I don’t have friendships which have lasted thirty-some odd years.

I don’t have friends from kindergarten that I grew up and stayed up late at night with around the bonfire during summer camp, singeing marshmallows till they were gooey enough to be sandwiched between graham crackers with some chocolate tucked in. I don’t have a collection of yearbooks on my bookshelf which I can share with friends and laugh over that nerdy Grade Two portrait, the one in which my hair is parted in the middle and swept up on both sides with a candy-pink barrette, (thanks, Ami).

But none of this matters, for the strong friendships I formed as a child of a wandering development economist cannot be valued by time.

Most of my friends were gypsies, like me, pottering about the world with their parents, from Lagos to DC to Islamabad to Nairobi to Manila to Yerevan, carting their Enid Blyton and Judy Blume collections and stuffed animals along with them (mind you, when we left Lagos, my parents gave away my beloved ‘Famous Five‘ collection to the SOS, which I’ve never forgiven them for). As I grew older, all the moving around just meant that amongst friends, we had to make more of an effort with that phone call, letter or postcard. My poor father, it turns out I mostly favoured costly phone calls over letters. And over the years we continued to meet in not-so-exotic-lands like DC, NY and London for our reunions.

Then one day I landed in Rome, where I thought I was finally going to hang my hat (only to leave, years later- but that’s another blog post). It was through work that I met Maria, a liquorice-haired, Bohemian Costa Rican beauty and Brandy, a jade green-eyed, soft-spoken, pretty girl from Vancouver.

Along with the rest of our gang, the three of us would start our weekends with a newspaper-thin crust pizza at Monte Carlo where the server never brings a bill but scribbles down the total on your makeshift paper tablecloth. Invariably, I’d argue with the server about this and invariably, Brandina, Maria and the rest of the gang would laugh and roll their eyes, “Ah, Shayma, there she goes again…” Then we’d take a walk through the Piazza Navona towards the raucous Campo de’ Fiori, as tourists in our own adopted city. We would go to Vineria Reggio to sip on some really bad sangria. In the land of €8 for a glass of Amarone, you ask, why the bad sangria? Can’t really say why, it’s just one of those quirky things that three close friends do.

I remember sitting at L’Insalata Ricca handing Brandina a silver bracelet, a farewell gift for her from our branch at work. While our boss did a cin cin, Maria and I wept quietly into our artichoke and rocket salad. Maria was a foreign service brat, and had lived all over the world, just like me. But we always cried when it was time to say goodbye.

Just before Brandina left, I prepared my mother’s rice pilaf for her and Maria at my home, made with sweet caramelised onions as a base, and intense, earthy spices like black peppercorns, cloves, black cardamom and a whole cinnamon stick. We ate this alongside cumin-spiced potatoes and a spicy chicken curry.

And then we took the camera and placed it on the kitchen counter, taking silly photos of the three of us with the self-timer.

Maria, Brandina and I haven’t been friends for thirty-some odd years, we cant reminisce about that Second Grade yearbook photo. But we haven’t forgotten the bad sangria, the walks through Campo de’ Fiori and the coffees and the lifelong relationship we formed on the rooftop cafeteria at the UN overlooking the pine trees lining the Terme di Caracalla.

Serves 4
The cloves are for fragrance and should normally not be consumed. Please note that there is no health risk associated with consuming them, but the taste is rather strong. The same goes for the peppercorns.

Ingredients:
400g / 2 cups Basmati rice, soaked in a large bowl filled with cold water for a minimum of 2 hours and a maximum of 24 hours
3 tbsp neutral oil such as corn or sunflower
75 g / ½ cup onion (this is about ½ of a medium onion), sliced vertically and as thinly as possible.
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves
1 whole black cardamom (optional, as it may be difficult to find unless you go to a Pakistani / Indian grocery store)
1 large cinnamon stick
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper (optional- or you can add ½ tsp if you want it less spicy)
750ml / 3cups boiling water

