The Pakistani Tea Party: Some Point to Note

POSTED BY HA

Tea is huge part of the Pakistani culture. So much so, that if you say "I don't drink tea" you get something similar to the reaction of Toula's aunt in My Big Fat Greek Wedding to her fionce not eating meat: "you don't eat MEAT?!?!" Shocking.

You see, a cup of tea with your family, curled up on the sofa, watching tv at the end of long day can be the best thing in the world. But serving tea to aunties you havn't seen in months and have little in common with, while your tea-serving standards are ruthlessly scrutinised  = not so fun.

It goes something like this, and if you are Pakistani/South-Asian/live in an area with a large population of Asians, chances are you can relate to at least one of the points below:

1. First thing to note, Pakistani "tea guests" will rarely call before coming over. If you do get some notice, it'll be an hours notice max. More likely is a call to ask "are you home? because we've just pulled into your street!"
   
   
2. A minimum of three-four snacks to accompany the tea are expected. No way around this. You only have one thing to serve? Just biscuits? Well forget it. Forget the tea altogether. Thats just insulting. Its an insult to the tea itself! Your going to be cussed much less for not offering ANY tea than you are for a half-full table of accompaniments.
   
   
3. There should be at least one deep-fried snack. Acceptable are: kebabs, samosas, pakoras, spring rolls and cutlets. Not acceptable is anything healthy. What is this brown bread, low fat, sandwich? Or sugar-free rusks? Conclusion: too cheap to buy enough oil to serve proper (ie. fried) food.
   
   
4. You must, I repeat MUST, offer your guests everything at least 5 times. Do a count in your head. If you fall short, they are going to call you inhospitable. And if you really want to impress them, use different words each time. Forget the normal "would you like some cake?" You've got to mix it up with a bit of "I made this cake especially for you" (ie. I was saving this to eat whilst watching Glee later, dammit) with some pushy "have some more." Simulatenously shoving a slice on their already full plate helps too.
   
   
5. And finally... if your guests don't leave an inch wider around the waist and fuller than if they'd had dinner with you instead, then its all over for you.

Disclaimer: All of the above is true. All characters appearing in this post are not fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely the truth.

Why Comfort Eating is Overrated and Banana Cupcakes Recipe

POSTED BY HA

For reasons I'll explain in my next post, I am feeling DE-pressed right now. Majorly. So I'm on the dangerous slope that is Comfort Eating. I finished the box of chocolates I treated myself to less than two weeks ago and as the store that sells imported chocolates is a bit far from home, I've taken to baking. It all started off with an innocent enough Zuchinni/Courgette Cake and pretty much went downhill from there. Chocolate cupcakes, orange yoghurt cake, trifle, chocolate mousse... I've made them all in the last couple of weeks alone! *gulp*

My family, on the other hand, must be loving this little "phase" I'm going through. Like yesterday, when my husband was full from dinner and then I bought out a tray of banana cupcakes, he was so pleasantly surprised that for a split second I thought "hey, maybe this won't be just a phase. I should do this everyday!"

And then I ate three of the cupcakes and actually felt my clothes slowly yet surely get snugger around my waist and almost burst into tears.

Comfort eating is not supposed to have guilt attached to it at the end! Whats that about? So I go to all that effort to feel better (comforted!) only to end up feeling tired and guilty AS WELL AS still upset?! Well thats crap. I need a new comfort plan.

Comfort painting?
Comfort cleaning?!
Comfort movie fests??!

Anyway, whenever you feel guilty after eating something, it generally means it turned out good. Really good. So I'm going to spread the guilt a little and share the recipe!


Banana Cupcakes with Pastry Cream Topping
(Makes about 15)
Recipe inspired by and adapted from Brown Eyed Baker

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup ripe, mashed bananas
1/4 cup yoghurt 

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees celsius (320 fahrenheit).

Meanwhile, put the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and using a hand whisk, stir them together. Or you can sift them together but this takes longer and you can achieve the same goal (ie. combining them all evenly) but just stirring together with a whisk too.

Then, put the oil, sugar, egg and vanilla in a seperate bowl and using an electornic whisk, mix it all up. Add your flour in two additions, alternating with the yoghurt. So you would add some of the flour, whisk, add some yoghurt, whisk, etc. Don't over whisk at this stage; a couple of seconds is enough. You just want the flour to be incorporated without ruining the texture of the batter by over mixing.

Finally, stir in your mashed bananas and thats your batter done! Pour into cupcake cases and bake for about 20 mins. Of course, this will vary from oven to oven so just keep an eye on it from 15 mins onwards.

