Khyber Dreams Chapter 11: Pakistani Cuisine

One element of Pakistani life that required no adjustment on my part was the food. I'd  been eating and enjoying it since Abid and I first started going out, and I loved the opportunity to sample the "real thing."

My mom and dad were devotees of the solid midwestern meat-potatoes-salad-vegetable type of meal, and that's really all I knew until I met Abid and his friends. In my family we ate beef and poultry. Period. My dad wouldn't eat lamb, and he would rarely eat fish.

It's been my experience that most people who don't grow up with it have somewhat of a learning curve with curry. First off, most westerners have the mistaken impression that curry is a single spice, the kind that's sold in the story labeled "curry powder." Not true at all. A true curry, properly made, is a combination of spices and herbs that are mixed together only at the moment of dish preparation. The actual combination depends on the type of dish being constructed.

Abid and his roommates, all Pakistanis or Indians, prepared their versions of food from their homeland, and whenever you'd enter their house, the air was filled with the distinctive scent of Indian cooking. Many people don't care for it, but I loved it from the first.

I learned both to eat and cook various dishes, although I've never come close to mastering its preparation as my sister-in-law Safia has. Over the years, as I've eaten less and less Pakistani cuisine, my ability to create it has also diminished--but not my love for it. Luckily roommate Carol relishes Indian cooking, as well, so we do seek it out on occasion. In all these years I've never come across a restaurant whose culinary skills are a match for Abid's family's.

Because meat is a luxury in India and Pakistan, many recipes are principally vegetable-based, with rice a main course and meat an add-on. One of the most popular and familiar dishes is a lentil soup called dhal. There are many varieties, and in my opinion, all are delicious. This is considered a poor-man's food, so it's not normally served for guests, but I would be happy eating it at any time.

During the time I was in Pakistan, the ultimate meat served for special occasions was chicken. Because everywhere we went during our time in the old country, we encountered chicken at nearly every dinner.

Thinking about it later I had to laugh. In 1979 my mom and I took Farida and Nasreen on a journey to Oklahoma, Nebraska and Wyoming to visit our relatives. This time it wasn't chicken at every meal: it was HAM.