Photo: Duarte Carreiro

I watch Nasreen as she carefully measures out four entire cups of ghee. I feel like I’m breaking out just being in the kitchen with this concoction. Four cups of clarified butter, almost pure saturated fat, is being used for just one dish. The golden globs sizzle and crackle as she tosses in the cows’ feet.

“You know how I learned cooking?” asks Nasreen. “From my mother. Before marriage, I learned everything. How to make chapatis, biryani, kabobs, chicken, mutton…so many things! Before marriage I was so smart and slim, but now I am very healthy,” she boasts as she makes the wrestler pose that inevitably accompanies the word ‘healthy’ in Pakistani English.

Breaking the Hulk Hogan flex, she giggles heartily. “Now you…you are looking so weak. You must eat rice and meat today.”

I smile. We’ve had this conversation on a twice-weekly basis since I moved into the upstairs apartment six months ago. As today Nasreen is teaching me how to cook her style, I decide it’s best not to explain that my version of ‘healthy’ differs markedly from the prevailing concept in Lahore.

To many Pakistani women, the more you eat means the healthier you are, and my stomach simply fails to comply. To terminate an endless deluge of food I often joke, “Bas! Mera pet Pakistani nahin hai!” No more! My stomach is not Pakistani!

Pushing a wisp of black hair out of her eyes, Nasreen rummages through the cabinets and pulls out an array of spices. “First we need to make the salan, sauce, for the biryani,” she explains. Throughout South Asia there are dozens of different biryani recipes, but Pakistan’s staple variety consists of chicken, aromatic basmati rice, onions, tomatoes and a complex cocktail of spices. Nasreen’s biryani is better than any I’ve had at a restaurant in Pakistan or even across the border in India.

She hands me ten garlic cloves along with a stone mortar and pestle. I haven’t used a set since high school chemistry, and Nasreen finds my ineptness amusing. In my fridge upstairs I’ve got a jar of pre-crushed garlic paste.

For me, the need to cook disrupts my daily routine like the arrival of an unwanted and unexpected guest. Almost everything must be made from scratch in Lahore unless you’re willing to shell out for expensive imported items. The temperature outdoors can be over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and there are often power cuts that incapacitate fans and air conditioners. In the middle of the night, I’ve woken up in a cold sweat, dreaming that I was hosting a dinner party.

I can’t remember ever hearing a Pakistani housewife grouching about how she has got to cook, but it’s something I grumble about at least once a day.

Photo: Duarte Carreiro

Whenever Nasreen comes upstairs to share the latest gup-shup (gossip) about the maid or drop off a utility bill, she asks, “What did you cook today?” If she discovers that I’ve made only soup and sandwiches, she’ll send me a tray of daal and rice or a curried meat dish. More than once I’ve gone downstairs to see her after 9 p.m. and found her thawing substantial amounts of meat.

“Wow, Nasreen Auntie are you having a party?”

“No no. No party. Just my sister, my brother-in-law, their five sons and my three cousins are coming for dinner.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes yes. They are coming are 11 o’clock…you must meet them! I am making mattar qeeema, chicken, shami kabobs and daal-chaval.”

Usually I manage to decline the invitation only after tasting the smorgasbord of dishes. Today we’re cooking for only seven people, but she’s just as exuberant while she explains every step. We finish the salan and move on to the rice. I wonder why we didn’t have both cooking at the same time, since the rice will take much longer to cook. Before putting the rice in the pot to boil it, she soaks it and lets all the tiny insects and broken casings rise to the surface.

“It is very important not to touch the rice. You should shake it; don’t mix it with your hands.”

We wait at least 15 minutes while the rice expels the unwanted elements and sends them swirling towards the top of the bowl. Nasreen picks out each little bit separately and throws it in the sink. I stir the cows’ feet and remove the dish from the flame.

