on crumble in times of grief and loss

strawberry crumble 

i hold the word loss in my mouth. it feels full and heavy. when babcia died on the last day of july, i realised that loss had crossed a boundary. until then, it had described the process of losing her. afterwards, it took to grief.

the truth is i lost babcia slowly.

over the last few years, dementia affected her memory and eventually cancer and age stole her body. when i saw her in march, she was a fraction of herself -  her bones so prominent that one could study anatomy through them. it is hard enough to lose a loved one, to do so over a protracted period of time from afar was excruciating. my grief was complicated because as i lost my grandmother, mama lost her mummy and daddy, his love and companion and whilst they were together, i was several thousand miles away.

edible islamabad and lahore

samosa chaat, mashallah chaat house

islamabad is no longer the sleepy metropolis of my girlhood. its boundaries have stretched into new sectors, swallowing land between the garrison town of rawalpindi and outwards towards the hill station of murree. i feel the change palpably on each annual visit. there is a new network of roads and a shiny new mass transit system that commands its own lane. the metrobus stations are wavelike in design and constructed of glass, allowing a clear picture of the commuters. i imagine they must be boiling in the summer when the sun shines mercilessly and the mercury is high.

there is a proliferation of malls too.

what i love of the city are the green hills that border it. march is a lovely time to visit. the days are warm coaxing flowers to blooms and leaves to appear on the trees. in my parent’s garden, the roses revealed themselves in hues of bridal red and rhubarb and custard. there were fuchsia geraniums and lines of pansies. trumpet flowers hung heavy with their fragrance. we had many cups of afternoon tea and late lunches in the garden.

on white + a recipe for pasta with labne, spinach and almonds

conchiglie with labne, spinach and almonds 

white is known for the absence of hues that are visible to the naked eye. this explains why some argue that it is not a colour at all. a (my sister-in-law) disagrees. she is an artist. she says that white is like light. it contains the full spectrum of colours that are sometimes visible, like when a rainbow appears in the sky.

gaajar halva; a cardamom laced carrot pudding

gaajar halva with a squiggle of milk pak cream

winter is the season of indulgence. it calls for the richness of butter and cream; of dark meats and root vegetables.

in england, my adopted home, winter is the time to eat roast meats with potatoes to sponge the juices. soft cheeses high on fat are eaten with sharp chutneys made from apples, quince and beetroots. desserts feature steamed puddings, deep dark ones heavy with vine fruits or soft sweet ones with delicate constitutions. both love a little cream or custard to mellow the heat and sweet. in pakistan, my erstwhile home, december is wedding season, so alongside the kormas, paalak and fragrant pilaus are trays of my favourite dessert. gaajar halva (carrot halva) is made from laal gaajar (literally red carrots). these are particular to the sub-continent. they are distinct from the orange ones that i use in england. they are crisp and sweet and an almost transparent red in hue.

choti eid + a recipe for channa chaat (chickpea chaat)

ilona's channa chaat

ramazan (the month of fasting) concludes this weekend. around the world, muslims will celebrate the festival of eid. in pakistan, the country of my birth and early adulthood, a committee of old men with compromised eyesight will be tasked with sighting the crescent moon that heralds the celebration. the politics of the sighting of the moon are such that celebrations will vary, with some parts of the country celebrating a few days later. 

choti eid always makes me miss my family palpably. i find that its festive nature and tradition of giving is much like christmas in the christian calendar. in pakistan, the nation stirs into jubilation after of a month of austerity and fasting. celebrations begin on chaand raat (literally moon night). even the buildings wear garlands of lights. families rush to the bazaars which remain open late into the night. there are bangles to be bought and clothes to be collected from the tailor along with the last minute rush to stock up on ingredients such as milk, bread, cream and yoghurt since most of the shops will be shut over the holiday.

aloo bukharay ki chutney

aloo bukharay ki chutney

there is a colony of jars in my kitchen. they come in assorted sizes with gingham patterned screw tops, clip tops and embossed glass surfaces. they are home to all manner of pickles and preserves, both sweet and savoury. i have been preserving in earnest since that first jar of diana henry’s fig and pomegranate molasses jam. there has been marmalade in tones of amber and caramel, strawberry jam with the fragrance of rose petals and maroon tomato jam to be had with cheese and eggs. to these i added the more familiar condiments of my childhood like achaar.