Preparation:
*Place a medium-sized heavy-bottomed pot on medium heat and add oil.
*Add sliced onions to this and sauté for 15-20 minutes till the white of the onion is no longer visible and the onions have turned a dark golden-brown colour. Be careful not to let the onions turn black-if they begin to do so, just remove the pot from the burner and lower the flame.
*Start boiling your water in a separate vessel at this point.
*Add peppercorns, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon stick to onions. Drain rice and add to the pot.
*Turn the heat to high and pour in boiling water. As soon as it starts to bubble, cover with a tea cloth and lid and turn the heat to low.
*Allow rice to cook for 15 minutes, do not open the lid before the total time has elapsed.
*Remove rice from the burner and allow it to rest for another 15 minutes without opening the lid.
*Serve with a meat-based curry or with borani kachalu/kudu.

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.

Memories of Childhood Summers in Lahore

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.

Arriving from the airport, our car heaved and trudged down the Canal Bank Road, laden with a boot full of our suitcases. Filled with several jelly sandals in shades of grape, cotton candy pink and cloud-white; a shoe for every outfit. Sundresses for my sister and I, with ribbons which you tie in a pert bow at the tip of each shoulder; cool linen skirts and soft t-shirts. Gifts for everyone, including cashmere cardigans from Selfridge‘s for my maternal grandmother, Nani Ami. And in our hand luggage, bars of Dairy Milk, Fruit & Nut and rolls of Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles.

As the car entered the gates of my maternal grandparents’ home, I peered out at the brick driveway, stained grape-purple from the bruised and fallen jamun fruit from the slender trees above.

Every summer, Nani Ami would have the gardener pick a basket of jamun for me. She would place it in the fridge the day before our arrival so I could have the sweet, acidic, tangy jamuns as the heatwave devoured the city outside our cool, shaded home. The jamun would dye my tongue shades of indigo. I would douse the olive-shaped fruit with chaat masala; a hot and tart spice mixture of dried mango powder, black salt, chili pepper and other spices. For my Ami, there would be a jug of opaque, cold lassi, made by Nani Ami with her homemade yoghurt. As she drank it, the ice cubes would clink against the walls of her glass. Sometimes she would add a dash of 7Up, to sweeten it, enjoying the bubbles on her tongue.

Nani Ami and I would have a siesta in her room, the air-conditioner turned on, the bamboo chicks outside every room’s window rolled down to block the sunrays out. Cold air pouncing all over the dark room as the ceiling fan whirled round and round.

For supper, Nani Ami would prepare my favourite chicken broth made from the organic chicken she bought in Lahore’s historic Tollinton Market.

Perfumed with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and other spices, she would use the remainder of the chicken broth to make a spiced pilaf; yakhni pulao. Each grain of rice perfectly separated, flavours intensified with homemade broth. Slippery ribbons of caramelised onions in every mouthful.

This was one of many dinners that a spoiled eldest grandchild would be treated to. I remember having the plush, unctuous, meaty, yakhni pulao with nothing but Nani Ami’s creamy, homemade yoghurt.

Yakhni pulao in the pan when the lid is removed; the onions and spices at the surface:

During Eid-ul-Adha, Muslims prepare red meat-based dishes. I prepared this for my family back in November with a side of borani bademjan; smokey aubergine caviar whipped with yoghurt. I learnt Nani Ami’s yakhni pulao from my Khala, my mother’s sister.

This post is for Nani Ami, who is no longer with us. But whenever I see a roll of Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles or Dairy Milk, I know whom that would have been for…

Photocredit jamun and Tollington Market: Wikipedia

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:
2 cups Basmati rice, soaked for 1 hour, minimum, (maximum 24 hours);
2 lb goat meat, veal or mutton. Ask butcher for meat with bone-in;
4 black cardamom pods;
6 green cardamom pods;
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp black cumin (kala zeera). This is not nigella sativa, but bunium persicum. White cumin may be substituted;
1 tsp whole coriander seeds;
1 large stick cinnamon;
1 bay leaf, fresh or dried;
2 tsp black pepper berries;
2 tsp salt (rule of thumb: 1tsp salt / 1 cup uncooked rice);
1 medium-sized onion, peeled, root left in tact, marked with an ‘X’ on top’ + 1 medium-sized onion sliced thin;
1 thumb fresh ginger;
6-8 cloves garlic;
6 cups water;
3-4 tbsp canola oil