Westerners may look on the lives of Pakistani women and imagine them to be hapless housewives, banished to days of slaving over a hot stove. Only one out of every three women in Pakistan can write well enough to sign her name on official documents, and only a very small percentage work outside the home. It’s tempting to see the kitchen as an oppressive prison, but most ‘inmates’ I’ve met are in no rush to stage a jailbreak.

I once asked a middle class Pakistani housewife if she’d rather be out working. “Work? Why would I want to work? Whole the day I spend cooking, eating snacks, drinking chai with my friends, having some gup-shup…”

Nasreen checks the pot of rice, determines that it’s done cooking, and strains out the extra water. We thoroughly mix the rice with the salan and carefully dot yellow food coloring on the top. As the biryani steams, we set the table and gather the family for lunch.

Pulling off the lid excitedly she exclaims, “See, now you know how to make the real Pakistani biryani!”

And now, it’s time for us to dig in.

Community Connection

Check out Heather’s blog for Nasreen’s biryani recipe. Heather is a student at Matador U.

Feature and Above Photo: visbeek

I’m sure there are many excellent dishes on offer at Arun Restaurant. In fact, I have been told as much by fellow diners. But I have eyes (and taste buds) for only one thing on the menu: the fried tofu with tamarind, chile and basil.

I had the good fortune of ordering the dish the first time I dined at Arun, and for almost a year now, I have been incapable of trying anything else. It’s that good—tangy and flavorful, it unlocks some window of pleasure in my brain of which I was previously unaware.

Photo: foodista

I eventually began to have fantasies of recreating the tofu in my own kitchen. In pursuing this goal, I had the enormous advantage of having Oeurn Pav, one of the cooks from Arun, allow me to watch her make the dish one afternoon. “Only the tofu? It is so easy!” Pav had said, boosting my confidence. Then again, she’s been cooking at Arun for twenty years, and when I later studied my scribbled recipe notes at home, there were some definite gaps.

First and foremost, there was the enigma of the tamarind. Pav had already had an enormous jar of thick reddish-brown paste ready to go, but when I asked her how she made it, the details were a little sketchy.

I searched high and low at Psar Chaa to find the right kind of tamarind, and I finally located it near the herbs at one of the vegetable stands—a peeled sticky mass that resembled a petrified human heart and cost 500 riel.

Photo: stuart_spivack/

In accordance with Pav’s instructions, I cooked it in water until it became a bubbling concoction thick with seeds and pulp, but then I needed to strain it and I hadn’t been able to find the kind of netting that Pav uses for the task.

My sous-chef Jason and I experimented with a plastic bag with holes punched in it, but it burst almost immediately. Then he hit upon the idea of using a gray Hanes sock as an improvised cheesecloth, loading tamarind guts into the toe and squeezing until it extruded a smooth paste. It worked, though it gave our kitchen the gruesome look of a medical experiment gone awry, at the center of which was a sodden sock and a bowl of something that looked like canned gravy.

I had no way of properly deep-frying the tofu, but pan-frying produced tofu triangles of a perfect golden-brown that were (dare I say it?) almost prettier than the ones at Arun. From there it was a matter of throwing ingredients like oyster sauce and heaps of basil together in a wok, though this too was a little hazy at times. For instance, there had been an unidentified white powder that Pheak, the restaurant owner’s young daughter, had described as “seasoning.”

“Like…salt?” I had asked.

“Like seasoning,” she had responded.

“Like…MSG?”

“Like seasoning,” Pheak had said, looking at me with pity. I decided to go with salt. Also, despite the name of the dish, I witnessed no chiles used during Pav’s preparation. To compensate, I seasoned the oil with a little chile-marinated garlic, the excellent result of a previous culinary adventure embarked upon by my sous-chef.

Heaping it over rice, I decided that the experiment had been a wild success. My efforts had produced a dish that was nearly identical to my favorite order at Arun, with the added satisfaction of it somehow tasting…well, like me. Plus, there is enough tamarind paste left in the refrigerator for another batch, which I anticipate being far less work-intensive than the first.

