How my dishes have changed since living in Pakistan

I have lived mainly in Europe, and this has certainly influenced my way of cooking. Before coming to Pakistan, I always had a plentiful supply of herbs like oregano (my favourite), bay leaves and many others. My kitchen cabinets have also always had spices and soy sauce, along with sesame oil and olive oil. It would be hard for people living permanently in the West to imagine the differences in cooking skills needed to prepare everyday dishes in Pakistan.

Although an Indian lady I knew taught me how to make some dishes from the Indian subcontinent many years ago, I failed miserably then and still fail now at making chapatti or roti, as flatbread is called here. My Pakistani husband can’t produce a good one either, so we bought them from the tandoor down the street.

You can buy herbs in the hypermarkets that are dotted around the capital city of Islamabad, but we don’t visit them very often as I am too tired after work to think about shopping; So that means cooking with the ingredients that are on hand at the local bazaar. As Pakistan is an Islamic country, there is no wine, so dishes that require a good drink of red or white wine are out of the question.

I have to say that my husband is a very good cook, but I like to cook and I have had to adapt the European recipes that I know to the available ingredients. It is no problem to prepare a ratatouille, for example, since there are plenty of fresh aubergines, zucchini and other vegetables, but no Mediterranean herbs to accompany it, except for fresh coriander leaves, so I have used cumin seeds, coriander seeds and many of fresh coriander leaves to season with a little chili powder. So one day I was cooking during a power outage (these are common occurrences of everyday life and a fact of life that I still haven’t learned to deal with). In the near darkness of the kitchen cupboard, I picked up the jar of chili powder, only to discover when the lights came on that it was actually a jar of turmeric. “Oh!” I saved the day with a liberal sprinkling of Tabasco sauce and all was good. In fact, the dish seemed to be greatly improved by the addition of the turmeric. Since then it has always been added together with the chilli powder.

My spaghetti bolognese is also very different from Italian, as instead of the usual herbs, all I use is fresh coriander leaves and spices: a small piece of cinnamon stick, cumin seeds, ginger, coriander seeds toast and some chili powder. . It’s a very good fusion dish, I serve it with pasta and not roti.

If I live in Europe again I will miss the green leafy vegetables here, purslane, fenugreek and others I don’t know the names of. Not sure if I’m going to miss karalla (bitter melon) or chong (caralluma fimbriata), the bitter greens, but I will miss not being able to buy them in the open bazaars if I feel like it.

I have learned a lot about cooking here and I hope to continue cooking in this simple way if I return to the West.