A Taste of Home: Kabuli Pilau
When you’re in a faraway place, it’s only natural to yearn for something that reminds you of home.
You might miss a certain meal or food that you associate with the warm feeling of celebrating a holiday, or simply being around familiar faces. People of all nationalities and ages can relate to this feeling. We call it comfort food for a reason.
Having just moved from Austin, Texas to Paris a few months ago, I encounter this desire of something from my old home almost every day. But my situation is much different from many refugees who journey over long distances to Paris searching for a new home.
This is why I decided to contact someone from the Association Pierre Claver school for those who are seeking refuge and asylum.
I interviewed a 25-year-old student from Afghanistan. He told me that considering the stories of the journeys of other people, getting to Paris was easy, but ”emotionally, it was one of the most difficult days in my life.”
When I asked him about the food he missed most, he told me it was Kabuli Pilau (chicken and rice), and that it reminds him of the holiday of Norooz, the Persian new year, and how his entire family comes together to celebrate it.
After that conversation, I did some research on this traditional Afghan dish. It is very popular, and considered the national dish of Afghanistan. The recipe I found consisted of chicken (though it can also be made with beef or lamb), rice, onions, ground cardamom, ground cumin, saffron, almonds, and raisins. Many people will pair it with naan, or other types of bread.
When it came finding these ingredients, almost everything was easy to locate except the saffron, which I could not find until the third store I visited.
The first step of the recipe is to cut up the chicken and onions and boil them for about one hour, and when it is finished, fry the chicken
in butter, and keep the stock in the pot. After that the rice is cooked and then set aside until the rest of the dish is ready to be assembled.
To make the sauce, I mashed the cardamom, cumin, black pepper, and saffron with the onions to make a paste, then added it to the broth. This process alone led to my kitchen being enveloped in smells that were both foreign and delightful.
Then I mixed the rice and the stock sauce together, placed them in a dish with the chicken and put it in the oven for around 35 minutes.
When it was finished, I paired it with some naan that I found at the store, and served it to my family for dinner.
Although it tasted like nothing I’ve ever eaten before, I could understand why one might miss it.
During this entire process, I kept in mind how homesick those who are living in refugee camps must be, or even the people at the Association Pierre Claver. I understood what they would do just to get a meal from their home.
I think that food is a way to connect people from different backgrounds. Whether they are refugees who risked their lives to get where they are today, or a student who is attending university far from home, everybody needs some comfort food every once in awhile.
