PAKISTAN - the Street food Capital of the World

by

Tehmina Ahmed

Street food in Pakistan is a feast for the senses and offers anything from a light snack to a full meal, at any time from early morning to well past midnight. Every region has its own special cuisine, which makes eating out and endless adventure.

A memory from everyone’s childhood is that of good times with the chaatwala, doing the rounds with his rehri or handcart. Chaat is a snack that can be a melange of potatoes, boiled and diced, mixed with boiled channa or chickpeas and served with a mouth-watering mix of spices and imli ki chutney, or tamarind sauce /chutney. It may include dahi bhallas- fried lentil patties topped with cooling yoghurt, powdered spices and the sharp flavors of its own chutney. Karachi now offers " mixed Chaat" , with a little bit of everything from potatoes and dahi bhallas to papri, a crispy fried topping . Chaat vendors also offer the exciting gol gappas - these are hollow and balloon shaped, fashioned from a batter and fried. They are dipped into seasoned tamarind water and the trick is to swallow the gol gappa whole and enjoy the fireworks.

Apart from the ubiquitous chaatwalla , street food does tend to change a little as one moves from the coastal city of Karachi in the province of Sind, towards the historic Lahore in the Punjab and further up the fabled frontier city of Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province, the home of the Qissa Khawani bazaar or te bazaar of the story tellers.

Karachi is a bustling city, the first capital of the country, and now the capital of Sindh. It is the country’s center of commerce and industry and also home to a large number of migrants who choose to make their home in Pakistan at the time of the partition of the sub-continent. Perhaps that is what makes it the most cosmopolitan of all cities in Pakistan, in terms of its lifestyles. It is in Karachi that you can get a whiff of kebabs made in the Bihari style in one locality while another offers Bombay Bhelpuri.

The food lovers paradise in Karachi is an area known as Burns Road. A host of vehicles and people on foot crowd its gallis or side roads every night. This is food that is not only enjoyed on the street but is ordered up in large quantities and carted home for festive occasions. Burns Road is famous, among other things for its mithai or sweetmeat/dessert shops. This is the place to find kheer, a dessert made from rice and milk, topped with slivers of pistachio or almonds and served in small throwaway earthenware dishes. The sweet shops have a delectable selection of rasgullahs and barfis, sweetmeats characteristic of the subcontinent, all made with base of khoya, milk boiled down to the consistency of cream cheese. Many of the sweetmeats are dipped into sheera or a sugar syrup, and some are topped with varak, a silvery tissue made from thinly beaten sheets of pure silver.

Most people come to Burns Road for its famous nihari. This is a rich stew of meat, traditionally left to cook overnight over a slow fire and served at breakfast in the morning. It often provides a quick meal at night, scooped up with bites of naan or leavened bread, hot from the tandoor or clay oven It also offers haleem , a dish of mixed lentils , wholegrain wheat and barley cooked with meat, and served with a garnishing of sliced ginger, friend onions, chopped green chilies and coriander leaves. Street foods favorite all over the country are seekh kebabs [skewered and grilled mincemeat] and tikkas , [ chicken breasts or drumsticks or smalll pieces of marinated goat/ lamb in yogurt and spices and grilled over charcoal]. Burns Road also has a special kebab, not easily found in other places, the Bihari kebab. These kebabs are made from highly seasoned meat, so tender that a piece of thread goes over the kebab on the skewer to prevent it from falling apart. After it is grilled, the thread is unwrapped and the kebab served with a salad of sliced onions, mint and chopped green chilies.

Other popular street snacks on Burns Road, samosas and jalebis, are national favorites too and available all over the country. The samosas are made from flour wrappers filled with cooked mince or potatoes and the jalebis are a syrup-filled sweet, fried in a big karhai or cauldron.

Karachi’s own version of fast foods is the bun kebab, with a kebab in a bun, topped with tomatoes, onion and ketchup. Also the kebab roll, where a paratha or a piece of fried flat bread is wrapped around the kebab. It is often served out from a Suzuki van that has been converted into a mobile kitchen, making its way through the busy streets.

