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REZAYEE: I'm chopping.
Faster and faster.
My hands are running ahead of my mind.
I do first, think after.
I'm chopping onions, eyes burning, then more onions.
Tomatoes, then more tomatoes.
I've chopped piles of leeks, carrots, and cucumbers,
and I still need to chop more.
Now, this is not a cooking show or a busy restaurant.
This is my apartment in New York City.
I'm behind chopping,
but there is something more important lurking in my mind.
I'm concerned that the rice,
which is the pinnacle of my culture's culinary pride,
is going to be ruined tonight.
I'm petrified that I won't be able to make the dinner
as exquisite as my guests,
especially my African competitor,
is expecting of me.
Let me back up a little bit.
I'm son of a chef.
Yet then to, like, come to college in America,
I even didn't know how to boil pasta.
I had to call my sisters in Kabul and Canada to get help.
My culinary inabilities weren't entirely
because I grew up in a society where moms and sisters
always prepared food for the family,
but because my dad didn't want us siblings
to get into cooking seriously.
He wanted the apples to fall a little far from the tree.
Majority of Afghans didn't have formal educations,
so it was easy for youngsters
to fall into labor-based employment, if not war.
My parents, just like any other parents,
wanted us to become doctors and engineers.
My dad worked as a chef for American diplomats,
their families, and U.N. officials
for almost 40 years.
Although it was a great career, and he benefited a lot from it,
he felt he missed on something bigger-- education.
And that's where he focused us.
In addition to school, he put me in typing
and English-language courses.
Despite war-related problems,
I eventually made it to college here,
at Tufts University, as an adult student.
Six years later,
when I got a job in New York City to move there,
I found myself in the heat of cooking.
My roommate and I, him also an Afghan,
loved to entertain once we realized
Americans liked Afghan food.
It was also a way to show that we immigrants
had something to contribute,
something that we were proud of back home.
You know, like you have B-52, but we have exotic lamb dishes.
(laughter)
Inevitably, we got into a bit of rivalry.
I remember asking him how he prepared lamb broth
before adding rice in it, and he went,
"Uhh," as in, "Dude, this is not how rivalry works."
He would hide his spices and methods,
and I would steal glances of them,
pretending that I was grabbing a beer from the fridge.
Sometimes, he was a good guy.
He would show me how to marinate kebab or something,
but I couldn't understand his patronizing tone.
Things like, "You know, if you lower your ambition,
everything will be perfect."
Then came the most spectacular of my challenges.
A house party with a former DJ in it.
Among 40 guests, we have people who my roommate and I
are both trying to impress
for professional and romantic reasons.
Highlight of the menu is heavily publicized on Facebook,
and it is the Afghan kabuli palaw,
which is long-grain aromatic rice
brewed in lamb broth
and sautéed raisins and carrots.
I see some people salivating.
(laughter)
I also see vegans cringing.
(laughter)
Side note: I am weekday-vegan, these days.
Anyway, so I'm chopping,
and I've chopped heaps of fruits, too, for sangria,
but my mind is at kabuli palaw.
I'm concerned that the rice is not going to turn out
the Afghan way-slash- Central Asian,
which is soft, but not sticky,
which we call "shola," and shola, back home,
is what keeps the suitors away.
I don't know how long I have soaked the rice for,
I've cut a finger, I've burnt another,
and I've got a no-show from another friend
who was supposed to be over to help me.
And I'm looking at the clock, and somebody's intentionally
just fast-forwarding the hour.
Lost, and my reputation and skill,
I did something I hadn't done in almost 20 years.
I talked to my dad about cooking.
I Skype him to show me how to do the rice right.
I'm taking the phone over to the boiling pot
and the screen fogs up,
I'm screaming into the phone
because the connection is weak on that side,
and I'm telling him, "Dad, this is going to be shola."
And he says, "Calm down, tell me what kind of rice
and how long did you soak it for?"
The first thing that occurred to my mind was,
"Dad, how can you be so calm?
Can't you see?"
But I took a deep breath and explained the situation to him.
And he said, "Make dough and seal the pot lid with it."
"Like, air-tight the rice?"
He said, "Yes."
when you're not sure which line to cut in a time bomb,
and then you get a professional tip.
It was like that.
I had done it.
I removed the lid later,
and I realized the dough had captured
all the aroma of the rice and had infused it back into it.
I scooped out a little bit,
and the grains are falling one by one,
just like they should be.
So I'm eating this, trying it a little bit,
and then something makes sense to me.
So for a long time,
I was subconsciously building resentment towards my dad
for not sharing his skills, because if he could,
I would be a celebrity chef in Manhattan today.
But, I realized, if he had actually,
I wouldn't be in America in the first place.
So my roommate shows up, and he's trying the food,
and his head is down and he's nodding
and saying, "This is really good, this is really good."
And I said, "You know, man, sometimes you can be ambitious,
and some things will turn out perfect."
Thank you.