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.

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.

baby beets with a walnut rose dressing

baby beets and fennel with a walnut rose dressing

this recipe was developed for natoora who sent me some beautiful baby beets (candy and yellow) and fennel to play with. i paired them with a nutty walnut oil dressing subtly fragranced with rose water. it lends itself to becoming a full meal with the addition of chickpeas, labne and toasted walnuts. the recipe appears on natoora's blog here.   

chard with white balsamic + yoghurt and almonds

rainbow chard with white balsamic

i have guest posted a recipe for rainbow chard with white balsamic for natoora. head over to their blog for it.  

memories of a persian dinner + a whipped ricotta and radish tartine

o's whipped ricotta and radish tartine

 radishes – plump, squat globes the colour of ruddy pink cheeks, much like those of my kashmiri relatives. i buy bunches of them at my local grocer, their leafy heads tied so tight, it evokes memories of the ponytails mama used to style my hair into. radishes look pretty shaved into thin rounds that show their contrasting crimson rim and white interior. they are presented whole at my parent’s lunch table. baba bites the crunchy flesh, alternating with curry scooped with roti. their peppery heat compliments whole spices like cumin, coriander, turmeric and red chilli that are an essential feature of pakistani food.

desi omelette; the perfect weekend brunch

weekend brunch

an omelette is a blank canvas for breakfast, lunch or dinner. at its simplest and most frugal, a briefly whisked mixture of egg seasoned with salt and pepper is poured into a well-buttered hot pan, nudged with a spatula to make soft gentle curds and then left to set until just cooked. the centre should remain tender. it can be made substantial for lunch or dinner by way of fillings. almost every country has its version, from the crêpe like french one to thick italian frittata's akin to crust-less quiche or the intensely herbaceous baked iranian kuku. a desi omelette is the sub-continental version.

eggs and i used to have a complicated relationship. when i was younger i disliked yolks (especially soft-boiled or sunny sideup). mama on the other hand saw them as essential nutrition and insisted that both m and i have one for breakfast. i can remember the dread of a soft boiled egg as it if it were yesterday. mama would bring them to the table in their shells, nested in an egg cup with buttered toast on the side. i would sit and watch the egg warily hoping that the need to get to school on time would do away with breakfast. that of course was wishful thinking as mama would make sure that i would eat before leaving. i loved all manner of omelettes, pancakes and baked goods though since the yolks in these were camouflaged. 

on how kichari soothes an upset stomach

kichari

i remember a complex set of rules and regulations about eating out from my childhood. pakistani tap water is unfit for drinking and therefore we always had boiled and eventually filtered water for this purpose. when we ate out we always bought mineral water. at casual and street-food like dining places we were not allowed to eat salad (because this was likely to have been washed with tap water) and there was no to be no ice in our cold drinks. ingredients that spoiled easily, especially those requiring refrigeration like diary and seafood were only to be eaten at trusted places. these rules were meant to protect us against water borne diseases and diarrhoea.

the lack of salad did not trouble me as much as being unable to drink mango milkshakes so thick that they would require effort to be pulled through the large straws inserted in them. the same is to be said of club soda with fresh lime and seven-up. also off bounds were the treats from the mooli wallah outside my school gate. i envied my classmates who would get long juliennes of mooli heavily anointed with chaat masala. this snack with its sharp, chilli and chatpata flavours would make the lips tingle and the mouth pucker but fell foul both on account of the ‘tap water’ and food hygiene rule. by secondary school i had worked out a way in which to eat mooli without my parents finding out. fortunately my stomach was sturdier than that of my sibling and rarely suffered setbacks. m often had an upset stomach and at times like these mama had to keep him from his favourite foods like mangoes, biryani, pulao, channa dhal and saalan chawal. she would also prepare kichari. kichari has the disposition of nursery food. it is gentle with a mere suggestion of spice. some may even call it bland but its restorative qualities are well known to the sub-continent and are echoed in other cultures that have similar rice based dishes. 

o's favourite kedgeree and its relations with kichari

m's kedgeree

it is a well-known fact that kashmiri’s love rice. my maternal family has kashmiri heritage and it is here that i first witnessed rice being scooped up with naan. babcia often found this trait peculiar given that it involved eating two forms of carbohydrates together. years later when i married o i discovered that he has similar loves. in fact i sometimes wonder whether he is secretly a kashmiri given his love for rice, eating two or more carbohydrates together and even kashmiri tea whose dusty rose colour i love but whose thick milk skin crusted with pistachios i cannot abide. when it comes to pakistani food he loves the labour intensive biryani with a heady masala base, a simpler and judiciously spiced chicken pulao or even the gentle and nursery like kichari intended to soothe poorly constitutions. he is partial to italian risotto, spanish paella, korean bibimbap and chinese egg fried rice. it should therefore come as no surprise that he took instantly to kedgeree.

chicken pulao and biryani friday's

chicken pulao with cucumber raita

when he was a boy, my brother m designated friday lunch to be biryani. we were living in our f-7/2 house at that point and our cook-cum-driver siraj was in charge of cooking. he was sindhi and had a fiery temperament that was reflected in the spicing of the biryani. in addition, his shoddy kitchen habits caused mama much discomfort. fortunately we had a lean-to kitchen annexed to the house where siraj was encouraged to cook. it often resembled a battlefield when he was done.

