Vegan Gaboot

A longer and more detailed description

Just a warning that this recipe can be fast-paced if you want it to be, or it can be chill. If you cook like me, there will be a lot happening all at once, which is fun and exciting, but if you don’t like fun and exciting, consider disregarding doing the steps in the order I’ve listed, and instead do whatever you like. It’s your kitchen. Follow your own rules.

If, however, you want a madcap dash of a soup, start by heating oil in a pot over medium heat. Well, technically, start with a conversation with your partner about the dishes that weren’t done, then do the dishes, then heat oil in a pot, but some of those steps are optional, depending on your dish availability. Once the oil is hot, add two onions, delicately sliced, and an entire bulb of garlic that you kind of gave up on mincing partway through and so can now best be described as garlic chunks. Cook them until they’re soft, then add your tomatoes, raisins, tomato paste, vegetable broth, and spices, give it all a mixy mix, and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiling, add in your jackfruit.

However! This was not the hard part of the recipe! In addition to making soup, we are also making dumplings for the soup, and it is in these dumplings that the soup truly shines. Make a soft but workable dough by mixing flour and water. The dough should be soft, but not sticky, so use whatever combination of the two seems to work. After making the dough, saute one minced onion, a reasonable amount of garlic, and more spice in a pan until soft. Once the onions and garlic are ready, make dumplings! Take a handful of dough, flatten it in your palm, and add onions and garlic. Pinch the dough shut around the onions and garlic in a half-moon shape, then add it to the broth. Repeat until you run out of filling, dough, or patience.

Let the dumplings bubble around in the broth until they give off “I’m cooked” vibes, then serve. !بلعافية

Substitutions and suggestions

For the jackfruit: I really liked the jackfruit here specifically because of the extra citrus and tang it added. However, if jackfruit isn’t your thing, this would also work nicely with chickpeas or mushrooms.
For the curry powder and lime juice: The combination of these ingredients is subbing in for black limes, which I could not find in New Zealand. If you have access to black limes, use those. They’re much better.

What I changed to make it vegan

This soup is ordinarily made with lamb, which I substituted for jackfruit. I also swapped out the meat filling in the dumplings for onions and garlic.

What to listen to while you make it

Kuwait is home to a specific type of music known as “sawk,” which adds a violin in to a more traditionally Arabic sound. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

A bit more context for this dish

Kuwaiti cuisine, due to the geographic location of Kuwait, is an interesting blend of Arabian and Iranian cuisines. Iranian ingredients and cooking techniques get blended with Arabian ingredients and cooking techniques, all with the addition of a heavy reliance on seafood, rice, and bread. Kuwait’s location on traditional trade routes, coupled with the reality of its modern workforce also means there are Indian influences on the cuisine.

What makes this dish in particular interesting, however, is not its culinary profile - though it is an excellent example of blending both Persian and Arabian influences into something wholly unique - but rather, its cultural one. Gaboot is an example of a culinary tradition found throughout the world, yet not generally recognised for how foundational it is. Let’s change that.

Gaboot is an example of a post-partum dish. It’s a dish made for mothers immediately after giving birth to both celebrate the birth of their child, and to help them regain their strength. It’s part of a long legacy of dishes made for women, by women, to celebrate getting through birth together.

And that’s pretty phenomenal.

Many cultures have their own versions of a dish filling a similar role to gaboot. These are dishes that are heavy in iron, vitamins, and nutrients that help the mother regain their strength after childbirth. South Korean miyeokguk, for example, is traditionally served not only to mothers, but to children on their birthday as a way to pay homage to their mothers for giving birth to them. In Mexico, nopales provide a source of rehydration and iron. For the Hmong people of southeast Asia, chicken soup garnished with ko taw os liab provides muscle strength, increases strength and energy, and helps mothers regain their appetites. Ojibwe doulas focus on charred bone broths mixed with vegetables, serving them to their patients to help them hydrate and grow stronger. In Bangladesh, women receive kalijira bhorta, a cumin mash that stimulates milk production while also rebuilding the mother’s health. There are as many of these dishes as there are cultures, with each group of people approaching the challenge of childbirth in their own way, with their own traditions, and with the ingredients they have on hand.

What joins this human tradition, though, is the community and the solidarity inherent in making these dishes. These are dishes made for women by women to celebrate and recognise the reality of a female experience. Throughout most cultures, most women will, at some point, give birth, and when they do, the community coalesces around them. In reading about these dishes and whether they have any actual medical benefit (unclear), what was clear was that, regardless of any objective benefit, the sense of community and belonging that accompanies these dishes is deeply meaningful and has an impact on a mother’s outcome. There is love in cooking for someone, and there is love in caring for them as their body heals. That love makes dishes like gaboot more than just a soup. These are dishes that encapsulate a fundamental element of what it means to be human. They are expressions of identity, of community, of solidarity, and of the knowledge that, no matter what happens, none of us are truly alone.

There is something deeply wonderful about these traditions, and they are worth celebrating. Making a dish like this is more than making dinner. It’s a connection to the generations of people for whom this soup was a celebration of new life and of the reinforcement of community and love.