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.
The Spice Spoon Will Be Back…
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 By 12 Comments
Heavy work schedule, just taking a break, dear readers. Inshallah, The Spice Spoon will be back…
Borani Kadu: Roasted Butternut Squash Verrines in the Afghan Manner
Sunday, November 7, 2010 By 23 Comments
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...]
Aloo Baingan: Potatoes & Aubergine in the Pakistani Manner
Monday, October 11, 2010 By 31 Comments
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...]
A Fresh Irani Appetiser: Noon-o-Panir-o-Sabzi and Women In Food
Monday, October 4, 2010 By 25 Comments
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...]
Ami’s Kebabs
Sunday, September 26, 2010 By 32 Comments
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...]
Keema Bharta Borani- Aubergine & Savoury Mince Borani in the Afghan / Pakistani Manner
Sunday, September 19, 2010 By 26 Comments
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...]
Eid Mubarak – 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010 By 23 Comments
Wishing everyone Eid Mubarak. [Read more...]
Sabu Dana Kheer- Tapioca Pudding with Roasted Apricot in the Pakistani Manner
Saturday, August 28, 2010 By 38 Comments
‘On Exile’ (to borrow Edward Said’s phrase)
My post is inspired by ‘York’, by Belgian Waffle, a fascinating blogger, who has written a nostalgic piece about her city of birth.
I was born in Lahore, Pakistan and left my homeland when I was two years old. My life, if sketched as a path on a map, would be a series of zig zags, going from Pakistan to America, to Nigeria, to America, back to Pakistan, then to Kenya, to Bangladesh, to the UK, back to America again, to Italy and finally, Canada. At the age of 13, when we were living in Washington DC, Baba, my father, decided to send me to live in Pakistan with Mader, my paternal grandmother, because he didn’t want me to become “Americanised”. I didn’t want to leave my parents, my sisters, and I especially didn’t want to leave my Ami; my mother, my best friend. But I didn’t resist or fight back; racist children in school had made my life miserable beyond comprehension, and all I wanted to do was to run away from them. [Read more...]
Doogh-Yoghurt Drink (Lassi) in the Afghan/Persian Manner
Saturday, August 21, 2010 By 15 Comments
The chaunsa, sindhri, anwar ratol: Pakistan’s mangoes. Oh, and the dohsehri. That’s the one you soften with your fingers, till it feels like soft pulp and then you pierce a tiny hole at the top. You suck out all the juice. And that’s how you eat that mango. But my favourite, which appears in late July, is the langra- with a thick parrot-green skin. And when you cut into it, the juice starts to ooze out-like perfect yolk from a softly poached egg-and forms a puddle in your plate. The flesh is fibrous and honeycomb-sweet. [Read more...]