In the countryside of Sindh, as in Karachi, pakoras or fritters made from a thin chickpea batter are a favorite snack. Stuffed with green chilies, pakoras may even be eaten with naan for a quick meal. Roasted water chestnuts or singharas are sold by the roadside along with bhuttas or corn on the cob, roasted or boiled, applied with a lemon half dipped into the mix.

In Sindh, the staple roti or flat bread, cooked on a griddle or tava , is made of rice as well as with wheat flour. Khichiri or a dish of rice and lentils cooked together and served with yoghurt is also a popular dish. An unusual snack is beeh, made from lotus root, and babri, from dried lotus flower. Wara, a candy made from sugar is popular with the children. Palla is the legendary Indus river fish considered the greatest delicacy in Sindh and this may be either grilled, fried, or cooked in a masala [spicy paste ].

Thatta in lower Sindh is an ancient town, once renowned as a great seat of learning. Travelers passing through today’s Thatta usually bring back some rabri with them. This is a special dessert, made from thick cream, skimmed of in layers from freshly boiled milk. Thatta is also known for its sherbets, the cooling thandai made from a paste of almonds and cardamom and the sherbet of sandal made from sandalwood and motia from the fragrant jasmine flower.

Shikarpur in upper Sindh is equally renowned for its Sindhi cuisine, and specialties here are the achars or pickles, made from mangoes and mixed vegetables, and desserts including kulfi, made from milk, sugar and seasonings, and a range of other sweetmeats.

Baluchistan is the most sparsely inhabited province in Pakistan although it has the largest land area. A rugged land of mountainous terrain, it is still ruled to a large extent by Sardars or tribal chiefs. Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan and here the ethnic Baluch mingle with the tribes of Pashtoon descent, who have been joined in recent years by large numbers of Afghans, fleeing the war in their own country.

Street Food in Quetta reflects both Baluch and Pashtoon or Pathan influences. Quetta is famous for sajji, whole leg of lamb roasted over an open fire, using green papaya to tenderize the meat. A variation of this is the khadda kebab, where a pit is dug in the ground, a whole goat or lamb skewered in it, and a fire lit on all four sides of the pit to gently roast the meat.

This is very much a meat eating culture, and another favorite dish is rosh, a form of roast, in which large pieces of mutton or lamb are steamed in a covered dish and eaten with tandoori naan. The Afghans brought their Kabuli pulao, a dish of meat and rice cooked with raisins.

In the winters the rehri walas have variety of dried fruit to offer, among which the apricots, roasted peanuts, pistachios and variety of homemade sweets, which they measure out with their tarazoos or weighing scales, wending their way in the fading light of dusk with oil fed lanterns perched atop their carts.

Lahore is surely the street food capital of the country. Or any other kind of food for that matter. lahoris , or the zinda-dillan-e-lahore [ hard to translate , but perhaps the closest you can get is the brave and large hearted of Lahore "] take their food seriously. They make sure they get the best , the freshest and the most of whatever they set their hearts on. The good food of the city is offered in its many mohallas or neighborhoods, its busy bazaars & bustling streets, especially within the old walled city. For a start there is the Anarkali bazaar, named after the woman who caught the Mughal Prince Salim’s attentions.- his father , the emperor Akbar did not approve of the affair and reportedly had her buried alive. In this bazaar today, there is a maze of shops selling everything from colorful bangles to footwear and jewelry, and of course its special brand of food. This is a sort of mixed fruit salad, with cumin, salt and pepper tossed on a mix of peeled and sliced oranges, bananas, apples and other seasonal fruits, topped with some glistening red pomegranate seeds.

Lakshmi [ hindu goddess of wealth] Chowk or Square is known for its biryanis and pulaos named after the Mughals who once made Lahore one of their imperial capitals. There is a choice of Shahjahani or Jahangiri pulao served with raita - a yoghurt based accompaniment. There is simpler but equally tasty fare in the nearby Regal area, serving Kashmiri dal chawal, a simple lentil stew served with steamed rice, made to a special recipe. When winter sets in, people stop by for a bowl of Kashmiri tea, a variety of green tea that is simmered for hours until it acquires a pink color when milk is added to it. It is topped with thin flakes of pistachios and a heavy dollop of cream.

