Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 60, The Palaw, the Dumpling and the Winter Meat

Aush

The Hazarajat, and Herat's table too

Aush, hand cut noodle soup with beans and greens, yoghurt, hot garlic and fried onion: a wide bowl of thick noodle soup with long hand cut flat noodles, kidney beans and chickpeas and chopped greens in a pale yoghurt broth.

Illustration

Time
1 hour

Aush is a noodle soup of beans and greens finished with yoghurt, and two Afghan tables claim it. The Hazara writer lists it first among Hazara foods; the encyclopaedia entry gives long hand cut noodles with fresh mint, served with whey. Herat's list gives aush with vegetables, legumes, noodles and qurut, garnished with hot garlic, onion and mint. In Quetta, Tayyaba Batool boils her noodles ten minutes.

As tradition built it

Serves a family. About an hour with cooked or tinned beans.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

  • flour, for the noodle dough
  • water, for the noodle dough
  • salt, for the noodle dough
  • 425g tin kidney beans, cooked
  • 425g tin chickpeas, cooked
  • 1 bunch spinach or other greens, chopped
  • enough water, salted, for the soup
  • fresh mint
  • fresh coriander
  • 475ml yoghurt, or qurut rubbed with water
  • garlic, fried in fat
  • onion, fried dark
  • dried mint

Method

  1. Make a firm dough of the flour, water and salt, roll it thin and cut it into long noodles.
  2. Simmer the kidney beans, chickpeas and greens in salted water, add the noodles and cook about 10 minutes until they are done.
  3. Stir in the fresh mint and coriander, and the yoghurt or qurut off the heat.
  4. Pour the hot garlic and the fried onion over the top, with dried mint.

Notes

The beans, chickpeas and yoghurt are Humaira Ghilzai's, from Afghan Culture Unveiled (2009), and the greens come from her 2010 post on the same dish. She cooks it with spaghetti, so the noodle dough has no cook's weights yet.

What a modern chef changes

The noodle given its due

Rungs 3 and 5

Method

  1. Rest the noodle dough an hour and roll it through a pasta machine to the thickness of a tagliatelle, then cut it by hand; the hand cut is the tradition, the even sheet is the help.
  2. Cook the noodles separately in salted water and add them to the soup at the table, so they are not soft by the second bowl.
  3. Temper the yoghurt with a ladle of hot broth before it goes in, so it does not split.
  4. Fry the garlic slowly and stop it at pale gold.
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