A movable feast day

Tomorrow night is the beginning of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday corresponding to the final day of the Mecca pilgrimage. Non-Muslims are probably more familiar with Eid al-Fitr, which ends the Ramadan fast, but Eid al-Adha -- the Feast of the Sacrifice -- is actually the more important celebration. It’s also known as the Great Feast (Eid al-Kabir).

Over the three-day holiday, Muslims around the world gather with family and friends, sitting down to tables laden with special-occasion dishes, turning their thoughts to the pilgrims in Mecca, performing acts of charity and welcoming visitors.

It’s an important food holiday, but the celebratory menu varies widely, with dishes particular to each region on the family tables -- curries in Bangladesh, pilafs in Iran, red-stewed lamb in China, whole roast lamb in Iraq. Since the Muslim calendar is lunar, Muslim holidays don’t fall in the same season every year, so even in the same place, the menu may change from year to year.

With the success of its recent elections, Afghanistan is much in the news lately, so I talked to some Southland Afghans about their Eid al-Adha culinary traditions.

There may not be many of them in this country, but Afghans are proud of their cuisine, and surprisingly often they open restaurants. Relatives of newly elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai run restaurants on the East Coast. It’s an attractive cuisine, a little like Persian and a little like Indian, but with a number of pastas and a distinctive taste for seasoning meat with yogurt.

Zahir Habib, who formerly ran Kabul Cuisine in Reseda, told me that in Afghanistan, as in other countries throughout the Middle East, Eid al-Adha is a time of feasting on meat dishes. “Everybody who can afford it kills a cow or a sheep,” he says. “In Afghanistan they make it in all sorts of ways -- kebab, qorma [stew], soup, which we call shorwa. Lamb shanks, lamb chops, steaks, qabili pilau [pilaf with lamb, carrots and raisins].”

Throughout history, meat has been a luxury ingredient. The abundance of meat served during Eid al-Adha not only connects celebrants with the pilgrims in Mecca, who are sacrificing lambs in memory of Abraham, but is an occasion for charity. Traditionally a portion of the meat should go to the poor. (In the modern world, many Muslims donate money to charity instead of making a physical gift of meat.)

Abdul Karim, owner of Azeen’s Afghani Cuisine in Pasadena, describes another specific food of the holiday in Afghanistan: shul-e goshti, a porridge consisting of rice, beans, chickpeas and meat. “It’s distributed to the poor,” Karim says. “It’s not restaurant food, but it’s very tasty.”

Many Afghan dishes are easily adapted to the American kitchen, but there are few resources for cooks interested in exploring the cuisine. Amazon lists only two Afghan cookbooks, one of which, “Afghan Food & Cookery: Noshe Djan” by Helen Saberi, an Englishwoman married to an Afghan, gave us three excellent recipes appropriate for the holiday, two lamb dishes and a quite traditional cookie.

One is seekh kebab, the Afghan version of shish kebab, subtly aromatic with coriander. It’s served like many other kebabs around the world, with bread, tomatoes and onions, but it’s worth studying its marinade. The lactic acid in the yogurt is a very effective meat tenderizer. The result is tender and appetizingly tangy.

Qorma-e ru-ye nan shows the Afghans’ love of yogurt again, and also their taste for combining it with both leeks and stewed meat. Served on toasted flatbread wedges, this is an appetizing dish with a hearty folk-food quality. It’s almost an Afghan version of nachos. This dish calls for chakka, the Afghan version of yogurt cheese: yogurt that has been drained in cheesecloth for six hours to overnight, which concentrates its flavor.

Festive snacks served to visitors are an important part of Eid al-Adha. Guests are offered fruits, nuts, candies and home-baked cookies. Karim singles out kulcha-e birinj, a wafer-like rice cookie with a pistachio set on top, and ab-e dandon, a cardamom-spiced cookie that’s also described in Saberi’s book. As the name suggests (it literally means “water of the teeth”), these cute button-like cookies crumble and then melt in the mouth, leaving a scent of cardamom, rose water and pistachio.

Afghanistan boasts a unique special-occasion beverage, often served at Eid al-Adha: qaymaq chai. Abdul Karim explains how to make it: First brew a strong pot of green tea. Add half a teaspoon of baking soda, bring it to the boil “until the foam turns pink,” then pour the tea back and forth from one pot to another. Presto -- the tea turns deep, purplish brown. Then you add sugar, cardamom and milk to taste, making something like an Indian chai, but with a distinctive pink color.

