"I Wish I Wasn't Your Daughter"

POSTED BY HA

First things first: I love my mama! Like most people, I think she's the best mother in the world. So the title of this post is definitley not me. Its the absurd, far-too-long name of a new Pakistani drama on TV here at the moment! Props to the producers for making a drama that for once  is moving quite fast... In just a few weeks, the story has unfolded quite a lot. BUT it just gets more and more ridiculous and horrifying. I had to sit down and write about it. Its like I need therapy because I've watched this!

The main character: a girl called Khushi (happiness) and her nickname is Pagli (madness). And she's very... well, happy and mad.

The storyline: Khushi comes from a super poor family. When she was a kid, she had a male best friend who she loved like a fat kid loves cake. Drowning in ever increasing poverty, her parents sell her (yes SELL her) to a super rich family. The oldest son is happily married but his wife can't have children, so they buy (yes BUY) Khushi for a year. She'll have his baby (which will have to be a boy, of course) and then her "husband" will divorce her and send her back home. Upon doing so, her family will get some more money.

Why does Khushi do it? She has no idea whats going on, the dumb twat. She thinks she's marrying her  childhood BFF that's just come mysteriously turned up again. She doesn't even mind that he's already married. True love, eh?

In short, she makes her new hubby fall in love with her, probably because of her "happiness" and "madness" one can only guess. And as luck would have it, she's pregnant now too. So what does her husband do? Illegally obtains miscarriage-inducing pills, spikes her orange juice with them, and gives them to her. He tries to abort their baby so that she can stay with them longer! Otherwise, she'd have the baby and have to leave!

At this point, I made a decision: I am stepping out of the room when this show it on. Disturbing on SO many levels!

What ever happened to simple love stories? You know... like she's super poor, her childhood BFF comes back, marries her, they both work hard, pull her family out of poverty and hey presto! Happiness all around?

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.

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).

Shopping in Islamabad

POST BY HA

Islamabad FINALLY has bigger shops, more variety, and better fashion. Hallelujia! If you've ever been to Islo, you'll know how terribly it compares to Lahore and Karachi, but something is happening here nowadays. It seems like all the bigger brands have suddenly noticed our tiny capital and an influx has taken place in the last year alone.

I first noticed this when Zahra Ahmed came to Islo. I'd previously only been to the store in Lahore and found it to be a fun and more unique ready-made store than your standard Generation, etc. Soon after, I noticed a sign go up on an empty building saying Gul Ahmed Opening Soon! This was super exciting for me because my weak spot is cushions and bedding. Strange weak spot, I know. But how some people feel when they walk into a shoe store is how I feel when I see a beautifully made-up bed in a department store. The cushions, oh the cushions... Cushions are a genius invention: providing comfort as well as extra beauty!

ANYWAY, point being that whereas Gul Ahmed clothing is available at various stores in Islo, a Gul Ahmed store is a different affair: three floors of mens clothing as well as womens, handbags, shoes, stitched clothes as well as unstitched including kurtas, and lots of bedding, curtains, towels, etc! In the last few months, not one but TWO Gul Ahmed stores have opened up here.

And as if that was not exciting enough, right next to one of them, Nishat Linen have opened up their third Islamabad store, called a Nisha Boutique. The boutiques carry a wider range of ready-made clothes than the normal Nishat Linen stores. Just last year there was only one Nishat Linen here!

I also noticed yesterday that Cotton Ginny is opening here soon too. And stores I'd previously only seen in Lahore can also be found, such as Threads & Motifs, and Needle Impressions. Plus a lot of existing stores have opened up more outlets, like Kayseria and Bareeze. So all of these add to Khaadi, Cynosure, Chen One, Junaid Jamshed, etc, and Islamabad being so small and easy to navigate around means we finally have some decent shopping to offer.

Contrary to the excited tone of this post, I don't actually go shopping that much here... There's usually only one of the following reasons I do:
1) someone has asked me to (such as family abroad or a friend visiting);
2) I'm buying a present; or
3) its summer/winter and time for a wardrobe injection!

It was No.3 that took me to the streets of Islo yest and I was so pleasantly surprised at how much the shopping scene is improving here that I've sat down to write a blog post about it! With so much political turmoil, inflation, instability and security tensions here, it sometimes feels like everything will come to a grinding halt soon. Its so nice for the opposite to happen in reality :-)

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!