In October of 1991, as a Wee Baby Thing Fresh from College, I moved to Chicago. This caused my parents a great deal of distress, but it turned out pretty well: I ended up loving Chicago (still do); I moved into a gorgeous, affordable apartment with roommates from college; and I lucked into a fortuitous arrangement to get my stuff up there from North Carolina. Once in Chicago, I started temping pretty much right away and soon got my first-ever grown-up job.
I lived just north of Clark & Halsted, and if there is a good place for a freaked-out young lady to live, it is the heart of the gay district. That soothed many of my worries. It was close to Action, close to cute shops and restaurants, and our landlords were friendly and protective. My roommate M was one of my best friends in the world, and my roommate K was organized and calm. My job wasn’t so awesome, but what did I know about the subject? I was a not-savvy 21. It was okay. I had big dreams of Making It in the Theatah (that’s a story for another day).
So my boyfriend of the time, who became The Unlamented Starter Husband, is not someone I want to blog about because why speak ill of the Long Ago and Far Away, but one small point he had in his favor was a sense of food adventurousness, and at the corner of Clark and Halsted was an Afghani restaurant. At that point in my young life, it was a little amazing to me that an Afghani restaurant even existed, much less in a place where I could get there. What I remember about the meal: it was super good, especially the appetizer, which was some kind of pumpkin thingo with meat sauce that blew my tiny mind.
That was when the internet was still a tiny baby, and if I took notes on what I ate, it’s in a journal packed way in the back of the attic, so for the next 20 years I thought periodically of the Afghani pumpkin thingo but never successfully searched for it. I will admit that when we went to war in Afghanistan, my first thought was “oh no” and my second was “pumpkin thingo.”
Cue about 3 weeks ago, when my friend Rosa asked on her blog what dishes people considered their specialty. One person posted about kaddo bowrani, and I used the mighty power of Google to find out what that was.
Tonight I made it. I had roasted butternut squash, not pumpkin (reheated in the microwave with a bit of sugar and cinnamon). I had pasta sauce, not tomato sauce, and leftover Roast Beast, not ground beef.
Even bastardized, it was worth waiting 20 years for. AND I have enough left for lunch tomorrow!
Kadu!! I’ve tried making it at home and it tastes like mushy squash with ground beef thrown on top. At the Afghan restaurant it’s divine.
For a boring little suburb, our immediate area has pretty good eats. Within a three mile radius there are two Afghan restaurants, a Korean tofu joint, a Vietnamese pho place inside three old trolleys, a Scottish pub with a full menu (Scotch eggs!!), 3 very good dim sum places, one bomb-ass sushi place and 3 not-so-hot ones, a fancy Persian restaurant and a shack at the tennis center that puts it to shame, countless Chinese restaurants of all stripes and more unique types of Indian cuisine than can be imagined. And a Wendy’s.
Now I’m very very hungry.
I am ridiculously pleased to hear this.
My first brush with Afghan food was at The Helmand in Baltimore and it was a revelation, and shortly thereafter at a little strip-mall-hidden place just off 495 outside Rockville, MD, which was even better. Apart from inspiring me to develop my own variant on the not sweet Persian lamb stew with fruit flavours (I do mine in a tagine with thin strips of orange peel which dissolve over the long cooking time) it introduced me to this apparently well-known Afghan appetiser thing which consists of a ravioli in two sauces, one meaty, the other minty, which still haunts my dreams.
I have to try pumpkin thingo. We have wonderful pumpkins and squashes over here, which make some of the best soups I’ve ever had.
I love this blog post.
Another ringing endorsement for the Helmand in Baltimore, AND the place in Rockville (where they were much confused by a horde of Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts invading the place during the last G&S singout in Rockville). I also believe that the Helmand has the honor of having at least one Afghani Cultural Liason working there as a waiter (before they got tapped to be a liason, obviously). And now I want pumpkin pie in the worst way….