Preparation:

Step1: Prepare the yakhni (stock)
*In a large pot, (I use a 6 qt stockpot), add goat meat, black and green cardamom pods, cloves, black cumin, coriander seeds, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, black pepper berries, salt, whole onion marked with an ‘X’, ginger, garlic and water.

*You may wrap the spices in a muslin cloth (like you would a bouquet garni) and secure before placing in the stockpot, however, I don’t bother with this, and neither did my grandmum, as the spices clinging to the meat did not bother her.

*Place stockpot on low-medium heat and let it simmer till the meat is tender. Keep checking the meat every 20 minutes; you want the meat to be tender, but not falling off the bone, otherwise it will not endure the cooking time in Step 2 below, and will become like pâté.

*To tenderise, the meat will take approximately 1-1 1/2 hour. The meat I use takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to tenderise.

*The garlic cloves will soften up as they cook; incoporate them into the stock with the back of a spatula.

*When the meat is tender, in a fine sieve, drain the stock. Discard onion and ginger. Remove the spices from the meat by hand, the black cardamom and other large pieces. The rest of the spices will stick to the meat, do not worry about that and please don’t wash it off, or you’ll lose the flavour of the meat.

*Set the meat aside.

*You should have approximately 4-5 cups of stock.

Step 2: Prepare the pulao, (pilaf)
*In a heavy-bottomed pan, add oil, and sliced onions. On medium heat, fry the onions till caramelised, this will take about 10-15 minutes. The onions will darken considerably, don’t worry, this gives the pilaf it’s unique golden colour.

*Turn the heat to low.

*Add three and a half cups of stock, the soaked rice and the reserved meat.

*Cover pot with a teacloth (or kitchen paper towel) and place lid on top. Allow rice to cook for 20 minutes.

*As much as you may be tempted, please don’t open the lid during the steaming process, you’ll lose all the steam and end up with an undercooked, almost raw grain.

*Turn the heat off and allow the rice to settle and rest for 15-20 minutes.

*Decant with a wide-rimmed spatula or a teacup saucer- as we do in our home.

*Serve with plain yoghurt or a raita.

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).

Dill is used widely in Persian and Afghan cooking. It lends a lovely fragrant, herbal quality to the rice- which can be paired with an aubergine and savoury mince casserole or a even a simple roast chicken.

A few cooking notes:

• I have learnt that the trick with this rice is to move very fast- once the rice has been parboiled and drained, the layering with the dill has to be done very quickly so the warm temperature of the rice doesn’t drop too fast.
• The rice and dill are layered in a dome-like shape in the pot. This allows the rice to steam uniformly.

Ingredients:
* 1 cup Basmati rice
* water for soaking and parboiling
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 cup fresh dill, chopped very fine

Preparation:
(The detailed instructions for preparing Basmati can also be viewed in this post.)
*Soak the Basmati for 30 minutes minimum, (preferably an hour, minimum);
*Boil 6-8 cups of water, when it comes to a rolling boil, add the Basmati. Let it cook for 13-15 minutes;
*To test when the rice is ready for steaming, take a grain and if it is soft on the outside but breaks between your finger and thumb, remove from the flame. It should be al dente;
*Drain the water. Place pan on the stove on low heat and add olive oil. With a wide-rimmed spatula, add a thin layer of rice to the pot. Sprinkle with dill, and keep layering the rice and dill in a towering dome shape; like a pyramid.
This ensures the rice cooks evenly;
*To release the steam, make 2-3 holes (one in the middle and two on the side) with the handle of a wooden spoon;
*Cover the pot with a tea towel, replace the lid and let it cook on low heat for 15 minutes;
*Decant with a teacup saucer or wide-rimmed spatula./blockquote>

The Sultan Missed a Delight

The Nimat-Namah, known as The Sultan’s Book of Delights, is a late 15th Century book inscribed in Persian, for the Delhi Sultanate represented by Sultan of Mandu, Ghias ud-din Shah and completed under the reign of his son, Sultan Nasir ud-din Shah. Bearing the son’s seal, this gem is housed at the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library, containing page after page of fifty intricate miniatures, painted in the distinctive Shirazi school style in jewel-like tones.

