Qabili palaw

Name: Qabili palaw
Total time: 5 h 20 min
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Cuisine: Afghanistan
Ingredients: 125ml sunflower oil; 2 medium onions, finely diced; 500g boneless lamb leg, coarsely diced; 1 litre hot water; 600g sella basmati, soaked 2 to 3 hours; 1 tbsp salt, plus salt for the boiling water; 1 tsp ground cumin; 1 tsp ground cardamom; 500ml sunflower oil, for frying; 2 medium carrots, cut in matchsticks; 170g sultanas; 1 tbsp slivered almonds; 1 tbsp slivered pistachios; 2 tsp sugar; 1 tsp ground cardamom

Afghanistan, often called its national dish

Qabili palaw, lamb buried in steamed sella rice under fried carrot, sultanas, almonds and pistachios: a wide oval platter heaped with long separate grains of pale golden rice, chunks of braised lamb half buried in the centre.

Illustration

Time: 5 hours 20

Researched: Researched from 55 sources in the brief

Qabili palaw is lamb buried in steamed sella rice under a crown of fried carrot, sultanas, almonds and pistachios. The recipe is Durkhanai Ayubi's, from Parwana in Adelaide, for four to six: an hour to prepare and eighty minutes to cook. She says the dish was once kept for ceremonial occasions, before pressure cookers, because of the work in it. Persian language recipe sites steam the layered pot for forty five minutes to an hour, where Ayubi gives twenty.

by Afghanistan, often called its national dish

Qabili palaw is often called the national dish. Durkhanai Ayubi calls it that on the Parwana recipe page, Herat's Doorbin magazine files it so, and Australian and American food writing repeats it. It is a description that writers reach for, not a decree. Where it is from is argued. The Persian language encyclopaedia entry, resting on the British anthropologist Magnus Marsden's 2021 article and on Helen Saberi's book, leans to the north, near the Uzbek border, and adds that the dish entered elite Persian cooking as Afghan pulao in the late reign of Fath Ali Shah, during the contest over Herat, when Iranians learned it from Afghans. Iranian outlets say the north without a source and disagree among themselves on Mazar, Balkh, Herat, Khorasan or Kabul. English Wikipedia adds a first written recipe in Ali Bavarchi's manuscript of 1521, which nobody we read has opened. No Afghan source we reached addresses the question. The name is Qabili or Qabuli in Dari; Kabuli is how the world outside says it.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours 20 minutes, plus 2 to 3 hours to soak the rice.

Ingredients

For the rice and lamb

125ml sunflower oil
2 medium onions, finely diced
500g boneless lamb leg, coarsely diced
1 litre hot water
600g sella basmati, soaked 2 to 3 hours
1 tbsp salt, plus salt for the boiling water
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cardamom

For the crown

500ml sunflower oil, for frying
2 medium carrots, cut in matchsticks
170g sultanas
1 tbsp slivered almonds
1 tbsp slivered pistachios
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom

Method

Heat the oil in a pressure cooker and fry the onion 5 minutes. Add the lamb leg and fry 5 minutes more.
Add the hot water, seal, and pressure cook 15 minutes. Lift out the lamb and keep the stock.
Bring 2.5 litres of salted water to the boil, add the drained sella basmati and boil 6 to 8 minutes, until the grains have doubled in length. Drain.
In the pot, combine the rice with the stock, the salt, the cumin and the cardamom. Bury the lamb in the middle of the rice.
Cover and steam on the lowest heat for 20 minutes.
For the crown, heat the frying oil and fry the carrot 4 to 5 minutes until soft. Add the sultanas and fry 3 minutes until they swell. Stir in the sugar, the cardamom, the almonds and the pistachios.
Turn the rice out onto a platter, the lamb in the centre, and heap the carrot and sultanas over the top.

What a modern chef changes

The stock made to count, and the crown dressed last

Rungs 1 and 2

Method

Pressure cook the lamb with a split onion, the cumin and a cracked cardamom pod, then strain the stock through a chinois and reduce it by a third before it meets the rice: it is the stock the rice drinks, and a thin one makes a dull palaw.
Weigh the rice to the stock, 600 grams to 700 millilitres of reduced stock, so the steam is the only water the pot gets.
Lay the sutak, a clean cotton cloth, under the lid, and put the lid on over it; take the pot off the heat after 20 minutes and leave it 10 more, closed, so the bottom layer sets without catching.
Fry the carrot in a third of the oil, drain it on paper and dress it with the sugar and cardamom in the pan off the heat, so it is glossy and not greasy. Crown the rice at the table.

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