That much you could easily make at home. For the final touch, though, Afghans top it with clotted cream (qaymaq), a rich dairy product midway between cream and butter -- some Middle Eastern markets stock it. A poetic Afghani has compared qaymaq chai to the reddish glow of Afghanistan’s mountains at sunset, with the clotted cream standing for their snowcapped peaks.

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Ab-e dandon (cardamom cookies)

Total time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Servings: Makes about 3 dozen cookies

Note: From “Afghan Food & Cookery: Noshe Djan” by Helen Saberi. The name of this cookie (“water of the teeth”) implies that they melt as soon as you bite into them. The dough will appear very crumbly.

3 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, divided

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon rose water

2 tablespoons ground pistachios

1. Sift the flour, 1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar, baking powder and cardamom into a mixing bowl. Warm the oil in a pan, then slowly add it to the flour, mixing well. Add the rose water and use your hands to thoroughly combine. The mixture will be crumbly and will barely hold together when pressed between your fingertips. Cover and let the mixture sit for half an hour.

2. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Form the dough into balls the size of a walnut. Make an indentation in the middle with your thumb.

3. Place the cookies on a greased baking sheet on a rack in the top third of the oven and bake until they crack and become crumbly but are still pale in color, 10 to 12 minutes.

4. Remove the cookies from the oven. Sprinkle with the ground pistachios and the remaining one-fourth cup of confectioners’ sugar. Cool and serve.

Each cookie: 106 calories; 1 gram protein; 14 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 5 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 7 mg. sodium.

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Qorma-e ru-ye nan (lamb with leeks, yogurt and flatbread croutons)

Total time: 30 minutes, plus overnight yogurt draining time

Servings: 4

Note: From “Afghan Food & Cookery: Noshe Djan” by Helen Saberi. Qorma is a kind of stew. Ru-ye nan means “the face of the bread.”

1 cup plain yogurt

4 tablespoons oil, divided

1 onion, chopped

1 pound boneless lamb, cubed or minced

1/2 cup tomato juice or water

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

2 leeks

2 loaves nan bread

Ground red pepper

Dried mint

1. The night before you plan to serve this dish, drain the yogurt: Dampen a piece of cheesecloth and place it in a strainer. Place the strainer over a bowl and place the yogurt in the strainer. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Discard liquid. You’ll have one-half cup drained yogurt.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet. Add the onion and cook over high heat until reddish brown, about 5 minutes. Add the lamb and fry until brown, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato juice or water and salt and pepper to taste, and simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes.

3. Trim the leeks, then slice them lengthwise and wash thoroughly. Discard the tough green parts and chop the rest.

4. When the lamb is done, cut the nan into 4-inch triangles or squares. In a separate pan, heat 1 tablespoon oil and fry the bread until lightly browned but not too crisp. Remove the bread and keep warm. Add the leeks and the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the pan and fry until the leeks are soft, about 3 to 4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. To serve, cover the bottom of a large warmed dish with one-fourth cup drained yogurt, then add most of the bread, then the leeks. Place dollops of the remaining yogurt over the leeks, then add the meat. Sprinkle with red pepper and mint and garnish with the remaining fried nan.

Each serving: 457 calories; 28 grams protein; 32 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 24 grams fat; 6 grams saturated fat; 70 mg. cholesterol; 506 mg. sodium.

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Seekh kebab

Total time: 45 minutes, plus marinating time

Servings: 6

Note: From “Afghan Food & Cookery: Noshe Djan” by Helen Saberi. Purchase 2 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb. When trimmed, it will yield about 2 pounds of meat.

3 tablespoons lemon juice

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons yogurt

2 tablespoons oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb, trimmed

Fresh lavash or chapati bread

1 cup chopped onion

3 tomatoes, cut into wedges

3 lemons, cut into wedges

1. Mix the lemon juice, garlic, yogurt, oil, salt, pepper and coriander in a large bowl.

2. Cut the lamb into 1-inch chunks and stir into the lemon juice mixture. Cover the bowl with plastic and marinate 4 hours to overnight.

3. Put about 5 pieces of lamb on each of 12 metal skewers. Grill 6 to 8 minutes. Serve in lavash or chapati bread garnished with onion, tomatoes and lemon wedges.

Each skewer with one chapati bread: 465 calories; 34 grams protein; 28 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams fiber; 23 grams fat; 7 grams saturated fat; 103 mg. cholesterol; 387 mg. sodium.