The more I think about it, the more I realise that vast portions of my imagination and aesthetic sensibility came from watching BBC Food. You may recall it being broadcast circa 2000 in Pakistan, those early days before the term ‘foodie’ became a badge of honour. It was, as you may have surmised, an entire channel devoted to cooking, one I could watch for hours on end. I was in school then, and I remember attending a slew of evening tuitions and in the hour free between two of them, I would go to my grandmother’s house for tea and sponge cake, and we would turn on the telly for an episode of Two Fat Ladies, early Nigella, the Naked Chef, or my personal favorite, Ready Steady Cook.
Sadly, BBC Food has since then turned into something else that involves lifestyle shows and stuff that is decidedly not culinary, but early exposure to televised recipes that I would never make (I mean really, who ever had time to caramelise a quail?) left me with a host of cooking facts that were useful once I started having to cook for myself. Somehow I knew that you always keep a cup of the water pasta has boiled in to add to the sauce later. I knew how to butterfly a chicken breast and also to add semolina to breadcrumbs to make a crust crunchier. (For the longest time I pronounced it “salmonella”, an error that caused much confusion and hilarity.)
I have always been convinced that Americans have growth hormones in their food because there are far too many of them who have abs for no good reason
This isn’t to say I’m a terribly good cook, but I am rather good at watching it done. I rationalised this theory-only approach by remembering the looks my cook in Lahore would give me were I ever to enter the kitchen without his express permission. In an effort to improve his mood and my own chances for a crack at the stove-top without whispered recriminations, I spent the better part of last year in Lahore redoing my kitchen. It had to be done. It was a small, nasty little room that looked like the aftermath of a murder-suicide, and things had gotten to the stage where it was impractical to make a cup of tea in it - with or without my ill-tempered cook.
Cut to a few months later and I now had a modest but attractive gleaming new kitchen. It had white countertops, a chic stovetop, recessed lighting, bar stools, and an oven that was at eye level, like the ones I coveted on Nigella. I could practically see myself closing the oven door after I took out a steaming duck and brought it to an already sumptuous table surrounded by my friends and family, all of whom would spontaneously burst into cheers as I sat demurely at the head, modestly shrugging as if to say, “Please, you embarrass me. It’s really all in the jus…”
This did not happen. My cook took over my kitchen with renewed vigor and I barely got any time in there to make jus or anything else, though he did seem slightly less morose. But now that I am in the States, I have begun to cook for myself again, and it’s a joy. I started small: toasts, omelets, sautéed mushrooms, rice. I then took a crack at daal, some salads, bread, even a cake. Now I’m back in the swing of things, making baked fish with orange reductions, pomegranate soups, chicken with dill cream sauce, roast beef with baby onions and so many other yummy things.
The Iranian palao - a more subtle cousin of the Desi variant
I’m glad to do it. Cooking is relaxing, and given how well-stocked the places here are, it seemed a shame to go into large supermarkets filled with everything imaginable only to come out with hummus and a packet of crisps. While there I do try to buy fresh stuff (see Mum? I’m all grown up) and I confess this partly has to do with all the articles I keep reading on Franken-food, i.e. dangerous chemically enhanced food that is all over the US. I have always been convinced that Americans have growth hormones in their food because there are far too many of them who have abs for no good reason. Now the FDA says I’m right. American poultry and meat, they warn, does contain cancer-causing agents, but what anyone is going to do about it has not been revealed. So I stroll past the cheaper giant chicken legs and massive turkey thighs and go for smaller organic stuff or sealed food like the Pomegranate, a fruit that feeds both my stomach and occasional homesickness.
Actually that Pomegranate soup recipe (which I recommend) was from a book that my sister gave me on Iranian cooking as a present because it reminds us both of our grandmother Nano, a Persian speaker who always added apricots and plums to her palao. The book is called “Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking” by a woman called Najmieh Batmanglij. My sister has been to her house for a cooking class and apparently she is the mother of the drummer from Vampire Weekend, but totally cool in her own right. The recipes are a strange mix of familiar and exotic, and I’ve been trying to cook something from it every week, to get into the bit of trying new things. It’s like desi food, but subtler, without all the spices that carpet-bomb your palette with every bite of aloo gosht.
In my enthusiasm I have signed up for a two-day cooking class on “French Basics” at a local cooking school. I’ll keep you posted on that but after reading the course reviews I have a sinking feeling that I’ll be doing more chopping than I hope to. It was a choice between “French basic” and another course called “Vietnamese Valentines for One” which I think you’d agree sounds like the last stop for the suicidal. Still, it’s a skill even if it is chopping, and part of my New Year’s resolution was to acquire more of them. Hopefully one day soon I look forward to bringing out a braised duck from my tiny oven here and snapping a picture to send to my cook in Lahore as a passive-aggressive symbol that he is ever in my thoughts.
