Cooking without borders: Cuisine from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran & beyond.
Dear All,
Thank you for all your kind messages regarding my lack of blogging as of late. I haven’t given up on blogging; I am just working on a non-food related project which has made it difficult for me to devote time to my blog at the moment. Inshallah, I hope to be back in the Fall with new recipes / posts. Thank you so much for your readership and warm and encouraging messages. [Read more...]
If you were friendly with one of the House Prefects, you were always guaranteed a thick stack of those buttery, crumbly biscuits for dipping into your milky tea. At 10am, as the bell rang, all of us would push past the Assembly Hall’s heavy doors and greedily reach for the blue and orange rectangular biscuit tins. The Prefects had control over the tins and if you weren’t on good terms with them, you’d have to ask your mates to share some of their goodies with you, which they always did, but rather reluctantly. It was all about survival of the fittest in that Assembly Hall. No one really wanted to share their elevenses with you. Not even your best friend. Everyone huddled together, with their plastic teacup of fragrant Kenyan tea in their hand, dipping the thin sliver of a biscuit with the frilled edges into the hot liquid till it turned just a tad bit soggy and melted in your mouth with each bite. [Read more...]
Aglio, olio, peperoncino. Tossed with some spaghetti and it’s a full meal for the five friends who end up at your place after a night of hearing the legendary jazz pianist Chucho Valdés perform at the Villa Celimontana. There isn’t much in your fridge or pantry, but you are all hungry, and you do have that holy trinity of garlic, olive oil and red pepper chilli flakes in your pantry. Add a bottle or two of Morellino to the late-dinner mix, even if it may be a bit too tannic for a spicy pasta dish, but it is all you have in the house that night and besides, everyone loves a good bottle from the Maremma. To cleanse the palette after the pasta course, there is a packet of rughetta; arugula- in the fridge, and some tomatoes you bought from the Testaccio market that very morning- tiny, china-red orbs, which your friend slices and tosses with the peppery leaves, adding a drop or two of musky, tart, sweet balsamic vinegar and splashes of fruity, grassy olive oil, from your favourite casale in Umbria. [Read more...]
It was the sort of evening where dessert had to be eaten first. It was the end of June and the tiny, scarlet, sweet-as-jam wild strawberries, le fragoline di Nemi were in season. Baba was visiting me in Rome from Bucharest and on the weekend our dear friends, Uncle Iqi and Aunty Neeman graciously drove us up into the Castelli Romani to the small town of Nemi. They always knew where to take us for the best medium-rare steak or the crispiest-thinnest pizza in Rome. And this time, they invited us for early season porcini mushrooms and le fragoline in Nemi. [Read more...]
Blog post is in response to a request from my friend AFC- who loved his masala omelettes during his business trips to India.
I like to eat my masala omelette placed between two pieces of soft, untoasted bread and eaten like a sarnie with some sweet chili sauce. It’s a childhood thing, you know, that ‘nursery food’ texture we all remember. The masala omelette is to the Pakistani kitchen what pancakes are to an American kitchen. The only pancakes I ever had as a child were out of a box, and that too, slathered with Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen syrup. [Read more...]
Her name was Bridget but we called her Aunty Brige. Not pronounced ‘bridge’, like the one which connects two points across a river, but Brige, with a long ‘i’, as in liege. She was tall and wore lots of white, flowing dresses which looked beautiful with her crown of wavy, strawberry blonde hair. One could imagine her sitting elegantly next to a harp, with her fingers plucking at the strings. Aunty Brige had light eyes; I cannot remember if they were green or blue or hazel, and they were always hidden behind large spectacles. [Read more...]
Recipe created by my dear friend BH and myself. BH adores spelt flour and has shown me how to incorporate it in my repertoire.
I could never understand why we didn’t eat Uncle Ben’s rice at home; the kind that Mrs. Ferris, my friend Sarah’s mum boiled in its own bag and served us alongside roast chicken. Each grain was plum and served slightly watery.
Why did we have to have basmati rice all the time? Sometimes laced with cumin and sometimes cooked in a cinnamon, cloves and cardamom-infused chicken stock. [Read more...]
Baba tells me that Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover would play repeatedly at picnics with his friends in 1960s Lahore. But for real affectation, there had to be some Françoise Hardy. Baba also tells me that if you didn’t know her hit La maison où j’ai grandi, or at least pretend to know it, then you were essentially a nobody.
And there were no picnic invitations for nobodies. [Read more...]
This post was featured in Oliver Thring’s weekly round-up. Oliver Thring writes for the Guardian and iStarvin’.
“Always keep some whipped butter next to the sink,” Aunty Bhupinder tells me as I lament over my dry hands after my move to Toronto. “Once you’re done with cooking,” she continues, “wash your hands and smear a little bit of whipped butter all over them.” Following the advice of someone I love like a grandmother, I slather some whipped butter on my hands. But in vain. Aunty Bhupinder’s hands are soft; like cake batter before it goes into the oven. No amount of whipped butter will soften mine up like hers. [Read more...]
Breakfast in a Pakistani Home
“Halwa puri, anyone?,” Baba and Kaka (father’s elder brother in Dari) would holler from the bottom of the stairwell in our family home in Lahore. [Read more...]
