I'm a big fan of Middle Eastern and Central Asian cooking, but the whole thing about pork being haram (Arabic: forbidden) really bums me out. Legend has it that ancient Kievian Rus took up Christianity because the proto-Russians liked to drink too much. And so my love of pork keeps me from converting to some Abrahamic religions, just like my love of going commando keeps me from becoming Mormon, and my lust for beef keeps me from becoming Hindu...you get the idea.
Russians living in Uzbekistan have gotten around this by producing plov with pork (see my other article), and if you go to Orthodox Armenia, you can find delicious pork dishes with more exotic spices being prepared. Still, how was I to incorporate the noble pig into the culinary delights of Afghanistan to please my pork loving family? I came up with this, using the traditional Afghan tastes of garlic, cilantro, turmeric, and chilis with pork.
So, here's my soup. By the way, you can use other meat too, for a more "traditional" taste, preferably mutton, but that shit's just way too expensive for me.
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