For the topping,  Brown Eyed Baker suggested pastry cream goes well with this, instead of traditional icing. I've never made pastry cream before. In fact, I wasn't even sure what it was!! A bit of reading up told me I do know this actually: its used to fill eclairs and also known as crème patisserie. I was super excited about making this because I love, love, LOVE ecalirs, profiteroles, etc! To be honest, I was a teeny bit disappointed as it was more from the custard family than it was from the cream family. But I persevered and piped some onto my cupcakes anyway and am glad I did. It goes really well with these particular cupcakes. Alone, the banana taste in this might be too rich, but this gives it a really nice balance without the heaviness of icing.

I used Joy of Baking's pastry cream recipe, because there was a video with it too. Note. you need to make and refrigerate this for a couple of hours before using, all explained in the video.

I didn't take any photos myself because my camera was upstairs and I was being lazy! So you'll just have to trust that they looked exactly as the original creator's did:

Taken from Brown Eyed Baker's blog. Links above!

An Ode to Take-Out!

POSTED BY HA

You know those days when just the thought of the kitchen makes you feel like hiding under the bed? When that whole "Happy Housewife" malarkey feels like a distant concept as understandable as Sanskrit (or as NK would say, something a Man probably came up with)! Well the morning after Eid felt exactly like that. After slaving away in the kitchen till 1am the night before, the number of total dishes served alongside MIL's cooking turned out to be such a ridiculously large amount that no-one really noticed the velvety texture of my chocolate mousse, the creaminess of the béchamel in my moussaka or even the six layers in my trifle! The next day, the thought of even looking in the direction of the kitchen made me want to puke.

God bless my Husband for occasionally saying the totally and completely right thing at the right time. Times like that a wife is suddenly flooded with the "yes-thats-why-I-married-him!" feeling, which (if you are super lucky) lasts ALL the way till he next speaks ;-)

What were these golden words of his? "Don't cook. We'll get take-out."

I swear I actually heard that operatic "Hallelujia!"

Its become a sort of weekly thing for us, getting take-out. It might be more or less in your houses, but how often do we stop and really appreciate the possibility of picking up the phone and ordering food to come to you? My god, in Pakistan you can even order a milkshake from McDonalds to be delivered to you if you really want! (I've done this... Ultimate definition of "a moment on the lips, two years on the hips").

Anyway, so this particular occasion, we went for BBQ Tonight, a favourite of ours. We always get the "charga" (a full chicken, barbequed with Pakistani spices) and then add things to it, like pilao or a karahi. There was even some charga left over for me to shred and chuck into an omlette for breakfast this morning! Dee-lish.

I love how despite the fact that in many ways, moving to Pakistan has meant leaving behind a lot of "luxuries," there are things I can do here that I couldn't do in London, like:

• have any and every restaurant deliver to me, including the internationals like Nandos, Chicken Cottage, McD's etc;
• eat freshly barbequed food as if it was just bought in from my back garden, without doing any of the hard work myself; and
• marvel at the delivery boxes! None of the standard cardboard affair for BBQ Tonight my friends... Their food comes in those sturdy, microwave-safe, plastic storage boxes you can stuff your leftovers in, which I'm pretty sure I have about 10 of now! (I guess the not-cooking was as far as I could leave behind the Housewife in me).

What To Do With a Courgette... Or Two

POSTED BY HA

We call them courgettes in England... My family in North America says we are totally wrong and they are actually called zucchini. And then I come to Pakistan where my mother-in-law politley informs me this is, in fact, "maaroo."

I don't see these green yummies that much here, so bought a kilo worth when I was out this week, only to find all the boys in my house (Husband, his brothers and father-in-law) flick pieces of courgette from my big roast veg tray to the side of their plates. I was really hurt on behalf of the poor courgettes.

Anyway I had two leftover and was stuck on how to use them up when I cam across this recipe.*

My excitement at making this was more about whether or not anyone would figure out there is a vegetable in it than eating a delicious chocolate bread, which is exactly what it was. So moist and so light! Chocolate anything is usually quite heavy, but this was lovely which is probably why I had three slices (nothing compared to Husband's five I guess, *gulp*)

Also, I didn't have a loaf pan and just used my mother-in-law's oval cake tin.

*I've only ever tried one more recipe from this site: eggplant wrapped kebabs, which was yummy. Next, I'm trying the Greek stuffed tomatoes/peppers!

OH and not one person figured out there was "maaroo" in this! Husband did eventually but only when I narrowed it down and said "I'll give you a hint: green veg you didn't like!"

