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.

on baking fails and cookie swaps

smitten kitchen's brownie roll-out cookies

do you have days when your efforts in the kitchen go awry? when recipes that should work fail? well, that is what i experienced in the fortnight of baking for the great food blogger cookie swap. i was keen on sub-continental khatai, a wonderful snow white biscuit that dissolves in the mouth like fine sand under the feet on a beach. i have memories of eating these with late afternoon tea at my phoopi’s house in lahore. the batch that i made was a variation on the traditional khatai as they had a fair bit of gram flour. they tasted lovely and were much appreciated by colleagues at work, friends and family but the recipe proved to be tricky. the second try involved ghraybeh, a shortbread like lebanese biscuit that echoed the feel of khatai, gently scented with orange blossom. once again the recipe i used failed me because the consistency of the dough did not match the description.

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.