Miniature painting from the Nimat-Namah, British Library.

The sybaritic Sultan Ghias ud-din Shah had a rather blasé attitude towards Courtly Affairs, with a preference for, “Women, Wine or Snuff”. Keats would have certainly approved.

As important, if not more, I believe, was his desire for The Culinary Pleasures. Sultan Ghias ud-din Shah had a coterie of women swirling around him, serving him delicacies of flaky, musk-spiced deer meat samosas and puddings steeped in essence of rose. The Sultan’s kitchen was heavily influenced by the cuisine of the Persian courts.

Regrettably, there are no capsicum-based recipes in the The Sultan’s Book of Delights. The Sultan Missed a Worldly Delight: the capsicum. This bell pepper only came to India in the 16th century, at the tail-end of Sultan Nasir ud-din Shah’s rule. The red capsicum is one of my favourite vibrant vegetables, adding a candy-like vibrancy to a salad, with it’s china-red glossiness or adding a sweet, caramelised note when impaled on a skewer alongside glistening onions and chicken kebabs.

Dolmeh Felfel is an Irani dish of Basmati rice, verdant herbs and fragrant savoury mince, encased in a bell pepper, with the scarlet version being my preferred choice. I have steamed, rather than baked it, in a tomato sauce, in order to preserve the integrity and shape of the capsicum, and perfumed it with delicate emerald leaves of mint.

When served, all this dish asks for is a slathering of creamy, milky yoghurt.

A few cooking notes:

• Please do use the scarlet version of the bell pepper, or even the buttercup-yellow or orange ones. Perhaps one should veer away from the green variety; it has been rightly said that green bell peppers are “merely unripe red peppers”, to which I agree. They impart a sour taste, which in my humble opinion, would not meld nicely with the subtly-spiced stuffing.
• I prefer steaming the pepper to baking it in the traditional manner. I feel this helps the pepper maintain its shape, rather than slumping down over itself with the papery skin escaping from its tender flesh.
• Insert the blade of a sharp knife to test for doneness; if it glides through, it is ready.
• Feel free to use leftover Basmati or savoury mince.
• Mint is a favourite herb in our kitchen, but you can play around with other herbs in this dish; parsely, dill, chives or tarragon.
• I do not use lean meat to prepare this dish. Because of the fat-content of the meat, I do not add any oil when preparing the savoury mince.

Serves 4
Preparation time: 1 hour (includes cooking time for the mince, rice and tomato base.)
Active Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
*4 red capsicum
*1 lb minced beef or lamb
*1 + 1/4 tsp salt
*1 + 1/2 garlic clove, minced
*1 small onion, finely chopped
*1 13 oz can tomato sauce (set aside 2 tbsp tomato sauce for savoury mince)
*pinch chili pepper
*pinch turmeric
*1 cup water
*pinch cinnamon
*2 cups cooked Basmati
*Bushel of fresh mint, in chiffonade form
*Yoghurt for serving alongside dish

Preparation:

Step 1: Prepare the savoury mince:
* In a heavy-bottomed pan add beef (or lamb), 1 tsp salt, 1 minced garlic clove, minced onion, 2 tbsp tomato sauce, a pinch of chili pepper and turmeric, 1 cup water. Stir, cover and leave to cook on a low-medium flame for one hour. Stir/check every 20 minutes;
*When the meat looks ready, turn the heat to medium-high and stir till the water has evaporated;

Step 2: Prepare the tomato base:
*In a pan with a large surface area (this pan will be used later for steaming the peppers), fry on a medium flame, 1/2 clove of garlic till golden and fragrant, add the canned tomato sauce, 1/4 tsp salt and a pinch of cinnamon. Stir for 5 minutes. Leave to rest;

Step 3: Prepare the Basmati
*Here is the link to the earlier post on how to prepare Basmati.