As for those readers with less culinary joie de vivre or no socks to spare, you can let Pav do all the work for you for a mere $2.20. But you would miss the satisfaction of unlocking the mysteries of the tamarind.

This article was originally published in the Phnom Penh Post.

Community Connection

You can find Arun and try its signature dish in Siem Reap, Cambodia. If you ‘re not in Southeast Asia but want to live vicariously through the foodies who are, check out these five incredible Asian food blogs. If you love travel and cooking, take a look at essential cookbooks for the culinary traveler.

Feature Photo: La Malula Photos: author

Clap, clap, step, step, swing handkerchief overhead… don’t fall, step again, now circle your partner… forward, back and think like a hen…

When most people think of dances from Latin America, visions of tango and salsa come to mind. While living in Santiago de Chile, I learned that these are not the only two options. While those styles of dance are quite popular in South America, the skinny Andean nation prides itself on another less-known, traditional dance called cueca.

Along with Chile’s great wine and talented poets, the cueca is an integral part of the cultural heritage. Every Chilean dances or has danced cueca at least once in their lives. It is done at weddings, parties, and family gatherings, and it is even taught to kids in elementary school.

Though it may not have the international status of other dances from Latin America, Chileans consider the cueca a great source of national pride.

Dancing cueca on the 18th of September is one of the most important ways of demonstrating Chilean pride, if not the most important. The 18th and 19th of September are known as “Fiestas Patrias” (independence day celebrations), or simply “dieciocho” (eighteen), in Chile.

And when it comes to celebrating the national Independence Day, Chileans know how to party. Officially the 18th is two-day celebration, but it is often unofficially stretched out for an entire week. During this time in Santiago and all over the country, parties large and small pop up in the form of “fondas”, temporary locations where people go to eat, drink, dance and be merry.

Last year on the 18th of September, I found myself at Parque O’Higgins, the largest park in Santiago, where numerous fondas had been set up, including “Viva Chile!”, the official fonda of the city municipality. Each fonda was set up with its own food area, bar, dance floor and bands.

Imagine 20 different parties celebrating in one location, some geared towards families, other towards younger people, all in the name of the glorious motherland.

Upon walking into the crowded park I doubted that any of my experiences in Chile would ever be as “Chilean” as this. The air was filled with smoke from the barbeques cooking up choripan (sausage on bread) and anticucho (spears of shish-kebab), the sound of music could be heard from all parts, people in traditional clothing were proudly showing off their costumes and make-shift stages were filled with cueca competitions and performances.

A few friends and I were sitting around a table watching the festivities while drinking copious amounts of chicha and pisco (two traditional Chilean alcoholic beverages both made from grapes), when my Chilean friend suddenly grabbed my arm and announced that he would teach me to dance cueca. Intimidated by the seasoned cueca pros around me, I shook my head and tried as hard as I could to resist.

But alas, the rhythm of the music got to me so I accepted his invitation and stepped onto the dance floor praying that I wasn’t going to embarrass myself. Someone handed me a white handkerchief and it began.

Humble yet subtly flirtatious, the cueca is intended to portray the mating rituals of a chicken and a rooster. Dancers in pairs wave handkerchiefs above their heads, which are meant to signify bird feathers or the rooster’s comb, and move around each other in circles. There isn’t much touching going on and all of the flirting is done with body movement, facial expressions and eye contact.

I followed my partner and tried to copy the other ladies around me who were glancing at me every so often with encouraging smiles. For the first few moments I felt terribly self conscious and awkward. But then as band played another song, I actually found myself getting into the rhythm and really enjoying myself.

I’m sure my cueca was terrible, but I afterward I loved doing it. For those few songs that I danced to, I felt like I was sharing something very important with Chileans all over the country. When you dance cueca, it doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, rich or poor, from northern, central or southern Chile. All that matters is that you’re Chilean, you love your country and you cueca proudly to show it.

