Gandana

Afghan leek

The green inside aushak and bolani.

What it is

Gandana is a perennial allium with flat, grass-like leaves, milder than garlic and sharper than a leek, with a green depth that a spring onion only partly matches. It is grown for its leaves, not a bulb: the clump is cut down and grows back, so one patch feeds a household through the summer.

Where it comes from

It is an Afghan kitchen-garden plant, grown in most provinces and sold in bunches in the bazaars. Botanists have not settled its exact species, and growers outside Afghanistan sell it simply as Afghan leek. The seed has travelled with the diaspora, and the plant grows well in a British or American garden.

What it's called

Gandana (Dari and Pashto) · Afghan leek (seed catalogues). It is not the same plant as Chinese garlic chives, though those are the nearest thing on a shop shelf.

In the kitchen

Gandana is chopped fine and cooked down with salt and a little chilli until soft, and that green mass is the filling of aushak, the boiled dumplings, and of bolani, the fried flatbread. It also takes the place of garlic chives in the greens of qorma-e-sabzi. Cook it right down: raw or half-cooked, it releases water as it heats and splits a dumpling. Away from an Afghan grocer, spring onion or leek with garlic chives comes closest, and that is what our recipes use.

What we know about the claims

A green allium, with the vitamin K, folate and sulphur compounds of its family. No particular claims attach to it; it is a vegetable and is eaten as one, in quantity.

Choosing and buying

Afghan grocers sell it in bunches when it is in: Southall, Hounslow and Ilford in the UK, Northern Virginia, Fremont and Queens in the US. Supply is seasonal and unreliable. The surer route is seed, from Afghan grocers and specialist seed companies; it is perennial and can be cut again and again. Use it within a few days, since leafy alliums turn slimy fast.