I am honoured to have been interviewed by one of Pakistan’s most prestigious and widely-read English-language magazines for their September issue. Here is the link to the three-page feature.

Toot toot! That is the sound of my horn, and I hope you don’t mind the sound of it, because The Spice Spoon was featured in The Independent as 50 of the world’s best food websites.

‘Stunning photography, beautiful food and evocative writing, Shayma Saadat’s Pakistani/ Afghan/Persian blog is a treat,’ says Nick. ‘Very original recipes from a blogger who is keen to offer a much-needed dose of humanity and romanticism to the countries of her heritage.’

I was interviewed by EGO Magazine. You can read the article here.

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. We call them “farmers’ omelettes” because they are prepared with whatever is in our fridge that particular morning (no farm here, sadly). Some days it is caramelised shallots and roasted tomatoes with brie folded in, which softly oozes out with each bite; other days it is mushroom, thyme and Swiss cheese. And there is always a little bit of caramelized garlic in them.

One morning, in the mood for an omelette in the Italian manner — a frittata, I entered the kitchen with Zain to prepare it. He took out Roma tomatoes, Irani feta and the fresh herb of the week, tarragon. Zain peeled the roma tomatoes with a potato peeler while I whipped the eggs. After pouring a few globs of olive oil into the frying pan, I added the chopped Roma tomatoes. Over a slow flame, as we sipped our cardamom tea, the tomatoes slumped and yielded, becoming soft and jam–like. In went the eggs and as Zain swirled the pan with a flick of his wrist, I added lots of soft, creamy, crumbled Irani feta. As it began to come together along the sides, we transferred it under the broiler for ten minutes. Flipped over onto a plate was a thick circle of eggy goodness—a sort of savoury custard, garnished with strands of fragrant tarragon. And since we had just returned from Istanbul, we had to give the frittata a dusting of pul biber, the prized semi–moist, red chili flakes from Turkey. We scooped up the custard–like frittata with our favorite pumpernickel bread using our hands.

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.

I know, it’s long- but it’s a piece I wrote for a magazine lots of photos at the end

Where The Sun Comes From

Memories of My Grandmother

By Shayma Saadat

Shameem was the given name of my paternal grandmother. Her favourite drink was Crème de Menthe, which she always drank chilled, and she was the best tango dancer in Lahore. My father tells me that the band at the Lahore Gymkhana Club would strike up the tango as soon as my grandparents entered the ballroom. They had won many tango competitions and their favourite song was Bahía Blanca. With my grandfather in his tuxedo and my grandmother in her silk sari, they would twirl around the outside of the dance floor in true Argentine style – long, elegant steps – her sari’s folds sashaying with each move. I often wonder how she did the legendary gancho, or leg hook, in her sari. I wish I could ask her, but she passed away in our home in Nairobi, Kenya, when I was sixteen years old.

We affectionately called her Mader, which means mother in Farsi. Everyone called her that. My parents, my friends, the fruit-wallah in Lahore who would save the freshest neon-orange persimmons for her, and the owner of Ajmer Bakery who kept a dozen vegetable patties aside for her every Thursday. Even our cook, Lala Ashraf, who learnt to make lasagne verde from her, called her Mader.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1916, Mader lived there for most of her life. Widowed when she was sixty, she came to live with us in Washington, D.C., but the pull of her homeland was too strong; she returned after two years. When I was thirteen I was sent to Pakistan to live with her for a few years. She taught me how to speak Farsi, paraphrased Shakespeare’s Richard II for me, and sat next to me all night when I studied for my final exams. She made sure the fruit basket in my room was always full and lunch was ready when I came back from school at one o’clock. I remember sitting with her for lunch and having our preferred dish of potatoes and aubergines made with roasted tomatoes and caramelized onions. We would chatter as our fingers scooped it all up with a chapati.

