afghan recipe « Cook Like Mad

Faryab- Excellent Afghan Cuisine in Bethesda, MD

First, let me say that I had no idea how hopping Bethesda, MD is on the weekends. D, his mom, and I went out to dinner this past weekend at Faryab and actually drove through an entire parking garage only to discover at the very top, that it was full. Yikes. We ended up going to another parking garage, only half full at that point, and thankfully got to the restaurant just as they were about to give our table away because all that searching took us 45 minutes and we were quite late. The owner took pity on us and showed us to our table. As we passed others, we saw a great deal of rice dishes- something that surprised me. I think I had imagined more bread than rice as the main starch component of the meal in Afghanistan, but once I saw the rice, with the meat stews, everything made sense. Just as in Indian cuisine, both breads and rice are a feature of Afghan cuisine, and while the bread was lackluster, the rice was moist and a perfect vehicle for the rich stews served with it.

The highlights of the meal were the lamb stew, topped with slow-cooked, skin-on eggplant slices and a to-die-for dish of pumpkin, topped with yogurt and a very thin meat sauce. The earthy spices in the meat sauce, such as cinnamon and cloves, married perfectly with the yogurt and slow-cooked pumpkin, It was toothsome and addictive. We should have ordered more.

The starter of meal pastries was rich yet not overfilling and came with a refreshing , soupy, fresh, green sauce that made me think of thai food. The steamed dumpling with meat filling were presented beautifully and made it seem like someone’s grandmother had been laboring over them all afternoon, folding each one into a purse by hand.

We didn’t have dessert, but the baklava looked spectacular and was drawing moans from the next table. Go on a weeknight, as the weekend parking in Bethesda is outrageous, but mostly, just go.