If you ever visit Penjwen, you must have Mrs. Salma's freshly baked kalanas

Variety 02:18 PM - 2021-03-02

Photo Credit: Jamal Sargaty

When you visit Penjwen district, 97.7 km northeast of Sulaymaniyah, you will see a small cozy house. Inside that house is a small family who make Kurdish Kalana bread to sell and make their living from its revenues.

 

Kalana is an authentic Kurdish cuisine and it's made with bread dough but inside of it there are spring onions and the bread dough is then cooked on the Saj oven.

 

With the arrival of spring, eating Kalana has its own delicacy. So Karwan and his family wake up early in the morning every day to start making Kalanas to sell. Every passerby who visits their town must have their tasty Kalana with Kurdish Do (Doogh), which is a cold savory yogurt-based beverage, popular across Western Asia.

 

Karwan told PUKmedia that they have begun their business three years ago.

 

They make Kalana with onions, walnuts.. etc, as well as Kurdish Doina and Dokhawash foods.

 

Karwan says that their business blooms during springs.

 

According to Karwan their family's living depends on this business.

 

Salma Hassan, Karwan's mother, is the master chef and the backbone of the business says that her recipe is mixing flour, water, and salt to make the dough and after that "we put onions, walnuts or Pichk (a special green grass that tastes like onions and garlic found in mountainous regions of the Kurdistan Region) inside the dough and then we cook it."

 

Salma says that their Kalanas are famous and they visited by a large number of customers every day. They even get customers from central and southern Iraq, as well as tourists who visit the Kurdistan Region from Iraq. 

 

 

 

Reported by Jamal Sargaty

PUKmedia