Mader had gone through a double mastectomy and had heart trouble, preventing her from standing up for long periods of time. On weekends my cousin Saadiya and I would go into the kitchen and, as Mader sat on her stool and instructed us, we would cook together. Mader loved making fresh mayonnaise. Lala Ashraf would set the mise en place on the marble counter. I would then begin to slice my knife through the tiny lemons that came from the Chinese dwarf tree in our garden and Saadiya would measure out the olive oil. Then eggs would go into the blender and Mader would guide us as oil was added, drop by golden drop, into the blender. Like alchemy, the ingredients would come together, transforming into a glob of pillowy, creamy lusciousness. And finally, we’d add Mader’s secret ingredient: a tiny dusting of brick-red smoked paprika. Lala Ashraf and Mader would spread this fluffy emulsion on soft, crustless slices of bread and add chunks of roast chicken and plump tomatoes. We would sit in our breakfast room and enjoy these sandwiches with the rest of the family, washing them down with glasses of mango squash. Saadiya was a talented baker, and there would be a slice of one of her spongy cakes with fresh fruit for dessert.

Mader’s father had passed away when she was a mere nine years old, leaving her mother with the responsibility of bringing up four daughters. Each piece of heirloom jewellery was sold so that her daughters could be educated. Mader was one of the first women in Pakistan to obtain an M.A. in economics. In addition to educating her daughters, she made sure they were also taught to cook. As a child, I always saw Mader in the kitchen with Lala Ashraf – cutting, chopping, and grinding on the marble counter from her stool. But the dishes she prepared didn’t seem like the ones her mother would have taught her. Back in the 1960s Mader had taken cookery classes from a Pakistani lady who taught Cantonese Chinese cooking, but her real interest lay in French food. She enrolled for classes at the French Cultural Institute in Lahore known as Cordon Bleu. I wonder if chefs were invited to Pakistan from this prestigious cookery school in Paris or if the instructor merely used recipes from the school to teach the students. Either way, she emerged from this school armed with recipes for Béarnaise sauce and how to make a perfectly airy chocolate soufflé.

As a wife, mother and civil servant, Mader took these classes in her free time. She would often make pommes au four with a cinnamon stick wedged in the middle of each apple and serve it to her husband and two sons with a good pour of crème anglaise; a dish my father craves to this very day. Some days she would request the chef of the U.S. Consul General to teach her how to make American-style pies and casseroles in her home kitchen. And from her American tenants who were in Lahore on a Ford Foundation scholarship, she learnt how to make a perfect pot roast with golden roasted potatoes.

All the dishes Mader prepared for me when I was a child were those that she had learnt from her cookery classes. Some days there would be a zucchini gratin with béchamel, the kind that comes out of the oven all bronzed and bubbly on top, or a lemon-yellow Victoria sponge cake sandwiched together with homemade apricot jam. And my favourite, a Cantonese chicken corn soup which was stirred and stirred for hours. I loved watching her perform the last step – the whisked raw eggs being poured in, metamorphosing into strands of silk floating lightly in the soup.

As for dishes from her heritage – Pakistani or Irani – I suppose that as a working woman who didn’t cook on a daily basis she felt those were best left to the experts, the cooks in her kitchen. I have heard stories of my grandmother’s Irani ancestry, but by the time I became keenly interested in finding out more about where her family had come from, Mader was long gone. My father tells me that Mader’s grandfather, Syed Nadir Ali Shah, was a Sufi Saint from Iran. He came from a province in the northeast called Khorasan, the land of saffron and zereshk – barberries. As a young adult, Syed Nadir Ali Shah migrated from his abode in Iran to present-day Pakistan to spread the Sufi word. Whilst there, he came across a beautiful girl with hazel eyes and hair as black as licorice, and married her soon after. This woman was Mader’s grandmother. He made a home for himself in Lahore and never returned to Sabzevar, the city of his birth.

Mader had taught me how to make a béchamel sauce, and to speak Farsi, but she never shared anything about her Irani heritage with me. I wanted to know more about Syed Nadir Ali Shah: did he miss his country of birth; how did he teach his wife and children Farsi; and did he tell them that the province of his birth, Khorasan, means Where The Sun Comes From in Farsi? As I became more curious about the land that Mader’s grandfather was from, I began to research Sufism in Iran and also delve into Irani cookery. The kukus: baked frittatas, some made with fresh, verdant herbs, others with roasted aubergine; the delicate polows: rice dishes with candied orange rind, zereshk and pistachios; khoreshts: the warm stews that are simmered on the stove for hours and eaten with mounds of steaming rice. I continued to cook Irani dishes as a tribute to Mader, my grandmother who was an enigma and a fascinating woman from that era, the lady who taught my father how to make ikebana flower arrangements and who passed away silently one night at our home in Nairobi.