babcia's pea soup with some additions

pea soup

when i was growing up we had a maali to tend to the garden. in springtime he would assemble a trellis made from thick cotton thread to support our sweet pea plant. its fragile flowers smelt so intensely of sweetness and had filigree-like tendrils. sometimes i would pick the flowers and place them in the porcelain bowl on our lounge coffee table. they wilted fast but left traces of their fragrance in the air even after their petals closed and shrivelled.

during the winter, peas were bought by the kilo from the sabzi wallah and my dadi would sit in the shade of the veranda with a plastic basket shelling them. baba and i had to be kept at bay because we would eat them faster than they were shelled.

one of my favourite meals was a fragrant pea pulao made with basmati rice and accompanied by a cooling cucumber raita. a variation of this was aloo matar ka salaan (pea and potato curry) on a mound of steamed basmati. and on the weekend a brunch of keema matar (beef mince with peas) scooped with flaky parathas and minted yoghurt was the definition of satisfaction.

a pakistani teatime treat: chicken patties with sriracha

a pakistani chicken patty with sriracha

chicken patties always remind me of the monsoon in pakistan. it is a memory of grey skies that burst into heaving showers. the earth would release trapped heat, allowing it to waft up in warm steam laced with the smell of earth. in one of the houses where we lived, i had a monsteria plant outside my window. during the monsoon it would grow threefold, its large waxy green leaves balancing fat raindrops. i have a memory of a weekend, in which i am curled up on my beanbag, reading fiction. as the breeze cooled, baba opened the doors and windows, and the house came alive with the sound of rain. you could feel the warm air moving out on a cooler current. reshma’s husky voice serenaded the breeze.

and soon after there was the call for afternoon tea.

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 conversation on punitions (punishments) and pakistan

punitions, just out of the oven

late last year in writing about malala yousafzai, kamila shamsie used the words of pakistani writer nadeem aslam "pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery. but no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave." those words resounded in my head through out january tenth and after when a series of bombs in quetta targeting the shia community left ninety-three dead and many others injured.

it appears that mine is a nation where resilience is punished with brutality.

i wonder whether humanity has extinguished itself in pakistan. at the end of twenty-twelve i had only one wish that pakistan may begin to turn a chapter (for the better). but barely two weeks into the year and the killing continues unabated with a brazenness that defies humanity and imagination.

eating pakistan

my annual trips to pakistan include an evolving list of things i want to eat. there are some constants. the first breakfast is always several cups of tapal tea with quarters of toasted roghni naan. the final dinner is always baba’s beef chilli dry with boiled rice. the space between is filled with homemade shami kebabs especially on toast with a slick of mitchell’s chilli garlic sauce and draped with adam’s cheese, afghani kebabs and mantu at kabul restaurant in jinnah, samosa chaat at mashallah chaat house in super market and kulfi from jamil. 

baba's beef chilli dry

a weekend in nathia gali

governor house walk

in nathia gali the air still remains crisp although it does not have the clarity is used to. the smell of the pines is a mere whiff. it doesn’t retain the pungency of my childhood but then recollections are always more vivid than real life itself. my memories of this hill resort are of pakoras smeared with a thick chutney made from anar dana, desperately yellow pound cake and peppery chicken sandwiches made with bread that was soggy in the middle and dry around the edges. in summer nathia gali provides a welcome respite from the heat of the plains and at a time when pakistan is in the throes of dire energy crisis, it was just what we all needed. my favourite season to visit though is towards autumn when the mist settles amidst the trees softening the sharpness of the pine needles. mama has images of this season on her blog. it makes me wistful.

murree brewery: pakistan's true brew

the brewery's logo in the whisky maturation cellars

as a little girl growing up in pakistan, i thought doctor’s brandy was so named because it could only be obtained by prescription.  this naiveté can be explained by a combination of facts – a teetotaller uncle who would consume brandy for stubborn coughs, and bhutto’s prohibition, which provoked the local population to use medical certificates to secure alcohol. so it was with much surprise that i recently discovered that doctor’s brandy is actually a french brandy, produced under licence by murree brewery in pakistan.

