Ah! Those perfect cooks
By Khalid Hasan
Khalid Hasan with singer and film star Musarrat Nazir, Toronto 1984
or years I
have been urging Kishwar Naheed to stop fighting the world, stop fuming
against the security-cleared literary establishment, stop attacking the
outposts of male chauvinism, stop organising conferences and instead write a
book on cooking to be called Kishwar ka Dastarkhwan . Not only has
she not done that, she has not even mailed me, despite earnest promises,
even one of her magic recipes.
The inimitable Musarrat Nazir, who has chosen to retreat into anonymity and silence for reasons that remain unfathomable, is the other lady who holds in her hands the great art and mystery of cooking. To her too I used to suggest that she write a book so that others could get a shot at getting that dum pukht aloo gosht recipe right. I even offered to be her scribe. “Yes, one day,” she would say, a day on which the sun has so far not risen. She is an extraordinary cook. That is one thing she and Kishwar have in common. They can put a meal together in about the same time it takes the rest of us to slice a couple of onions. I once watched her prepare karela gosht . I had a notebook in my hand to capture in writing every single step that was to go into the making of a dish that beats all dishes on earth, when rightly done. I couldn’t keep pace, so rapid was Ms Nazir’s handiwork. At one point, when I asked her to please lift her foot off the cooking accelerator, she shot back in Punjabi, “ Toon keralay khanay na’in ke jutian khanian nai’n .” Who can argue with that! The bottom line is that she has not written the cookbook that would be a greater hit than ‘Mera Laung Gavacha.’
That having been my experience with these two ladies, I was therefore delighted the other day when I received through the mail a cookbook called South Asian Cooking by Amtul Hafeez, an amazing 85-year old lady who lives in Manitoba, Canada. Her book was published in New Delhi last year and I must say that having read more books than I can count on what makes a great Pakistani or Indian meal, this one lays out the methodology of cooking in simple, uncomplicated words without requiring you to first open a mini spice store in your kitchen that many cookbooks, including Madhur Jafri’s bestseller, require you to do. You take one look at the list of spices needed and your heart sinks. Amtul Hafeez’s book is simplicity itself. I must, however, confess that so far I have only been relishing its recipes on paper; I have not tried to prepare anything according to her instructions. Who knows what I might come up with when I do try.
Before I write more, Amtul Hafeez, who was born in Delhi, came to Pakistan with her husband Syed Habib Ahmed, then travelled around the world for the next thirty years that he spent in UN employ, before finally deciding to settle down in Canada when he retired over twenty years ago. He is now ninety and in excellent health. Two years ago, his autobiography, From South Asia to North America , was published by the Oxford University Press in Karachi. But I stop here because this column is about cooking.
The best cook – even better than Musarrat and Kishwar – that I was privileged to watch at work was the late Saleem Shahid, pater to the talented actor and director Salman Shahid, who, I should add, also speaks Russian or used to be able to speak Russian. I once drove from Vienna to London and from London to Birmingham to watch Saleem Shahid cook and to eat what his truly magical hands had produced, food for the gods made out of earthly commodities. I appeared at his flat on the 10th floor, within walking distance of Edgbaston, the great Warwickshire cricket ground. “Saleem Shahid,” I said, “I have come all the way from Vienna for your fabled mince with spring potatoes, otherwise known as aloo qeema . He agreed to prepare it on the condition that I would not “panic” him while he was casting his spell. Panic, he explained consisted of interjections like “Aren’t the onions quite done now,” or “Shouldn’t the flame be lower?” and the worst of them all, “When will the food be ready?” Saleem Shahid was a slow mover and his cooking was even slower. Therein, he would say, lies the secret. Musarrat and Kishwar are the Shahid Afridis of cooking; Saleem Shahid was the Hanif Muhammad. There I stood behind him that afternoon, watching the aloo gosht reach perfection. Just about the time I thought it was all done, Saleem Shahid peeled four tiny, ivory-green onions, making me wonder what the purpose of that exercise was. Before I could ask, he turned around: “These onions are going in not as onion but vegetable.” When I returned to Vienna, I was sure I had got it all from the maestro. Various attempts to follow in his footsteps produced near-disasters, the moral being that great cooks are magicians and mystics, not open to copycat attempts.
But to return to Amtul Hafeez’s book, let me quote just two bits from it. One relates to dum or maturation, the other to bhoon-na which she calls deep seasoning, but adds that there is no word in English that would explain what bhoon-na really means. A curry that is cooked without having been bhoon-oed or given dum is not fit for the discriminating palette. Here are Amtul Hafiz’s formulas as to how the two magical transformations can be achieved. Bhoon-na first. Fry chopped onions in oil, add composite masala – ginger, garlic, ground coriander, red pepper, turmeric, salt and a bit of yogurt – mix thoroughly, keep stirring, adding some water till the masala becomes lumpy. Add meat, which begins the main process of bhoon-na . Stir the meat in the pot round and round with sprinklings of water ( chatta in Punjabi) until the meat has released its moisture and assumed a clean, pinkish brown look. The oil will have separated from the meat by now, collecting around its edges. Eureka: the penetration of spices in the meat stands accomplished.
And here is how to administer dum . The idea is to bring out to the full the flavour and taste of the dish which is being prepared. In the past, the pot was lidded and placed over hot ashes of charcoal or wood, but since cooking is now done on a gas or electric stove, here is Amtul Hafeez’s method. She raises the burner to full red heat and then immediately shuts it off as she places the cooked curry, duly lidded, on the extinguished burner. As the heat generated by the burner cools off, the dum can be said to have taken place.
Everyone tells me Ustad Daman was a great cook but I never had the experience of sampling the Ustad’s delights, having remained content with his poetry.