 I would love to have been able to create tah-chin, a traditional Irani dish, with her. It is much like the Neapolitan pasta timbale I learnt to make when I lived in Rome, except that this dish is made with rice and chicken and has intense currents of saffron’s golden, musky aroma running through it. I would like to have been in the kitchen with Mader, at the marble counter in our family home in Lahore, grinding saffron threads in the mortar and pestle, adding drops of water and then seeing it all transform into a brilliant vermillion syrup. I would have watched her, seated on her stool, mixing steamed rice with egg yolks and yogurt. Then together we would add the saffron water into the rice mixture, watching the colour bleed slowly into it, a transformation from yellow to gold.

Finally, how wonderful it would be if Mader and I could sit down to have a meal together, like we did when I was thirteen years old, and say nosh-e-jan – bon appétit. Except this time I would pour her a small glass of chilled Crème de Menthe as a digestif.

Shayma Saadat is a Pakistani-Afghan of Irani ancestry and the author of the food-memoir-style blog “The Spice Spoon: Cooking Without Borders” (www.thespicespoon.com). She was born in Lahore and grew up in Pakistan, the U.S., Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, and the U.K. Two years ago, Shayma moved from Rome, Italy, where she worked for the United Nations, to Toronto, where she is a Senior Policy Advisor to the Canadian government. She lives in Toronto with her husband.

Here is the recipe for tah-chin.

Here is the recipe for mast-o-khiar.

My first published article came out in Edible Toronto’s Summer Issue. Edible is a magazine based on sustainable food and the farm scene with over 65 chapters across the United States. The inimitable Gail Gordon Oliver is the founder of the Edible Toronto chapter in Canada. The article was about my move from Rome, Italy to Toronto, Canada a year and a half ago, and the aromas of my childhood which made me feel at home in a new city.

Here is the link to the article, which I have also pasted below, with the recipe and a video of myself talking about kheer.

Here I am talking to my friend Jodi about the kheer I brought to the Mother’s Day Brunch. Kheer is known as sheer berenj in Afghanistan.

The text from the Edible Toronto article:

Kheer: A Milky Spoonful Of Home

I swirl my wooden spoon in a pool of rose-hued rhubarb, soft and glossy, gently bubbling away. In go the strawberries, deepening the colour and spreading their bubble gum-sweet smell through the kitchen. Soon the guests in our home will be drizzling this coulis over kheer, a Pakistani dessert of cardamom-spiced rice pudding, each spoonful milky and sugary, with the crunch of flaky sliced almonds. And the fragrance of cardamom, the smell I associate with childhood and home – my mother’s creamy vermicelli puddings on Eid day marking the end of Ramadan, scented with whole cardamom pods. Or maybe a pod or two steamed with the basmati rice my mother’s sister – Khala Neelo – makes especially for me. The kind of rice you eat with a mere dollop of Greek yogurt on a rainy afternoon.

As I remove the coulis from the flame, I turn to my window. I can see the summer sun hanging in the sky like a plump apricot. It has been a year-and-a-half since my move to Toronto from Rome, Italy, as a new bride.

On that January day – my first morning in my new home – I stood there alone staring out the window, looking at the snow particles whirling around outside. Turning towards the fridge, I found it barren and cold, just like Toronto on that wintery morning. With my husband at work and no friends in the same time zone to call, I stared at the suitcases lying in the hallway flaccid and empty, waiting to be stored. After two weeks of traditional wedding celebrations in Pakistan: silence.

No leftovers in the fridge from the night before. No dahl, that Pakistani-style lentil dish I love, infused with fresh ginger and garlic and tempered with a spiced cumin oil; the cold, congealed dahl that I smear on a piece of hot toast some mornings. Alongside a cup of milky tea with a fragrant cardamom pod popped in.

Every morning before my wedding in Lahore, I would sit in front of the gas heater in my grandmother’s home, watching the BBC news. Our cook would bring in the fruit basket on a tray with my grandmother’s paring knife, the one with the ivory handle. Fragrant lemon tinted guavas, with an interior like soft-ripened cheese; mandarins with oily flesh, the kind that clings to your fingertips as you peel them; and petite bananas, their yellow skin soft, with black flecks. My mother would peel a mandarin for me and steal a few slices for herself.

