CULINARY CROSSROADS OF ASIA
New cookbook offers up recipes that `became emblematic of this deeper story of exchange'
“The reason people can connect with Afghan food so easily,” says author Durkhanai Ayubi, “is because there's a little bit of everybody in it.”
Afghanistan sits at the crossroads of ancient trade routes leading east into China and Mongolia, west into Iran and the Mediterranean, north into Uzbekistan and the steppes of Kazakhstan and southeast into India.
For centuries, Durkhanai adds, people travelled the Silk Road with goods to barter or divine messages to share.
These exchanges — of philosophies, traditions and ingredients — resulted in the “cross-cultural pollination” underpinning Afghan cuisine.
In writing Parwana (Interlink Books, 2020) — a cookbook named after her family's restaurant in Adelaide, Australia, featuring her mother Farida's recipes — Durkhanai only gained a deeper appreciation for the complexity and beauty of her native cuisine.
She cooks and serves her family's food every day, at the helm of Parwana spinoff, Kutchi Deli.
Learning more about the history of Afghanistan and her own genealogy, she says, has only deepened her connection to Afghan culture and cuisine.
“The food became emblematic of this deeper story of exchange,” says Durkhanai.
“And it made me realize just how much is etched into food of any region.
“If you take the time to understand it and unpick what's in it, it tells you this really glorious history that you might not have really thought about before.”
Parwana means butterfly in Dari, the Ayubis' native language. The family fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in 1985, arriving in Australia two years later.
In 2009, after settling in Adelaide, they opened the doors to their first restaurant.
The symbol of transformation was fitting. Food had long been a huge part of their lives, Durkhanai recalls, especially as a tether to their history and ancestry.
But her mother had been an English teacher in Kabul, her father a lawyer.
They didn't have a background in the hospitality industry or business in general.
Farida inherited time-honoured recipes and customs through her maternal lineage, Durkhanai says, and her culinary talent is matched by her love for cooking.
As the family pulled together to make Parwana a success, their guests responded positively.
“They hadn't really had this very traditional Afghan food, with all its intricacies and all the beauty that comes with it, and then it grew from there,” says Durkhanai. “These recipes are very old and traditional. And I'm not even sure if there are many people in my generation who would know about them, even within the Afghan community.
“And so my mom's intuition was, we need to be able to preserve this glorious history of the food.”
Their cookbook became the next iteration of this act of exploration and preservation, she adds, but on a larger scale because people all over the world could partake in it.
From the outset of the project, Durkhanai knew it would take a different sort of cookbook to push past common narratives of war and violence — one viewing the nation with Afghan eyes.
“There's just so much that has to be undone before anyone can appreciate Afghanistan and its cuisine properly,” she says.
She highlights that Parwana is her perspective on her family's story and that she hopes other Afghan voices will be heard so that people can develop a layered understanding of the country.
Since the book was published, Durkhanai has received supportive messages from Afghans around the world — expressing a feeling of connection and pride in the beauty of their culture.
“It brought me to this place of connectivity. It made me see our connected histories and why I can be so many things in one.
“And so there's no conflict for me between my Afghan roots and me living where I am now because we actually are built on these huge histories of exchange. It felt so lovely to be able to unmask everything to claim that.”
Recipes excerpted from Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen by Durkhanai Ayubi (Interlink Books).