Step 4: Assemble
*Once the rice has cooled, add the savoury mince and toss lightly with a fork, so as not to break the delicate Basmati grains. Add the mint chiffonade;
*Cut carefully around the bell pepper’s stem to create a lid. Remove it, and slice the thick white skin underneath it. Wash the inside of the pepper, removing any seeds;
*Spoon the stuffing into the pepper and replace the lid.

Step 5: Steam
*Place the capsicums upright in the pan with the tomato base, add half a cup of boiling water, cover with a lid and let the peppers steam for 25 minutes over a low- to medium-flame.

*Serve with lashings of creamy yoghurt.

A Mellow Yellow Fever

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.

Once the croci are hand-picked, the garnet-coloured stigmas are separated from the yellow stamens. It is an intricate job done by women, with approximately 4,000 croci yielding a mere 1 oz of saffron filaments. Half a kilo of saffron comes from 70-250 000 croci.

Zafferano, kesar, krokos, azafrán, zaafran are all words for saffron. Today saffron can be bought for $9/g. It is produced in Iran, Spain, Italy, Kashmir, Turkey and Greece. I find saffron to be particularly fascinating as it is one of the very rare spices which appeals to our three senses; sight- with its vermilion juice; smell- a musky, smoky aroma; and taste- the pungency elevating the base of any dish without being cloying.

In the case of saffron, a light-handed approach is good, which is not only easy on the pocket but also because you don’t want your dish to be garish or any of the flavours to be masked. Rather, they should be intensified and deepened.

A mellow yellow approach is best.

Rowley Leigh, one of my favourite chefs, says, “Saffron is merely one of the pigments in a complex aromatic picture.” When I think of saffron I imagine a flaky, oily fish poached in saffron-infused coconut milk; a slice of warm toast with butter, washed down with a glass of milk, dyed yellow with a drop of saffron and honey; or Pierre Hermé‘s saffron-scented peach and apricot macarons. Just a few drops of saffron’s golden water and it sends an intense current of flavour through any drink or dish.

Now that I have extolled the virtues of saffron, I must come to a rather sad story about my childhood; Ami, my mother, did not and does not like saffron. She thinks it tastes like metallic medicine and “…eclipses the flavour of a perfectly perfumed dish”. I was not brought up on saffron-fragranced polows at home. I only came to know and love saffron in my father’s ancestral home in Lahore.

My paternal grandmother, known affectionately by everyone as Mader; mother in Dari, adored saffron. She liked the way saffron, or zaafran, in Dari and Urdu, extended the flavour of her dishes with its honey-like notes.

A mother- and daughter-in-law disagreeing on the inclusion of a spice?

A grave matter. Relationships can be destroyed over such an issue in our part of the world. But Ami and Mader, like true adults, looked beyond this. They were family, after all.

Besides, Mader used zaafran primarily for a dish known as Sholeh Zard, for Nazri; a religious vow of offerings of charity food to the needy. How could my mother dispute that? In our home this was done during the month of Ramadan. Mader, a chic and modern lady for her time with no religious predilictions (no correlation between chicness and her lack of interest in religion, just stating things as they were), distributed a dish called Sholeh Zard to the needy during Ramadan.

Sholeh Zard is a creamy rice pudding infused with saffron, rose water, cardamom and cinnamon. Almonds are added to it for textural crunch and pistachios for adornment. Saffron, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, butter, rice, almonds, pistachios, all the very good things in life, in one dish. Yes, it takes cholesterol highs to a new level, but who can refuse such deliciousness? As the saffron water is added to the rice, I love watching the colour bleed slowly into it, a transformation from white to gold.

