top of the pops and a childhood tv dinner: cheese béchamel with toast fingers

cheese béchamel

i know. you are wondering why i am giving you a basic recipe for a cheese béchamel. the truth is, sometimes the simplest of things are the most memorable. there is childhood pleasure in this pale ivory sauce whose colour attains a little depth from flour toasted in butter. it recalls a particular tv dinner on a weeknight when mama would allow us to eat in front of the television. the programme that warranted this special treatment was top of the pops (totp), which was broadcast on a local private pakistani channel called ntm. before that the public broadcaster ptv maintained a monopoly that equalled to boredom.

toast with personality + a recipe for 'accidental cardamom peach butter'

sunday afternoon with the observer + accidental peach and almond
butter toast

when i was little toast was limited in my imagination to slices of either dawn or continental white bread. the toaster would bronze their whiteness. it would crisp the epidermis while allowing the centre to remain a little soft. one had to be careful to not exert pressure on the slice given its unsubstantial thickness because unlike in england one could not get thick sliced bread in pakistan. brown bread made an appearance in the late 90s and was largely ersatz, merely coloured wheaten.

a green and white supper for the pakistan election

asparagus spears

there are some things in life that one is not prepared to feel emotional about like elections for instance. nonetheless this saturday both o and i woke up with a lump in our throats and a feeling of pride. eleventh may was the day that pakistan went to the polls in what was the first real election in my lifetime. pakistan has had elections before but never one in which one democratically elected government has been succeeded by another. up until now pakistan’s system of governance was a pendulum that swayed between the military and the political offspring of dictatorships. the terms of the latter were aborted by the military before they were able to complete them. 

a home-made provençal aperitif that makes wonderful truffles

vin d'orange truffles in my parents garden

winter has over extended its stay and in doing so has snatched spring of its element. a british winter is much like its summer. it has a variable temperament. its inconsistency is its chief characteristic. although not my favourite season, i have come to appreciate its turn. there is something charming in the bareness of the trees, mere sharp silhouettes of branch and trunk. a crisp cold morning with silvery sunlight marries well with a breakfast of warm cardamom buns and a milky latte. 

but what i love most about winter are oranges. to me they are the fruit that promises change. their vibrant colour and freshness resists the often dull and grey tones of winter. their sharp, sweet and sometimes astringent nature is everything that winter is not.

my dadi and her besan ka halva

besan ka halva

my dadi (paternal grandmother) is a formidable woman. as a child, her appetite for grisly stories intended to inculcate fearlessness in her grandchildren gave me nightmares. they were peppered with kidnappings and robberies by wadera’s and daku’s (vernacular for tribal chieftains and robbers). it did not help that my vivid imagination was easily supplemented by figures in dramas like kashkol and dasht. the latter was about the story of two lovers caught between personal enmities of warring tribes in balochistan. it was replete with burly men with butterfly moustaches bearing arms. the former was about a beggar cartel whose network was made up of kidnapped children. she was keen on us watching these with her. in addition she had grown up in an age when religion was synonymous with fearing god. and so i grew up hearing much about sinning, the afterlife and hell.