (pan fried flat breads) or the various desserts and sweets that are part of our cuisine. 

Coming through to the more contemporary account of Afghanistan, I wanted people to engage with our story in a way that helped them understand it beyond the confinements of purely a narrative of war and violence that has prevailed over the past few decades, and it doesn't mean ignoring this as a reality, but it does mean saying it’s not the only part of our identity as Afghan people. It was also important to confront the myth of the inevitability of the violence in Afghanistan, and also the myth of the passivity of its own people who, in fact, struggled to develop their own idea of governance and a future that reconciled traditional beliefs with contemporary realities. Extending this further still, I wanted to offer a more nuanced vision of how regions become embroiled in ongoing violence in a way that was not one-dimensional, but which takes into account the authoritarian and segregating vision of power that drives so much of our political and social ideologies. This vision of power has been especially detrimental to regions like Afghanistan, primarily because of the loss of life, the fragmentation of cultural identity and the decreased stability it creates, and secondarily because it thrives on a narrative that dehumanises people, resulting in a sustained injury against us all.  

Overall, for people who are Afghan, I wanted to connect and say we have a history that is not peripheral but which is paramount to the story of being human, and one that to this day, it offers messages that are far more prescient than just the narratives of violence which hang over us. And to everyone else, I wanted to create a story in which they could see themselves - because ultimately, I believe we are each echoes of one another—our essences intertwined and our futures dependent upon a recognition of this.

Writing the book in a way that connected chronologically Afghanistan's story with my own family's and with our cuisine, presented a chance to contribute a narrative that helps us see one another, to re-excavate the importance of ideologies of exchange rather than purely domination, and ultimately, to explore the idea that a vision of power that is embedded in re-humanising and reconnecting with one another and the natural universe from which we are made, remains a possibility. 

In 2012, you along with some of your family members returned to Afghanistan. Your observations while being there for the first time from the lush landscape in the spring to the way that people lived in such volatile situations. I love how you wrote, “There was a tendency for war to break; but with so much broken all around, those who still lived did so with a deep appreciation of what remained.” Can you share more about your experience? 

Going back to Afghanistan for the first time since leaving as young children, came to feel like a right of passage for my sisters and I. Before I journeyed there, I had no real expectations around what it might feel like. Twenty-seven years earlier, my parents had made this very same journey with us, only in reverse—to flee a country being increasingly embroiled in violence at the height of the Cold War. It felt like reconnecting an unplugged fuse, the current ripped through me, and I felt an unexpected and intense connection to the place of my birth. It taught me so much about who my parents and their parents before them were, about the origins of the mannerisms that were a part of my everyday life, about the breath-taking beauty of the region and what could grow there, about how people who had so little were so unendingly generous to their guests, about how human dignity could remain despite the sustained violence and the brute force of power being used against ordinary people and importantly, about how much more I needed to learn and to grow.

Can you share a bit of the backstory of when your family emigrated to Australia and decided to open the restaurant Parwana Kitchen, Kutchi Deli and Shirni Parwana?

My family migrated to Australia in 1987. We had left Afghanistan two years earlier, at the peak of violence of the Cold War - tensions between Soviet Russia and the United States, which were playing out on Afghan soil and which resulted in an absolute devastation for the region. It was a time when many had been killed, and over half of the population had been displaced—a blow to the country from which it has not yet recovered. We had spent time in a UN refugee camp in Pakistan before eventually being accepted on humanitarian grounds to Australia. When we came to Australia, we had very little. My parents enrolled themselves into English courses and my sisters and I were all enrolled in school. Growing up, food became a way for us to remain connected to our history and ancestry, while also becoming a way to remain connected to one another - so much of the preparation of Afghan food is done communally. My mum loves to cook, and always had a natural talent to match this inclination. The recipes we grew up with were ones which had been passed down to my mother by those before her, and formed part of traditional Afghan cultural identity. My mum realized the importance of preserving and sharing this knowledge, with us as her daughters, and eventually also with others in our community. This natural love for our cuisine, organically grew into an idea of trying to open a small kitchen to see if people liked the food! That was in 2009, and now 11 years later, we have had the privilege of sharing Afghan food further and wider than we ever imagined. We opened Kutchi Deli and Shirni in the years following and they too developed organically to match what my sisters and I felt we could share.

What role do you play in the family business? 

I work a few nights at Parwana, and I run Kutchi Deli alongside my sisters. As small family run businesses—we all just fill in wherever we can and however we're needed!

Can you share more about the influence of Afghan cuisine and how it came to be?

The influence on Afghan food is what I would describe as a fusion of native ingredients/recipes with the influence of those from regions all around Afghanistan, which as earlier mentioned, traded through over millennia or settled, in some cases for centuries, bringing a panoply of different ingredients to the Afghan table. The region was once part of the ancient Persian Achaemenid empire, Alexander the Great travelled through and Greeks settled there, it was home to ancient Indian Buddhist Kings, as well as to the Mongolian descendents of Genghis Khan, to name just a few influences. It blends together food blends warm spices, like cumin and turmeric, with cooling yogurts, citrusy chutneys and staples like dumplings, rice dishes, hearty soups and naans. The spices and ingredients introduced into the region are blended with native ingredients, like nuts, various fruits, vegetables like native leeks, and to local taste which is, usually, a cuisine that is formed in a light handed way, creating food that is aromatic and quite light. This cross pollination means that Afghan food has become something that is at once unique, but also very familiar to many, which is I think one of the reasons why Afghan food is so immersive. 

What is a typical Afghan meal comprised of? 

An Afghan meal is generally a spread and rarely a dish alone. If you were invited to an Afghan house or celebration, you would be treated to a spread of dishes, usually with an intricate rice dish at the centre (rice forms the staple of Afghan cuisine and it is made using a multi step process including soaking, boiling, spicing, baking and topping with a jewel like mix of nuts and fruits), some dumplings like ashak and mantu (which are a hand rolled dough filled with leek or onion and lamb and topped with a lamb mince sauce and a garlic-yogurt dressing), curries with a meat like chicken or lamb, or with a vegetable or legume like eggplant or chickpeas, and with naans, accompaniments like pickled vegetables, herb chutneys and yogurt dips.

I know it is hard to pick favorites, but do you and your family have favorite recipes in the book?

It is hard to choose because a meal comprises of a few things put together! But I would say a nostalgic personal favourite is the bolani, which is a pan-fried flat bread stuffed with a seasonal filling of choice. You eat it hot off the skillet, with a yogurt dip or chutney on the side, and with some slightly sweetened tea.

Images from Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen, courtesy of Interlink books