We would come together every night in our home for the dholki –a pre-wedding dance and song celebration of family and friends: I, in my traditional pre-wedding citrus yellow cotton kurta shalwar and the girls in their silk attire in lollipop-like colours of grape, cherry and lime. They would gather around in the drawing room and sway in unison to the beats of the current Bollywood tunes as we clapped and watched on.

Food would be served every day on the terrace under a magenta and green enclosed canopy. Fresh chicken tikkas impaled on iron skewers, cooked over coal embers, charred perfectly on their edges; beef seekh kebabs lacquered with oil, glistening and ready to be dunked in a cool mint raita. From the dome-shaped earthen tandoor would emerge some fresh naan, small sesame seeds pressed neatly into each one. And in a bain-marie, a heady mutton biryani – braised meat layered and steamed with basmati rice, its notes of saffron, cardamom, clove and cinnamon mingling with the smell of that crisp Lahore winter night.

Everyone would enter the drawing room again, lean against the burgundy velvet cushions on the floor and tear away chubby pieces of naan, wrapping them around spicy, unctuous pieces of chicken tikka and seekh kebabs. Shortly thereafter, the dinner plates would be replaced with dainty crystal dessert bowls filled with kheer, this particular one infused with rosewater and adorned with chandi ka varak, edible real silver, a specialty at weddings.

My youngest sister, Maria, in the midst of her dancing and too busy to eat, would steal a spoonful or two from my bowl. Nearing the end of my kheer, I would greedily smear my finger across the bowl for that last drop of creaminess. It didn’t matter if someone was watching. I was the dulhan after all: the bride.

The dinner would be rounded off with cups of a dusty pink tea – Kashmiri chai. Sitting there sipping this salty spiced tea, I’d swallow the crushed jade-green pistachios floating atop the chai, family and friends around me, the beats of the Bollywood songs going on till our eyelids would begin to wilt, the clinking sound of the cup against the saucer being the familiar sound of home.

Back on that first January morning in Toronto, I needed to be comforted. I opened the fridge again and took out a carton of milk. From the pantry, some sugar, and then a sack of basmati rice from under the sink. I had entered the home of a former bachelor with a sparsely stocked pantry, but marrying a Pakistani has the advantage of knowing there is always basmati to be found. I reached into my purse for cardamom pods, which I always keep for an after-meal breath freshener.

I wrapped the cardamoms in a newspaper and crushed them into smaller fragments with the back of a frying pan, discarding the tough, green skin. In a large pot on the stove, I threw in the crushed black seeds along with a generous pour of milk, spoonfuls of sugar, and a handful of basmati rice. The milk started to gently roll, like soft cotton cloth. I stirred and stirred in silence as the cardamom’s sweet and musky smell filled the kitchen. The steam from the milk turned the window opaque, with the snow continuing to fall outside silently, now hidden from plain sight.

Slowly over the year I learnt things about Toronto: that wearing 5-inch-heel boots out in the snow is probably not advisable; that a small gourmet shop, Pusateri’s, has a café that serves my favourite Illy caffé macchiato; and most importantly, that summer comes late. But when it arrives, I can walk down with my friends to Summer’s for homemade frozen yogurt – a tart and sweet strawberry-banana flavour, a small powder pink snowball. And when my family comes to visit I can take them to Harbourfront to show them how Toronto throws its arms around Lake Ontario. I also learnt that in the summer I can travel with my husband on snow-free roads to the north of the city to find a Persian bakery that sells gosh-e-feel – elephant’s ear – a fried, puffy pastry with powdered sugar that spreads all over your mouth with each bite.

Entering my second summer in Toronto, on this particular day I recreate for my guests the dish that has always made me feel I am home: kheer. And combined with those flavours of my childhood are new flavours of Toronto, my adopted city – summery rhubarb and strawberry. The coulis on the kitchen counter and the kheer resting in the fridge, my guests arrive and we tuck into supple roasted red peppers dressed with pomegranate molasses and sprinkled with crushed walnuts, served alongside barbecued saffron-infused chicken tikkas. To cleanse the palate, some heirloom black cherry tomatoes atop spicy arugula anointed with olive oil and tiny pinches of fleur de sel.

Finally, out comes the kheer. A ladle of it into each bowl, and then a drizzle (or a drench) of the sweet-and-sour, candy-pink sauce. A scattering of sliced almonds, rounded off nicely with a dust of freshly cracked black pepper. And in every spoonful of kheer, soft and pillowy on the tongue, some bits of cardamom. The aromatic smell and sweet taste of home. In a new home.