every once in a while mama, baba and i would encourage m to alter the friday menu and on days like these he would concede to chicken pulao. i must confess that i much preferred the chicken pulao. i often think of it as a distant relation of biryani. it is true that it lacks the chilli spiciness of biryani and its base is pared down in comparison. but made well, it shares the complexity of flavours and like biryani is a one-pot meal. 

baba's tomato chutney with hard boiled eggs

baba's tamatar ki chutney with ublay huay unday

baba would make his tamartar ki chutney on lazy sunday afternoons. it would often appear at a time that was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, upsetting the balance of the day’s meals. but it did not matter because it is a firm yusuf family favourite. the tomato chutney has an element of umami with bright sparks of heat lent by thin rounds of fresh green chilli and coarse black pepper. the protein in the hard-boiled along with the velvet yolk is a soothing counterpoint to the sharper flavours of the chutney.

baba would cook this in a karahi that has been in my parent’s kitchen since the past decade. its bottom is black with consistent use over a naked gas burner, and its insides are well seasoned like that of a much used skillet. he would boil eggs simultaneously and since he prefers them very well done, the yolk would always be rimmed with a blue-black halo. this is my only point of departure from his recipe because i like firm whites and yolks that are velvet like. a hard long boil makes the white rubbery and the yolk dry. 

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.

lemongrass spice paste

lemongrass spice paste

the last of autumn is fast receding. the trees are nearly bare, an erect frame of bark and branch. on sunny days, the light has been silver bright and the air so cold that it almost hurts to breathe. this is the season for soups and i am partial to those that clarify the senses, expanding the ability to breathe deeply and fully. such soups are aromatic and bright with ingredients like chillies, ginger and coriander.

the easiest way to make such soups is to start with a spice paste. the one i am sharing with you today has become a staple at thirty-two. i always have a jar of it in the fridge (and a little in reserve in the freezer). it is an amalgam of my favourite aromatics and spices.

on autumn with recipes for sweet and savoury labne

a carpet of leaves in the bloomsbury

autumn is the cusp of summer and winter. it is the brief interlude between long light filled days and the short sullen days of winter with abbreviated sunlight.
it is also the season of abundance.

packed work day lunches and a recipe for courgette butter

courgette butter

at the tail end of the summer vacation mama would take my sibling and i shopping for the new school year. there were books to be bought and uniforms too. the most exciting element was buying a lunch box. the one that stands out in my memory was baby pink with a large picture of minnie mouse on the front. m had a turtle green one with a scene from ninja turtles. inside the lunchbox was a rectangular lidded box to hold lunch and a thermos for water or juice.

my fascination for school lunches was limited to the lunch box. 

m and i always had a packed school lunch. very often it would a jam sandwich made with buttered slices of soft white bread. sometimes there would be aloo tikki (potato cutlet) or shami kebab (beef kebab) sandwiches with a smidgen of ketchup. mama was careful about the architecture of the sandwich, balancing the moisture content to keep the bread from disintegrating. she spared us fried egg sandwiches or ‘unda paratha’ (fried egg rolled in a flaky griddle fried flatbread) that were curiously popular with children whose parents were in the army. i had zero tolerance for the smell of eggs and grease and spent the better half of secondary school trying to distance myself from two classmates who perpetually smelled of the combination.

notes on how to cook chicken karahi + mama's recipe

mama's chicken karahi

i missed this. a pool of bronzed oil, chicken with slightly crisp, caramelised edges and a lacquer of tomato along with the bright heat of fresh green chilli. a really good chicken karahi must be all these elements and must be accompanied by fluffy and soft white naans. the naans should be thick enough to allow their edges to be prised open to a thinner layer. this exposes the dough like centre that becomes a sponge for the spiced oil and masala.

ilona's tea-time koftas

frying the koftas

i have always wanted the recipe for these delicately spiced little koftas. they are a departure from the traditional pakistani ones that are usually simmered in gravy. they are very much my mama’s recipe, partly drawn from a norwegian cookbook as well as being inspired by auntie y’s teatime entertaining who made something similar. i do not remember auntie y’s koftas but have a vivid memory of her person. she had a petite frame and was the essence of femininity and grace. her signature fragrance was motia especially in the long months of summer when she would weave a gajra into her long hair or wear individual jasmine flowers in her ears. perhaps that is unsurprising given that her name is the persian variant from which ‘jasmine’ is derived.

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.

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 recipe for artichoke hummus

artichoke hummus

hummus appeared in my family’s kitchen in the early 90’s. baba brought the taste back from his travels around the middle east. i should ask mama where she got the recipe, for this is before the time that the world wide web became part and parcel of our daily existence. in london baba would take us to beirut express. their hummus has an assertive tahini character and is finished with a pool of olive oil , chopped flat leaf parsley and some whole chickpeas. hummus has become ubiquitous. it has global allure and everyone seems to be eating it. the brit’s will even eat it in sandwiches or wraps for office lunches. it crops up with crudities at parties and cocktail receptions. the real problem though is that most of this hummus comes from little plastic tubs from supermarkets and tastes awful. my home-made version is rich in tahini and will find itself adorned with herbs and spices like cumin, sumac or zaatar.