Cooking without borders: Cuisine from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran & beyond.
An array of Turkish cheeses, fresh plump tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, an assortment of olives, sucuk (lamb sausage), tomatoes grilled with Turkish cheese, fresh thick yoghurt topped with a fruit coulis. A perfect breakfast in Istanbul with my husband.
I am featured on my favourite website this morning- The Kitchn. Click here.
Zain, my husband and I never go out for brunch on weekends — because Saturday and Sunday are the two days when he gets deep into the kitchen and prepares all sorts of omelettes for us. [Read more...]
I remember when I first moved to Rome, I used to lie on a weekly basis. At least for the first two months. [Read more...]
Photo by my husband, Z.
Below is my latest published piece for Edible Toronto’s Winter Issue. You can also view it on their website here. See end of post for recipes.
Heavy work schedule, just taking a break, dear readers. Inshallah, The Spice Spoon will be back…
Kadu Bharta.
Two words which sent shivers down my spine as a child-that Pakistani roasted squash dish which I just could not abide as a child. I don’t know whether it was the nursery food-like texture on my tongue of the cooked vegetable or the sight of it; one amorphous mound on my plate. I remember my parents scooping it all up with a chapati and adding spoonfuls of piquant mint chutney to the equation. It wasn’t for me. [Read more...]
It was our last summer in London. Post-graduate degrees in hand, we were going to leave the UK soon. I was to join my parents in Washington DC; S was to return to Karachi and Z was moving to Islamabad, her new home after having grown up in Manila. We spent our days walking around Covent Garden pausing to hear a street performer sing an aria, stopping at Caffè Nero for a creamy cappuccino, walking into Karen Millen to ogle the silk dresses (at that age, yes, Karen Millen was l’alta moda) or sitting in Z’s kitchen with her flatmates on the Pentonville Road in her uni housing, while she prepared a Pakistani scrambled egg dish of potatoes, cumin and green chilies for us. And there was tea, lots of tea, along with chocolate digestive biscuits for pudding. [Read more...]
The Toronto air is so cold that it’s almost brittle. But it is familiar to me now. Just like the street outside my home with its pedestrian crossings or our neighbourhood Korean-owned Japanese restaurant which serves an insipid salmon roll, but a perfectly spicy kimchi soup. It is just the ticket for a cold evening.
Toronto is the place where, for the past year and a half, I have made a home with my husband and invited friends over for platters of basmati rice served with prawns drenched in fragrant coconut curry. It’s the place where thousands of dollars have been raised by my non-Pakistani colleagues at work when the floods struck Pakistan, my country of birth. The place where people are curious to know more about my culture and where I am from. The place where its people have welcomed my husband and I into their homes and their land. [Read more...]
I would like to thank Lucy Waverman whose staff helped me write this recipe. I had a loose recipe from my mother according to her andaaza, estimation method.
Ami and I usually sit in our breakfast room when we’re having an afternoon cup of tea. For her just a splash of milk, “pour it in with just a flick of the wrist, Sham,” Ami cautions me. And for myself, a cardamom popped in, no milk. We share namak paray, finger-thin crackly wafers spiced with cumin as we sip our chai. Ami used to bake buttercup-yellow dense cakes when I was a child, but she’s given up on baking now. But that’s all right, as my Aunty Shelly lives just down the road and I can steal a blueberry-banana bread loaf from her kitchen on most days.
My favourite chai-time treat is when Ami makes kebabs. [Read more...]
French-Indian. Mexican-Japanese. Thai-Chinese. Fusion cuisine? Not really my brand of gin.
But when you have a family who is originally Afghan, now settled in Pakistan- invariably, there will be lots of ‘fusion-cuisine’ type of dishes prepared in the kitchen. [Read more...]
