Pary Baban. Photo: Clare Winfield
Pary Baban was just 18 years old when, in the 1980s, her family was forced to flee their hometown of Qaladzê in southern Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces. She had enjoyed a simple but idyllic childhood as the fifth of 11 children in a family who kept livestock and harvested food from the plains. The kitchen was always the centre of the home – the place, she says, “where most of my memories were born: cooking, eating and sharing stories with my family and friends”.
The family escaped on foot to the mountains of east Kurdistan, en route Baban found herself drawn to, and carefully scribbling notes about, traditional techniques of foraging, fermenting and curing from local farmers and shepherds. “At the time of the genocide of the Kurdish people,” she says in her newly published debut cookbook Nandên (“kitchen” in Kurdish), “I felt it was very important to keep a record of our unique history and culture.”
Then, in 1995, she moved with her husband, Pola, to the UK. Initially the couple worked as newsagents in a kiosk in Elephant and Castle in south London before taking over the empty space next door to sell sandwiches and hot food – kebabs and dishes infused with sumac and other fresh Kurdish flavours. By 2016 they had opened a proper restaurant, Nandine (also meaning kitchen), beloved of locals and the food press, which led to her being affectionately crowned “London’s queen of Kurdish cooking”.
Today she shares a fresh and hearty spring recipe for tarêh kurdi – slow-cooked lamb and butter bean stew. “Lamb and mutton are very popular meats in Kurdish cooking,” she explains, as are “wild herbs, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables” of the sort that could be gathered by shepherds looking after their flocks. “How the land itself moves through the year dictates what we eat.”
Words by Imogen Carter
Slow-cooked lamb & butter bean stew. Photo: Clare Winfield
Tarêh kurdi or slow-cooked lamb & butter bean stew
Serves 6
Ingredients
250 g dried butter beans, soaked overnight
3 tablespoons rapeseed oil (or any of your choice)
250 g lamb (can be neck or chop, it’s up to you, but use meat on the bone), cut into chunks
1 onion, diced
2 tablespoons tomato purée
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped (about 100 g)
bunch of fresh parsley, finely chopped (about 100 g)
bunch of fresh dill, finely chopped (about 100 g)
½ bunch of fresh mint, finely chopped (about 50 g)
1 leek, finely chopped
100 g spinach, chopped
2–3 crushed dried limes, deseeded
(these can be found in Middle Eastern stores or use the juice of 2 lemons)
Method
Pre-cook the butter beans: pour 1.5 litres water into a saucepan, bring to the boil, cook for 15 minutes, then turn off and cover with a lid.
Heat the oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the meat to the pan once the oil is hot and sear it all over.
Once the meat has browned, add the onion and saut. for 5–10 minutes until golden brown. Add the tomato purée, the salt and the spices and cook for about 3–5 minutes until the aroma is released and everything has combined.
Add the herbs, leek and spinach and 500 ml water to the saucepan along with the butter beans with the remaining water. Add the dried limes and stir, making sure the water covers the beans and meat.
Cover with a lid and bring it to the boil, then turn down the heat to medium-high heat. Cook for 50 minutes until the meat is tender and the sauce has reduced.
Serve it with your favourite rice and pickles.
NOTE You can include the stalks from the herbs if they are soft.
Nandên by Pary Baban is published by Ryland Peters & Small (£25)