Lastly, before you purchase saffron, please remember that there are lots of saffron impostors out there- beware of saffron powder, always buy saffron strands and pulverise them yourself. Those of you who have been to markets in exotic destinations may have come across orange-hued or brick-red saffron counterfeits – they contain turmeric, shredded marigolds, or the addition of molasses. There is a fantastic company in San Francisco called Vanilla, Saffron Imports, who sell saffron and have a website for instructions on what to look for when purchasing saffron. They also sell it there for approximately $9/gr.

A few cooking notes:

• This is a milk-free rice pudding.
• Half a cup of rice may seem too little, but since this is a rich pudding, all you need is a few spoons per person. If you would like more, just double the recipe.
• The rice will look mushy after it has been simmered for the first 30 minutes, a bit like this:



• I prefer less sugar in my puddings, so I have used only 1/2 cup. Feel free to use 1 whole cup.
• I have added whole saffron strands to the pulverised mix solely for visual effect.
• I find rose water to be very strong, but feel free to use a few more tablespoons if you like. Even though this pudding is traditionally made with rosewater, if you can’t source it, no worries, the dish has a lot of aroma because of the presence of cardamom, cinnamon and the saffron.
• The rice must always be cooked on the lowest heat possible, otherwise it could burn very easily; keep stirring gently and continuously.
• The pudding will be firm and almost tacky when done, some people like to place it in muffin tins and then bake for 30 minutes on 350F/180C.

It’s lovely to have a husband who has a sweet tooth.

Pampore, Kashmir saffron fields photo credit: Waseem Andrabi

Serves 4

Preparation time: 15 minutes + 1 hour for rice to soak

Active Time: 1 ½ hour

*½ cup Basmati rice
*1 + ½ tsp saffron strands
*4 cups cold water
*½ cup sugar
*1 cup hot water
*4 tbsp unsalted butter
*¼ cup rose water
*3 cardamom pods; seeds extracted, pods discarded
*1 cinnamon stick
*¼ cup slivered almonds
*handful slivered pistachios for adornment
*cinnamon powder for adornment
*A heavy-bottomed pan, minimum 8 in diameter

*Wash the Basmati in cold water 6 times till the milky water begins to run clear and soak for 1 hour;
*In the meanwhile, take 1 tsp of the saffron threads and crush with a pestle & mortar or back of a spoon in a small bowl;
*To this mixture, add ½ tsp of whole threads and 1 tbsp of warm water. Set aside;
*Add the Basmati to a pot with 4 cups of cold water on the lowest heat;
*Let the Basmati simmer for 30 minutes till you see it has cooked and moistened and the water has almost evaporated;
*To the moistened rice, add sugar mixed in hot water, rose water, butter, a cinnamon stick, almonds, cardamom seeds and the saffron infused liquid and stir gently;
*Cover and let cook for another 20 minutes;
*You will have to stir it occasionally, but gently, to ensure the rice is not sticking to the bottom of the pot;
*Uncover the lid and cook for another 20 minutes;
*Remove and discard the cinnamon stick and ladle pudding into 4 individual cups;
*Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight; and
*Serve with a sprinkling of powdered cinnamon and slivers of pistachios.

“Each grain of rice should be elongated, separated, curved and slender like a girl’s eyelashes,” say the women in my family.

Basmati means ‘fragrant’ in Hindi and may just be the Jewel in the Crown of rice varieties. Regrettably, my first attempt at dealing with this Jewel was a bit of a disaster. At an end of term dinner I hosted at uni, the Basmati I prepared was something of a throwback to my kindergarten days; resembling papier-mâché paste. As students, we often starve and are not so discerning about what goes through our mouths. After all, it simply cannot get much worse than tuna casserole, black pudding and fried toast in the College cafeteria, can it? Or so one would think. At the dinner, everyone unapologetically passed over the rice as they filled their plates with ginger chicken, zeera aloo (cumin-spiced potatoes), raita and store-bought pita bread as a stand-in for rice.

