Food is How We Keep Cultures Alive
The sweetness of onions slowly caramelising, the warmth of garlic, ginger, and spices cooking out, to the richness of buttery, aromatic carrots infused with cardamom. These are the smells of home.
Inspired by Mariam [Mariyum], a Palestinian food blogger, who has recently been re-sharing the recipes from her heritage, with the history of Palestine voiceovers, in a time when Israel is doing everything in its capacity to erase all aspects of Palestinian life, I have begun to re-examine the food I grew up with.
The food that brings me comfort and joy, and that is traditional Pakistani cuisine. The food of my parents, my grandparents and so on. The food my mother cooked for me, the food she taught me to make that she learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, and so on. Recipes that have not been recorded, taught through demonstration, no measurements just based on visuals, on instinct, on the taste we remember from our mother’s dishes. In each bite, there are generations of love and soul, and you truly feel that.
Tied in this re-exploration are two elements, the first being vegan for almost two years now, a lot of the dishes I got comfortable making were the veg-based salaans [for those who are not Pakistani, salaan is essentially what you would use for the word curry] dips, salads, and snacks, etc because it was easy to veganise and was a break from meat replacements. But in the last few months, I came to crave the texture and feel of the meat salaans, so I tried a remake of ‘Keema Aloo Mattar’ or mince, potato and peas, and Chicken Saag. I also missed out a lot on Pakistani sweets and desserts, and boy do Pakistanis love their sweet stuff.
The second part was learning to fall in love with cooking again. The last year has been incredibly hard with spending a lot of the year in excruciating pain due to untreated Endometriosis, which brought on a lot of nausea and exhaustion that a lot of the time I couldn’t cook and struggled to ‘want’ food, in the sense I had not creativity or input on what to eat, and food felt like fuel most of the time. 4 months post-surgery and in therapy to deal with all of the troubles that came with that, I spent a week whilst my partner was away with only myself for inspiration to dive in and experiment again.
The re-exploration into Pakistani cuisine beyond my usual veg-based dishes began with my favourite salaan, which was Chicken Saag, or chicken and spinach, and to be honest any spinach-based salaan. My mum would cook the spinach in lots of lemon and that was the key to its deliciousness. Now, I know how to make this and the basis for most salaans from the age of 16, where after I finished my GCSEs my mum spent the summer teaching me how to cook and I relished the opportunity, cooking and baking is something I have always loved as a child, it was an activity my mum would do with me and my sister, and I ended up taking Food Tech GCSE because I really love all aspects of cooking and it plays a huge part in all of my relationships.
Chicken Saag covered in a healthy amount of fresh coriander [I used This isn’t Chicken as my preferred meat replacement]
I cannot explain to you the joy and accomplishment I felt when I had that first taste and it tasted just like my mum’s Chicken Saag, except vegan! From being able to create a dish on pure memory and taste, it is reflective of the expertise in balancing flavours that I learned from my mother.
Gajar Halwa - I opted for no cream/ice cream first time going to make sure I had the right balance of flavours and sweetness
However, the real fun began with desserts, which led me to the first recipe on the website. I haven’t had Pakistani desserts in so long because it is nearly impossible to buy them vegan, and rare to find them in a restaurant unless it is a Pakistani-inspired ice cream.
Gajar Halwa, or Carrot Halwa. It is a rich, buttery, creamy carrot pudding. I associate it with Eid and weddings. It is one of those dishes that is a slow, labour of love. Like most Pakistani food, the longer you spend cooking down the onions or carrots for example, the sweeter and more intense flavour you get. It is best served warm, with some cream/ice cream and chopped nuts. Each spoonful is a buttery delight. Making it vegan for the first time, unearthed a feeling that I can only describe as home.
The full recipe can be found here.
I look forward to trialing out more recipes like my mum’s vegan keema biryani, layered with caramelised shallots and fried potatoes, which is my favourite dish in the whole world to perfecting the vegan Gulab Jamun dough, which I have had some mild success with so far, but it is not quite perfected yet!
You can view Mariyum’s recipes here, I highly recommend the Zataar Manakeesh, it is honestly the best bread I have made in years.