pars restaurant

pars restaurant

west london seems to have a proliferation of persian restaurants and since it is one of o’s favourite cuisines i always keep an eye out for ones that are authentic. fortunately me for me, a wonderful toronto based twitter foodist called spicespoon of iranian heritage recommended pars to me. i specifically asked her for recommendations as to what to eat. it turns out that we have similar loves as she said to try the kashk-e-bademjan and khoresh-e-gheimeh bademjan both of which feature aubergine. 

elephant

if you are in london and you love food you've probably already been to brixton. everyone who is into seriously good food is talking about what's happening in brixton village. in fact i am convinced that jay rayner's article in the observer has been directly responsible for the increasing traffic. on the day that i went to eat at elephant the lines at honest burgers stretched out to double the length since i was last there. as excited as i am about honest burgers (they are damn good!) and lab gelato and kaosarn thai, what really makes me proud is a little place called elephant based in unit fifty-five. for the first time since being in london i can say i've had real pakistani food. sure there are lots of place in east london like lahore kebab house and tayyab's that cook pakistani food but there is an unmistakable indianess to their food. elephant is in total contrast to that as it is purely home-cooked pakistani food. 

aloo samosa's at elephant

on ladoo's and a love tray

a basket full of ladoo's from fresco sweets

where there is a wedding in pakistan, there is always the presence of mithai (sweetmeats). whoever visits brings boxes of mithai, the most common ones being ladoo's, barfi, gulab jamum and cham-cham. ladoo's are saffron coloured balls made out of chick pea flour with some cardamom. the boondi chur ladoo features more at weddings. boondi chur are small balls made of a gram flour batter which are deep fried. these are then bound together by sugar syrup. o likes boondi chur ladoo's a lot whereas i much prefer besan ka ladoo which made purely of gram flour with a little bit of semolina for a slightly crunchy texture. 

lunch at three in bani g

lunch in the garden

despite all the wedding chaos and preparations mum and i got a chance to have a relaxed lunch in the garden. i had bought her a bottle of oil infused with truffles which we used to dress up some mushrooms. our cook had also brought some apricot kernel oil from his village in skardu. the oil has the sharp smell of almond kernels and a very strong nutty flavour. i sauteed the mushrooms in this with lots of finely chopped garlic and some rosemary. 

then we sat in the garden and assembled our lunch. slices of feta cheese on toasted brown bread with the mushrooms. we all added roughly chopped walnuts for a bit of texture. we finished on the last of the seasons strawberries that came from auntie f's farm. the strawberries from her farm are so sweet it would be a sin to put sugar on them. 

keemay wala samosa at mashallah chaat house

a piping hot keema samosa

there was a time when i didn't eat samosa's. it was the time when i went from being plump to becoming thin and decided to give up all things fried. looking back, i wonder what possessed me to give up these incredibly delicious sub-continental treats. now, when i visit pakistan i have to go to mashallah chaat house in super market to have my fix of samosa chaat. 

zizou's, saidpur village

the saidpur village of my childhood has disappeared, replaced with a mini-food park of restaurants. it is now home to des pardes, hotspot, polo lounge and the recently opened zizou's. as a child i had spent many an afternoon here with my mother roaming through the tight and cramped streets to watch the potterers create earthenware vessels. i was fascinated by the potters wheel that spun in opposites with the hands moulding and creating shapes. the potterer still remains although hidden behind the numerous eateries. i ate at des pardes in the summer of june twenty o nine and didn't bother reviewing it as i wasn't very impressed.

bar-b-q tonight

reshmi kebab (chicken)

i had barely recovered from my post-christmas food coma when my grand dad decided it was time to catch up with the family and eat out. our first dinner out on what was christmas day turned out to be quite disastrous. an understaffed and over-busy kim mun delivered a chinese meal that was far from edible. luckily, the day after we were saved by the choice of local cuisine when we ended up at bar-b-q tonight.