Shayma Saadat, a Pakistani-Afghan with Persian ancestry, is the author of the food-memoir-style blog “The Spice Spoon: Cooking Without Borders” (www.thespicespoon.com). She is a Senior Policy Advisor for the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Canada. Shayma lives in Toronto with her husband.

Recipe

This rice pudding (known as kheer), made with basmati rice, should not be a mushy dish; each rice grain should be visible and remain intact. If you feel the rice is undercooked and the milk is being absorbed too quickly, just use some of the warm milk being heated in a saucepan on the side and add in small quantities to loosen the pudding.

I have added only ½ cup of sugar because the coulis adds sweetness; however, if you have a sweet tooth, feel free to add up to a whole cup of sugar to the kheer.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Kheer
6 whole green cardamom pods
4 1/2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup basmati rice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup sliced almonds, for garnish
freshly ground black pepper

Rhubarb Strawberry Coulis
1 pound rhubarb, chopped into ½-inch pieces
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 pound strawberries, hulled and chopped into ½-inch pieces

Make the kheer: Wrap the cardamom pods in a newspaper and crush with a rolling pin. The seeds should not be crushed to a dust. The result should look somewhat like freshly cracked pepper. Discard the green skin of the pods.

In a small saucepan, heat 1½ cups of the milk over medium-low heat; do not bring to a boil, but keep warm while you prepare the kheer. In a large heavy-bottomed pan, add the remaining 3 cups of milk, the rice, crushed cardamom seeds, sugar and slivered almonds. Turn the heat to high. As soon as the milk starts to steam, turn the heat to low and cover with a lid.

Every 7 to 10 minutes, remove the lid and stir gently, from the bottom up, to ensure that the rice is not sticking to the base of the pan. After about 40 minutes, the milk should be thickened but not entirely absorbed. The pudding should have a soft, velvety consistency and not look congealed.

Taste the rice. If it seems undercooked, add some of the reserved warm milk, replace the lid and continue to cook for 7 to 10 minutes. When done, the basmati rice grains should be intact. Transfer the kheer to a container and allow it to come to room temperature before covering and refrigerating at least 5 hours, but preferably overnight, to set.

Make the coulis: In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the rhubarb, cinnamon stick, water and sugar. Stir well. Allow the mixture to bubble away until the rhubarb looks soft and has melted down into a sauce, about 20 minutes. Add the strawberries. Continue to cook until the strawberries have softened and melted into the sauce, about 10 to 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, discard the cinnamon stick, and allow the coulis to come to room temperature. The coulis can be prepared in advance, kept refrigerated, and brought to room temperature or warmed up prior to serving with the kheer.

To serve: Ladle chilled kheer into individual bowls and drizzle with coulis. Top with a sprinkling of sliced almonds and a dusting of fresh black pepper.

Here is the link to the article below.

Click here for the winning recipe, and here for my interview, (above).

I am pleased and honoured to share with my readers that my recipe for Borani Esfanaaj won the Food52 competition for ‘Your Best Spinach Recipe’ this week and will be published in a crowdsourced cookbook entitled ‘Food52′ by HarperStudio. (Here is my recipe and the story of inspiration behind it, on my blog).

Food52 is an innovative project created by Amanda Hesser, ex-Food Editor of the New York Times Magazine and Merrill Stubbs, a freelance food writer and recipe tester. For 52 weeks, homecooks submit recipes to Food52, under a specific theme. Amanda and Merrill vet and select the best two each week, presenting these back to the Food52 community, who then vote on which one will make it into the cookbook. At the end of a year the winning recipes will be compiled in a book.

Many thanks to all the lovely Food52 community homecooks and to Amanda and Merrill. Here’s raising a glass to all homecooks and the founders of Food52! Jennifer Ann won the ‘wildcard’ this week, she is an ace cook, you can see her ‘Couscous with Roasted Fennel and Toasted Almonds’ recipe here.

Here is the link to my recipe.

Here is the link to my interview- you can scroll all the way down.

I am most honoured to have been interviewed by Qype, London, a Hamburg-based web 2.0 company centred around social networking and local reviews. In it, I talk about ladyfingers, Raoul’s in London and how I came to start this blog. Thank you for your readership, as always, Shayma

You can read it by clicking on this link.