Roasted Peaches with Wild Blueberries

Roasted Peaches

I don’t remember being told I did anything, “like a girl”, and if I did, I took it as a compliment, because I was the granddaughter of two very strong, intelligent matriarchs. In my home, doing something “like a girl”, meant I did something like my grandmothers or my mother – and that was always a good thing. We are three sisters and we were lucky, in a sense, that we didn’t have any brothers. We ran like girls, we ate like girls, we talked like girls, and that meant being and doing our best – there were no comparisons with the opposite sex. We were just simply, the Saadat Girls. And we did everything, “like a Saadat Girl”.Read More

Doogh-Yoghurt Drink (Lassi) in the Afghan/Persian Manner

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

Poached Pears in Crème Anglaise

A Pudding-less Nairobi Reunion

Nairobi is where we learned to love safari parks and dislike zoos. We would take trips to the Nairobi National Park on most weekends, bobbing up and down on the inner roads in a Land Rover. As we peered out to look at the statuesque white- and caramel-jigsawed giraffe, we would eat sliced, plush, cinnamon loaf bread and cucumber sandwiches, prepared by our beloved cook, Simon Mackenzie, wrapped in tin foil. We would stop for a bit and drink dense and milky Kenyan tea out of flasks, hoping to spot a cheetah.Read More