Community Connection

Got Chile on the brain? Check out 10 reasons to base your study abroad experience in Chile. Or have a look at what people are listening to in Chile and 8 natural wonders of Chile. And don’t forget about Chile’s best coastal towns.

Feature and above photos anniemullinsuk

Six months into my exploration of outback Queensland, my money supplies – vastly under-calculated in a country where even a few beers can run up a small fortune – dwindled to a measly wad of $5 bills.

By this time I had already mastered the art of cheap living, working my way from farm to farm and volunteering to work in exchange for a bed and a few home-cooked meals. The time had come, however, to find a ‘real job’.

In the Australian outback, ‘real jobs’ come in the form of backbreaking harvest labor, cattle mustering or sheep shearing, and somehow I landed a job in the latter category. Packing a holdall stuffed with op-shop t-shirts and battered shorts, I left the comfort of my borrowed mattress and headed out into the bush.

A Quintessential Australian Activity

I’d never before thought of sheep shearing as a quintessential Australian activity – kangaroo shooting, maybe, but sheep? England has fields full of them. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. It turns out, there really is no better way to experience the outback than through the murky windows and blistering heat of the shearing sheds.

Photos: author

Our first location, like many to follow, was a tiny complex of sleeping quarters, kitchens, shearing sheds and sheep pens, set in the midst of a vast stretch of nothingness. These sheds are home to the workers for a week or two before the team moves on to another shed and another job.

It’s a nomadic lifestyle, where workers (mostly men) are hours from home in the weekdays and return to their families only at the weekends (if they’re lucky enough to be less than a day’s drive away).

In fact, I wasn’t shearing the sheep. That’s a job left to the men and for once I was happy to admit defeat and step aside, for the sheep are huge, heavy, stubborn and covered in spiky burrs that leave your legs and arms scorched with red scratches.

Instead, I worked as a rouser. Rousers pick up the ‘fleece’ (the wool coats sheared from the sheep) from the shearers and carry them over to be sorted (or ‘classed’ as its known in the trade). Sounds easy but there’s an art and a technique to picking up these huge mounds of wool that can’t be learned overnight.

Add to that the pressure of working under two other rousers twice my age, both of who grew up in the sheds and can pluck a gigantic fleece from the floor in seconds.

My job as a shearer lasted five months before I finally buckled to the pressure of my sore knees and aching back and headed back to the city to recoup.

By this time I was super-fit and covered in bruises, and I’d discovered muscles I never thought I had.

Day to day life in the Outback

But more than the physical pressures and the unique skills I had mastered, those long hours spent in the middle of nowhere stuck in my mind. The juxtaposed moments of solitude and camaraderie could never be experienced in a country that didn’t possess such wide stretches of uninhabited land.

I learned more about the Australian outback and the vastness of the landscape in those months than I could ever have learned by driving through. More importantly, I learned about the people – the resilience of the country people and their deep connection to their environment. I learned that I am stronger, more determined and more capable than I ever knew I could be.

I learned what it means to really work, physically work, for a living.

So many travelers come through these sheds, picking up a few wage packets in exchange for a half-hearted attempt at living in the outback. So many buckle to the physical and emotional pressures of the job in weeks.

But for the rest of the workers, this is their life, their day-to-day routine, and there is no leaving town or gaining a promotion. It’s a way of life that may seem simple and tough in a country of white sand beaches and laid-back cool, but this is the outback, and this is a different Australia from the one so often seen from abroad, or from the eyes of travelers passing through on holiday.

Community Connection

Thinking of visiting Australia? Check out 10 places in Western Australia you don’t want to miss or 15 things you can’t miss in Australia. Or map out a road trip from Melbourne to Sydney along the Sapphire Coast.

Interested in submitting to this column? Check out the submissions guidelines.

Photo: Jorge Santiago

The first dilemma hit when I tried to choose a chair.

