کلتور
Culture
Food
Dishes, hospitality and the table.
Articles on food
- Bread of the Pashtuns: naan and the tandoorBread, dodai (ډوډۍ), is the Pashto word for both bread and a meal. It is baked in the clay tandoor or on a plate, bought from Kabul and Peshawar bakeries, and its price decides how a city eats.
- Chapli kabab: the flat Pashtun kebab of Peshawar and Takht BhaiChapli kabab (چپلي کباب) is a flat minced beef or mutton patty fried in animal fat with pomegranate seed and coriander. Dawn says it is thought to have started at Takht Bhai in Mardan; Peshawar's Namak Mandi made it famous.
- Feast food among Pashtuns: Eid, weddings and khairatAmong Pashtuns, Eid callers are given sweets (Rajjar methai in Charsadda), a wedding centres on a day-long meat and rice dish, and a death is marked by khairat, a charity meal to which kin bring rice, oil and sugar.
- Kabuli palaw: the rice of Afghan feasts, and rice in the Pashtun landsKabuli (Qabili) palaw is rice cooked in meat stock and topped with fried carrots and raisins, Afghanistan's national dish. A Qabuli rice dish is listed in Akbar's kitchen, but Peshawar's own pulao is older than the dish's arrival there in the 1980s.
- Kandahar's pomegranates, grapes and the dried-fruit tradeKandahar's Arghandab orchards grow the Kandahari pomegranate, grapes dried into raisins in shaded houses, figs and almonds. The fruit has gone to India since Mughal times; in 2025 and 2026 closures of the Chaman crossing left growers with unsold crops.
- Karahi and tikka: the grill and the pan of PeshawarKarahi is mutton cooked fast in its own fat in an iron pan, tikka is meat grilled on charcoal, and both are tied to the Shinwari of Landi Kotal and to Peshawar's Namak Mandi. Shinwari restaurants now fill streets in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
- Namkeen, rosh and dumpukht: salted meat of the PashtunsNamkeen, dumpukht and landi are the plain meat dishes of Peshawar's Namak Mandi and the winter larders of Zhob and Kabul: mutton in its own fat with salt, and sheep dried on poles. Rosh is its Baloch neighbour.
- Pashtun food and the table of hospitalityEveryday Pashtun food is bread, dairy and tea, with meat kept for guests and feasts, and a stranger is fed in the village hujra. The best-known Pashtun dishes today include chapli kabab from Takht Bhai and Peshawar, Kabuli palaw and winter landi.
- Qurut, shlombe and the dairy of the herdersQurut is dried curd, made with yoghurt (maste), buttermilk (shlombe), butter (kuch) and ghee from the milk of Pashtun herds. In the Pashtun country of the east and south, fresh milk was not sold, but butter, cheese and qurut were.
- Shin chai and kahwa: green tea among the PashtunsGreen tea, called qehwa or kahwa and boiled with sugar and cardamom, is the everyday cup of Peshawar and the first thing offered to a guest. Afghanistan grew no tea, so every leaf came in over the trade routes from China and, later, India.
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