friederike's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
Noshe Djan: Afghan Food and Cookery
By Helen Saberi, Abdullah Breshna
Prospect Books - 2000
The book is intriguiging. It seems to be quite authentic. The dishes appear to be a mix of influenced of Indian and Persian cooking, which sounds quite reasonable if you look at the geographic situation of Afghanistan and the influences it has probably experienced throughout history.
Lamb and chicken features a lot, as does rice and yoghurt. Most dishes are just variations of one another, though I don't find this particularly irritating. There are quite a few pasta dishes which make me wonder if this is were Marco Polo picked up the later Italianized pasta. Simple stews abound with again both Persian as well as Indian influences showing. Some of the dishes I made looked not only simple but even primitive, as if the recipes weren't too far removed yet from simple fire place cooking. But maybe my fantasy is being carried away now.
It has a longish section on Afghan food, cooking etc., though unfortunately it does not have a reasonable glossary - what is chapati flour? I found chapati bread, but no mention of chapati flour anywhere...
I'm not yet quite sure what to make of it in terms of quality of dishes and reliability, though I have noticed that I want to like it. It contains no photos, only few drawings.