The inner city of Lahore takes pride in cooking and serving waddi, a dish of buffalo kidneys, cooked in a fried masala. There is much more in the walled city of Lahore, a narrow maze of alleys from another age. Though decaying, beautiful houses with carved wooden balconies still peer down on mass of people, cyclist, horse drawn carts and shops where people ply their traditional trades from kitemaking to the fashioning of harnesses and ornaments that still pull the tongas [carriages] in the city streets. It is here that huge cauldrons are fired up each morning for a breakfast of halva poori. The poori is deep fried bread that puffs as it floats to the top of the cauldron. It is eaten with aloo ki bhaji or a savory dish of diced potatoes, along with the popular cholas [chickpeas] . Sometimes the kulcha, a small naan topped with sesame seeds, replaces the poori. The kulcha may also be served with just a bowl of thick cream into which it is dipped.

Lahore is also known for its fresh water fish, usually fried in a chickpea batter. Great mounds of fried fish at roadside shops disappear at a surprising speed. More rarely, the fish is cooked on a cast -iron griddle or tava to make the moist and delicious tavay ki machli.

Hundreds of visitors congregate every day at the shrine of data Ganj Baksh, the patron saint of Lahore. Around Data darbar, as the place is popularly known, a number of shops specialize in katlamas or fried bread stuffed with mincemeat, lentil paste, or plain masala, fare hearty enough to satisfy the Lahori appetite.

A steady favorite is the dish of chikkar cholay [literally chick-pea-slush], but the name probably owes to the Lahori sense of humor than it does to the quality of the dish, although it is made to a mushy mushy consistency. It consists of chickpeas cooked to a perfection in yogurt and a mix of spices , eaten with naan to provide a satisfying meal. One also has the choice of murgh cholay or chicken with chickpeas.

Characteristic of Lahore are the huge hand painted hoardings announcing the arrival of the latest Punjabi movies. the movie goer may stop at a roadside table to sample nihari with the parathas or fried bread, and bong a similar stew that is meatier and includes more bones and joints of mutton or beef . For dessert there is steaming hot gajar ka halwa, a sweetmeat made of carrots; or hot gulab jamuns , made from cooked down milk in a sugary syrup.

In the Punjab villages, the sugarcane crop in winter brings ganderis to the roadside vendor. These are pieces of sugarcane, cut from stalk. Village folk often dispense with the preparation and simply peel off the hard skin of the stalk, biting off as large a piece as they can comfortably. Besides roasted channa or chickpeas, there are sweet batashas and rewaries. Gur or molasses is often mixed with fennel and nuts for a snack.

Peshawar is the gateway to the legendary Khyber pass, leading to Kabul and beyond. It is the capital of the North West Frontier province or the NWFP. This is the fabled frontier where the martial Pathan tribes cross over a porous border into Afghanistan and back again. The city is known for its densely packed, colorful bazaars,. One of these the namak Mandi [salt market] has excellent tikkas [coal grilled meat cubes] to offer while the famous Kissa Khawani bazaar [story tellers bazaar] is the place to linger over endless cups of spiced green tea or kahva, made in a samovar, flavored with cinnamon and cardamom.

Peshawari cuisine is best known for its chapli kebab, a round, flat kebab made with minced meat, egg, onions, and tomato,fried on a giant sized griddle. It is served with the crisp Peshawari naan , fresh from the tandoor. Karhai gosht, usually made with mutton is also a popular dish. This is meat fried in a paste of tomatoes, onions, and spices in a n open karhai. Peshawari kulfi is a rich dessert flavored with rose water and pistachio and mixed with falooda , a thin, lightly cooked vermicelli.

Sweet, sour , hot and spicy or a combination of all - its all there - in the cities, towns and villages of Pakistan.

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