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.

bergamot marmalade

bergamot marmalade

marmalade is the beloved preserve of my favourite childhood storybook character. i am of course talking about paddington bear. it is also my father’s favourite. as a child i preferred sweet jam. the pale emerald mitchell’s rose’s lime marmalade was marginally bitter. i loved its citrus fragrance but did not care for it on toast. two years ago mama sent me a jar of her kinnow marmalade. kinnow is an easy peel citrus cultivated in the sub-continent’s punjab. i loved eating dollops of it with strained yoghurt and a scatter of flaked toasted almonds. it was what piqued my interest in marmalade making. since then, i have made the classic seville orange marmalade as well as experimenting with different citrus with herb and tea infusions. this year’s flavours include seville bay leaf, screwdriver marmalade (blood orange and vodka) and treacle marmalade. i loved making all of them but the real treat was a pale amber bergamot marmalade. 

pakistani spiced apple chutney + o's boarding school tales

m's pakistani spiced apple chutney

before i met o, much of what i knew about boarding school was from books that i inherited from mama’s childhood collection. there was roald dahl’s ‘boy’ with its rambunctious descriptions of boarding school. it spoke of a world inhabited by strict headmasters, stern matrons and care packages from home brimming with nostalgia and longing. enid blyton’s ‘malory towers’ was a detailed sketch of a british all girl’s boarding school and was much more gleeful than coolidge’s american ‘what katy did next’. as much as i loved the books, they did not inspire a love for boarding school. i could not conceive of being away from home in an environment of abysmal school dinners and strict teachers. it is perhaps the reason why i never understood o’s love for his boarding school days until i met andrew maclehose, his headmaster.