It was a hot day in Lahore. The kind of day when the Loo wind blows in from the Cholistan Desert, as the sun casts its tungsten-white glow on the people of the city. The canal’s water a dirty brown, small children leaping in one by one, to cool themselves off in the 40C heat. The willow trees lining the bank, drooped and in prostration, praying for the monsoons to come. (more…)

 
As promised, this is recipe part II, from the menu at the Nairobi Reunion dinner I hosted in my home for my childhood friends. (more…)

This is the recipe for the vermicelli pudding my mother, Ami, prepares every Eid, which I wrote about in my post about her on Motherhood: The Final Frontier. (more…)

It’s been an absolute honour for me to have had the opportunity to write a guest post on Motherhood: The Final Frontier (click here for link), for one of my favourite bloggers / friends, a British girl who blogs anonymously from California about her life as a mum. She inspired me to write a short piece about my mother. In Missing Person’s Report, I write about the difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that one’s mum has aged; I still see her through the optic of a young child. (more…)

This is a recipe, as promised, from the menu at the Nairobi Reunion dinner I hosted.  (My recipe was awarded an Editor’s Pick on Amanda Hesser -the ex- New York Times Food Editor- and Merrill Stubbs’ Food 52 project). (more…)

In his memoirs; the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, Mughal Emperor Jahangir expresses his desire to visit Pampore, Kashmir, to see the land where the fields turn amethyst in the Autumn, when the saffron crocus sativus is ready for harvesting. It is from this flower that delicate hands nimbly extract three crimson-hued stigmas, also known as “Red Gold”; the most dear spice in the world. A spice which was once known to be worth its weight in gold. (more…)

Madhur Jaffrey, the Dame of Indian cuisine says, “Well-cooked grains of rice should be like brothers; close, but not stuck together.”

In my family, we say “Each grain of rice should be elongated, separated, curved and slender like a girl’s eyelashes.” (more…)

The French have their pillowy, like-a-curdled-creme, soufflé-like version of scrambled eggs. The Latin Americans have their huevos revueltos; the Colombians serve theirs with pillowy arepas. Us Pakistanis & Afghans have our own version of scrambled eggs, called Khagina. (more…)