This Pakistani cookbook has recipes of ‘papdi chaat’ and ‘kadhi pakoda’
Author Maryam Jillani deep dives into her country's rich culinary traditions for her debut cookbook ‘Pakistan’, and documents the diversity of ingredients and cooking techniques
The cookbook Pakistan opens with a description of kadhi, a dish of deep-fried fritters cooked in a yoghurt-based curry with a tempering of cumin seeds and dried red chillies. It's something author Maryam Jillani found homely comfort in, at a neighbourhood Pakistani restaurant during her time in Washington DC. Like many living away from their homeland, she found an anchor in food.
“It resurrected buried memories of my childhood in Islamabad," she writes, talking about the nostalgia as she started cooking her childhood dishes away from home. “I remembered Eid lunches at my grandparents’ house, during which my grandmother would reliably serve mutton pulao with a side of punchy garlic chutney that she'd caution us to eat sparingly."
But, Jillani's search for Pakistani recipes on the Internet resulted in just a handful of dishes like nihari, biryani and korma that have come to represent the nation’s cuisine. Compelled to bring forth the less-talked about food of her country, Jillani, who holds a degree in public policy from Cornell University, US, started the blog ‘Pakistan Eats’ in 2016, in which she published recipes crowdsourced from friends, family and even strangers. She also started reporting on the intersection of Pakistan’s food and culture in various publications. One of her first stories in 2018 addressed the threat to Afghan cuisine in Islamabad as an aftermath of Pakistan’s decision to deport Afghan refugees.
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Jillani's debut cookbook Pakistan blends the essence of her blog and reporting skills. The recipes, divided into eight sections are layered with eight essays focusing on different regions and cities of Pakistan like Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, along with Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Each essay paints a picture of the country's hospitality, and the diversity of ingredients, and cooking techniques at the intersection of economics, politics and migrantion.
In one of them, she takes us to a kitchen in the Hunza Valley in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, where she learns to make mamtu – Hunza-style dumplings, and hoi lo garma – handmade noodles cooked with spinach, highlighting the unique cuisine that emerges out of the region because of its proximity to Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor and China’s northwest Xinjiang region. “A short, but memorable meal was simple roti with a luminous filling of burutz, locally made cheese and some herbs," she writes.
From Punjab, one of Pakistan’s most culturally dominant regions, she brings a repertoire of vegetarian dishes like mash ki daal, a dry black gram preparation, beet bhujia or stir-fried beetroot, and a variety of flatbreads like makki ki roti, lachcha paratha and naan. The recipe documentation is not limited to home kitchens, as Jillani ventures into the bazaars and food shops in the walled city of Lahore, and Burns Road in Karachi to recreate nihari, bun kebab and papdi chaat.
The book also holds a certain nostalgia for 90s kids, and not just the ones who were born in Pakistan. As an Indian reader, I was thrilled to see trifle, a layered dessert of sponge cake, custard and jelly, a colonial hangover that sneaked into our kitchens, and black forest cake that was our introduction to the world of cakes and pastries.
There are recipes that are mirror images of the ones in India, like the Lahori fish that we know as Amritsari fish, the lobia karahi that we call rajma, kadhi pakoda, and sarson ka saag. The similarities, however, are not limited just to the Punjab region. The seafood section includes a Karnataka-style prawn curry that uses curry leaves and coconut milk, and a Konkani prawn curry with potatoes made in a tamarind base, both from the Muslim communities of Karnataka and Konkan who migrated to Pakistan after Partition. The Sindhi besan ki subzi, cooked by the Hindus of the region, is strikingly similar to the Rajasthani gatte ki subzi. “The dish was a revelation to me in terms of flavour and cooking technique. Sindh was also a surprise for its resourcefulness despite the arid conditions," says Jillani.
Sourcing recipes, especially from home kitchens where there has been little documentation, was a gargantuan task. “There were times when I would try the recipes in my kitchen, but it wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t possible to jump on a call and speak to the source because of the time difference," says Jillani, who currently lives in Manila. “I relied heavily on voice notes sent by the women since not all of them were too comfortable typing text," she adds.
While most kitchens, both domestic and commercial, were generous with sharing recipes, there were incidents when it was a closely-guarded secret. “There was a funny incident at Waheed Nihari in Karachi. No one knew the recipe except the Wahid brothers, not even their wives," she chuckles. Jillani shares a recipe for nihari in the book, but makes it more approachable and less daunting by using a pre-made/packaged garam masala instead of giving a list of 20 spices. “I am not big on using freshly hand ground masalas. I don’t have an heirloom garam masala recipe. Some may call it lazy cooking, but I have written it keeping people like me in mind," she says.
There’s a frequent use of packaged spice blends, and freshly-ground spice mix is only recommended where it adds depth to the flavour like in the Punjabi-style chole, or the Konkani prawn curry that requires a specific Konkani masala. A few recipes are also modified as per the American kitchen. “In America, seafood is not cooked for long, so I changed that in bhapu, the Sindhi fish soup, and the prawn pulao, where both fish and prawns are cooked for a long time, and are almost disintegrated. In both the dishes, I added the seafood towards the end and did not overcook it," she says.
For her most memorable meal during her fieldwork, Jillani circles back to the kadhi she ate at a restaurant in Mithi, the only Hindu-majority and predominantly vegetarian town in Pakistan. “I did not see how it was made as it was served at the last minute, but it was a lot lighter, had no pakora in it, and was extremely bright. Two same dishes, but done so differently," she quips.
As an Indian food writer, who loves to watch Pakistani food reels, Pakistan acts as a bridge of sorts—to the food, culture and stories of cooks—from a land that may seem forever distant to us.
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Shirin Mehrotra is a Delhi-based food writer and researcher.
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