Faculty members did an awkward shuffle, turning this way and that like confused middle-aged couples in salsa classes. I loitered over a seat and pulled back, loitered and pulled back…

Then the deans strolled in with grace and unconcern and seated themselves in the two seats closest to the door of the banquet room. Somehow, everyone unraveled neatly into seats around them without further ado.

I later learned that the seats closest to the most important guests are occupied by the second most important guests, and then the ensuing chairs are filled in the same way, with the least important people being furthest from the guests of honor.

The university staff must’ve known this and waited for the cue from the deans, and the other professors swiftly slid into their places accordingly. I, being the youngest and newest professor, sat squarely across the table from the deans.

It was our first university banquet. I was new to everything in China and I took in the scene with an air of intrigued bewilderment that didn’t leave me the whole time I lived and worked in Beijing.

The younger dean was in charge of the menu. This is a great honor and an even greater responsibility. Unlike in American restaurants, in which each person studies a menu and chooses a dish, in China one person orders a variety of plates for everyone to share. This ordering must be done according to several cultural givens:

There must be way, way too much food for anyone to eat.

There must be a mix of hot and cold dishes, sweet and spicy dishes, meat and vegetable dishes, and dishes cooked according to the different styles of Chinese cooking.

There must be rice and/or noodles. The rice should follow the meal.

There must be soup.

The dean ordered a cold wood ear mushroom salad, a cold Spinach salad, a plate of crunchy chrysanthemum greens, a plate of cold, firm tofu, and the ubiquitous cold cucumber salad with grated garlic.

The dishes kept appearing after that. Again, unlike in an American restaurant in which the entree dutifully follows the appetizer, in China all the dishes come out as they’re prepared. Just as the gong bao chicken is put on the table the sizzling platter of fish with Sichuan peppercorns comes out. Then, three waitresses in qipiaos bring in over-the-rainbow ribs and the Peking duck.

All of these dishes are placed on the revolving banquet table. Guests push the table gently so that each person has access to the array of dishes.

This is when mad chopstick skills come in handy. I had been mastering mine, eating peanuts in the house with a precise pinch of the chopsticks, picking up slippery cashew nuts between sticks of stir-fried celery. I could sneak in and snatch a piece of passing broccoli before it was lost to my neighbor.

The visiting English department head was not so lucky. She knew, however, how to handle the situation with grace. She asked a Chinese staff member to serve her, and the Chinese woman placed small portions of each dish on her plate. She did a fine job of not making the two major cultural mistakes I’d been warned about: stabbing portions of food with a chopstick, and sticking chopsticks straight up in a bowl of rice or a dish of food.

The soup and rice presented she and I with less possibility for peril. I swooped in with my spoon and served myself each after the main courses had been sufficiently depleted. A small bowl is reserved for rice and another for soup, and I learned by example that it’s important to serve each in its proper place. It’s also critical to hold off until the meal is wrapping up; soup and rice are generally reserved for after a meal, as they’re considered to aid in digestion.

Luckily, this banquet was not one of the alcohol-drenched affairs which end with someone stooped over a bowl of fish soup and others gesturing in flagrant, drunken revelry at the waitresses. But I’d heard stories from enough people about this to know that my situation was the exception to the rule. In the case of drunken abandonment, my friends had advised sipping…sipping…slowly…and if necessary, pretending to pass out at the table so as to avoid further damage.

The banquet ended tranquilly, with the dean paying the bill and all of us pleasantly stuffed, sipping green tea. I was, above all, relieved. I’d survived the first major social experience in China, and I hadn’t dropped anything in my lap or lost face or greatly offended anyone’s honor or the group harmony.

I learned something tonight, I thought. I can do this again.

Each Friday, Matador Abroad features a new learning experience. Want to share yours? Check out how at call for submissions: learning experiences around the world.

Community Connection

Interested in China? Check out Christoph Rehage’s time lapse video about a walk across China. Or read our tales from the road from China and Tibet. And if you’re thinking of moving there, you might want to look into how and why to move to China during the recession.