PITTSBURGH -- If you don't know a lot about Afghan cuisine, it's understandable. Yet many of its flavors and ingredients are familiar to those who enjoy foods from other cultures, and a few traditional Afghan dishes could even be mistaken by the uninitiated for the curries, noodles, and rice and meat dishes found in China, India and parts of the Mediterranean. One plump and delicious example is the savory dumpling known as mantu.
A variation of the steamed Chinese dumpling or Korean mandoo, the hand-rolled dough bundles piled high on platters in Afghanistan are stuffed with ground meat and vegetables (usually onion), and served with two toppings: a tangy yogurt sauce kissed with garlic and dried mint and tomato-based sauce spiced with turmeric and chili. As relayed in "Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen" by Durkhanai Ayubi (Interlink Books, $35), mantu are thought to have originated in Central Asia, in territories that belonged to the Mongolian Empire. The dumpling then traveled to Turkey and, as it grew in popularity, made its way via the fabled Silk Road into Afghanistan, where it was adapted to local palates and culture.
Today, mantu offer not just a warm and gently spiced taste of Afghanistan, with prized spices such as chili, turmeric, cumin, pepper and nutmeg at the forefront, but also an expression of the country's hospitality. "The highest tenet of eating in Afghanistan," Ayubi writes, "perhaps its holy grail, is the hospitality that surrounds it. Une.