And now its ALL finished :-)

Recipe: Biscuit Pie

POST BY HA

Before moving to Pakistan, dessert-making almost always meant a trip to the Sainsbury’s to buy something very specific to that treat: mascarpone, blanched hazelnuts, this type of flour, that type of sugar, etc! And then I moved to this side of the world, where I could still get these things at special stores (at imported prices!) but the nearest “market” behind my house only humbly sells the basics of life… certainly not mascarpone *sob*

Thats the story of every market near every Pakistani housewife here I guess. So the array of cooking shows (tens of channels dedicated to nothing but cooking!) are majorly welcome, because they make a point of using ingredients easily available to all here. But instead of compromising on the quality of the recipe by simply skipping ingredients, these clever trevor chefs teach you relatively easy ways to substitute them, so now I can make ingredients from scratch that I really would never have bothered with living a stone’s throw from my much-missed local Sainsbury’s in London…

I’m going to share the latest recipe I tried last night… Biscuit Pie! However, Mr Husband tells me its more a Biscuit Pudding than a pie, so we’ll just call it Yummy Easy Dessert :-)

Got this recipe from a very popular morning chef here called Shireen Anwer. Here’s the link to the video (but it is in Urdu and and to save you the time watching it, I’m writing it up anyway): http://zaiqa.com/recipe/11604/ek-handi-daal-bhaat-biscuit-pie-and-savory-cone-by-shireen-anwer

Yummy Easy Dessert(easily serves 6-8)
Two cups Marie* biscuits, crushed in a food processor
4tbsp melted butter
1 cup curd cheese**
2 eggs
Half cup double cream
1tsp cornflour
1tbsp Orange Tang***
Half tin condensed milk

*You can use any biscuits you want really, such as Digestive, but just make sure they don’t have a taste too overpowering or it will interfere with the filling. The closest equivalent to Marie biscuits in the UK would probably be Rich Tea?

**This chef uses curd cheese as an equivalent to cream cheese quite a bit. Either go for cream cheese instead, or to make curd cheese, take a thin piece of cloth (like muslin, though I confess I tore some off an old shirt I no longer wanted!) and place it in a sieve with a bowl under the sieve. Now pour about 1.5 cups of natural-set yoghurt onto the cloth and leave it all in the fridge for a good few hours (I left it overnight). All the watery whey will drain into the bowl under the sieve leaving you with 1 cup of thick, delicious curd cheese.

***Again, this is a Pakistani thing. Tang is basically powdered flavour you add water to for an instant squash. Skip this altogether if your not fussed about the orange flavouring. Alternatively, add a couple of drops of vanilla essence instead for a different but equally nice flavouring.

To make the biscuit base, preheat your oven at 180 degrees and generously butter your pie dish. Put the crushed biscuit crumbs inside. Now pour in the melted butter and gently rub with your fingertips till all crumbs are coated. Press the mixture down into the dish evenly, making sure to raise it along the sides too. Then pop it in the oven for about 3-5 mins. Lets go with 4.

Take it out and let it cool. Meanwhile, throw everything else into your blender and blend. And thats your pudding filling done! Pour it onto the biscuit base and pop it back into the over, this time for 20mins. Take it out, let it cool down and put it in the fridge (this is a serve-cold dessert).

This is great to make-ahead. I made mine around noon to have after dinner. I would definitley use this for tea instead of after dinner next time though. Reason being, its quite rich, so if you’ve had a heavy dinner (in Pakistan, lets face it, every dinner is a heavy dinner!) then it can be a bit much… But saying that, 6 of us devoured this last night and there were no leftovers!!

Hmmm, should’ve taken a photo really. Next time!

Why Some Women Should Be Exempt From Fasting

POST BY IR

It all started in Ramadan when I forgot to put a nappy on my 1 ½ yr old daughter and she ended up tasting the contents of her nappy. Bad times! Fasting, married life, a toddler, lack of sleep are not a good mix. Did I learn my lesson?….NO!

So I decided to not waste this Autumn/Winter and to use the shorter days to make up many of my missed fasts. Day 1 was difficult but luckily I didn’t interact with any humans apart from my daughter and husband. By the end of Day 1, I felt so proud of myself for fasting when others were not. So on we went to Day 2. Day 2 was a human interaction day with my in laws. All was going well. The fast was easy.

As I sat there in a room full of people, holding my sister in law’s baby, I sat thinking how natural and at home I felt with my in laws. A lovely feeling right? So anyway, this baby in my lap then pulled the brooch that was holding my hijaab in place. This was dangerous as I didn’t want the pin to go into his eye…..how sensible I sound.

That’s when it happened. My mind went blank. I forgot the name for ‘brooch’???? So I shouted across the room to my poor husband to pick up his nephew; “Husband, take the baby because my bra’s fallen down!”
MY BRA….MY BRA????? Why bra???? I didn’t know what had happened til I saw my Husband’s face looking down at me shocked and i’m stumbling with my words. “I mean…I mean…ummm….badge…my badge is falling down….hmmm”.

I’ll never forget the name for brooch again. Eyes down, cheeks red, bra intact…..I said my goodbyes and decided to take a few days break from my fasts.