kabul restaurant

o and i spent christmas and new year in islamabad with our families. the best part of my trip home is feasting. the day usually starts with a cup of strong and perfectly brewed tapal tea and toasted roghni naan (i will be putting up a separate post for this). lunch could be any manner of pakistani salan - vegetables in masala, kebabs, chicken salan or tarka dhal. aside from all the home made food there is a ritual that i take very seriously. i have to eat at 'kabul restaurant' at least once. this time mum and i had a quick lunch there in between shopping and running around on last day of twenty ten.

christmas twenty ten

a christmas collage

i had a wonderful christmas surrounded by my parents and sibling, my other half, my grand parents and my god mother (of sorts). it was also princess zubeida's first christmas made merry with welcome scraps of roast beef and chicken bones. we had a sit down dinner for eight and here is what we ate

a cream of mushroom soup (with porcini that had travelled from turin, italy).

a salad of mixed greens, capsicum and apple with a blue cheese and honey dressing.

roast chicken whose cavity had been stuffed with citrus. 

a pan roasted beef tenderloin.

red cabbage seasoned with bruised juniper berries, sugar, orange zest and fruit vinegar.

potatoes dauphinoise.

red and white wine.

for dessert there was christmas pudding that had travelled from london with custard and mama's home made bread and butter pudding.

it was a very special christmas because it was the first time babcia and daddy had come to be with us. usually, we celebrate christmas in lahore with my grand parents. mama had been anxious thinking that they might not like the tree (after all it was very modern) and that something would happen to the food but it all went very well. 

a very contemporary christmas tree

in fact disaster didn't strike until two days later when after making two rather successful 'makowiec' (pronounced mah-koh-viets), mama succeeded in burning the poppy seed mixture to a crisp and made the whole house smell. polish 'makowiec' is a christmas tradition in my mother's household. my grand dad makes it every christmas and i love both versions - the soft moist almond one as well as the dark crunchy poppy seed one. 

mum also made a fantastic and very boozy christmas cake. it was very dark and full of dark fruits and bright red maraschino cherries. she had fed it with a homemade orange liquer. as per tradition my grand parents had brought mrs cross' christmas cake. i much preferred mum's as it is moist and boozy and more fruit to cake. cross' is lighter, crumblier and less fruity. 

what i love about christmas is that you can indulge at whatever time you please so on christmas day i had cake for breakfast and makoweic for tea. i'll think about counting calories in the new year. for now, bring on the champagne truffles that o and i brought back for the family from la maison du chocolat. 

the humble spud

the humble spud is a real treat once scrubbed, salted and baked for a leisurely time in a hot oven. i love the slight cackle of skin when you press the hot potato in a kitchen cloth to let it release it's soft fluffy yellow centre.  the humble baked spud can be jazzed up or dressed for comfort with some melted butter, or the usual suspect of grated cheese and beans. today o and i ate ours with hot smoked salmon flakes in creme fraiche with crunchy cornichons and a dusting of dried dill (only because i didn't have any fresh and it's too cold and snowy outside to go get some). 

homemade granola

there is nothing that i love more homemade granola. mine is ultra crisp. this particular batch was four grain flavoured with a syrup made of 'gurr'. in pakistan you get raw sugar in misshapen balls. often it includes nuts. it's got a dark treacle-ish taste with a rounded saltish edge. to the syrup i added some olive oil and some sea salt. for a slight spice i added cinnamon, ginger and some grated orange zest. once it had been roasted in the oven on low heat for around an hour and a half i let it cool and then added chopped dates and sunflower seeds. i love eating it greek yoghurt and some grated apple or sliced banana.

on grief and birthday's plus nigel slater's chocolate almond cake

lighting candles on the cake

it was o's birthday today and i was in two minds about birthday cake. of course there can be no birthday without cake but then there are no rules on bereavement. when is it okay to celebrate? and what exactly is celebration? of course religion's prescribe periods of mourning but then in o's words, his grand father put a period on an official mourning at three days. i am no fool to believe that prescriptions of time periods will determine the passing away of a loved one. grief isn't linear, it is interspersed with sadness and the celebration of happy memories too. after all, homer was right when he said that 'life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor'.