At eighteen, I left home for uni with a recipe for Béchamel sauce and Victoria sponge, but no knowledge of how to prepare Basmati. Growing up, Basmati was eaten almost daily in our home. Every evening, we would sit at table to see a bread basket with chapatis peeking out from under the linen, but I waited for that steaming mound of rice to arrive from the kitchen. To be drowned in ladles of spicy gravy. Perhaps that is why it never occurred to me to learn something so seemingly basic, yet delicately complex in its preparation method. Learning to prepare Basmati the Afghan way, in the manner of my father’s family, was a rite of passage to becoming A Real Cook. I dont think I got it quite right till I was in my early twenties. It’s a rather fiddly dish and these are the things I learnt from my Ami, my mum, along the way:

• Wash the rice 4-6 times in cold water till the water transforms from milky to clear. Washing away the nutrients may seem frivolous, but this lightens the grain; when you see the airy lightness of this fragile and delicate grain, you’ll understand why.
• The rice should be soaked a minimum of 30 minutes (maximum 24 hours) to allow for the brittle grains to swell. Now some people may disagree with this. I read an article this summer by Martha Rose Shulman in the New York Times in which she writes that she cannot differentiate between soaked and unsoaked Basmati. I tried this experiment in my kitchen and here are the visual results: soaked on left; unsoaked on right.



• You will note that the grains which have been soaked are more elongated and separated. The unsoaked grains took 24 minutes to parboil, whereas the soaked grains took 14 minutes. The texture of the unsoaked grains was a bit chewy and elastic. Please do soak your Basmati rice for at least 30 minutes to get the best possible outcome.
• Rice should be parboiled till al dente. To test, gently squeeze a rice grain between your thumb and forefinger to see if the rice breaks into 2 or 3 pieces.
• Once al dente, swift action is required. (This is where it can all go horribly wrong, as it did for me back in the day.) Remove the pot from the flame and transfer the rice in a sieve to drain the boiling water. Do not wash the rice with cold water.
• Gently, but quickly, transfer the rice back into the pot, cover with a tea towel before placing the lid, to prevent the steam from escaping (I have seen my mother place a brick on top of the pot). Let the rice cook in its own steam for the requisite time over the lowest flame possible (a tava; a griddle made of cast iron could also be placed between the burner and the pot).
• For those of you using an electric stove: since it takes sufficient time for a burner to go from a high to low heat level, it would be advisable to transfer the parboiled Basmati to another burner on low heat, to avoid the rice from scorching.
• When decanting the Basmati, do so very carefully, in our home we use a teacup saucer.

Where I usually ended up going wrong was in determining how al dente the grain should be. Often I misjudged its readiness and the rice remained raw. Or, it would be too soft and I would end up with a porridge-like dish. Either way, it was binned. I hope these tips are helpful- I would love to hear about your experiences with preparing Basmati in your homes.

Favourite brands of Basmati: Tilda and Daawat.

Serves 2

Prep time: 30

Active time: 20

Ingredients:

*1 cup Basmati rice

*water for soaking and par-boiling

Preparation:

* Soak the Basmati for 30 minutes minimum. I usually soak it for at least 1 hour.

* Boil 6-8 cups of water, when it comes to a rolling boil, add the Basmati.

* Let it cook for 13-15 minutes.

* To test if it’s ready for steaming, take a grain and if it breaks between your finger and thumb, remove from the flame (cooking times vary for certain types of rice, be sure to check the rice every few minutes so it doesn’t overcook).

* Drain the water well (otherwise the excess water will overcook and soften the rice), add the rice back and place the pot on the burner on the lowest heat possible. Place a tea towel or paper towel between the lid and the pot to prevent the steam from escaping.

* Turn the heat off after 5 minutes. The rice will continue to cook in its own steam.

* Allow the Basmati to rest for at least another 15 minutes, as the grains are very fragile.

* Decant with a wide-rimmed spoon, we use a teacup saucer.