Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

by Rabia Chaudry

A chaat is an explosion of flavors and textures, layers of spicy and savory ingredients doused with a variety of sweet and fiery chutneys and whipped yogurt, tiny diced onion and tomato and cilantro, finished off with yet more crunchy goodies. A chaat could consist of boiled, cubed potatoes and chickpeas, a smashed-up samosa topped with chickpeas in a tangy sauce, or fried lentil dumplings, with layers of papri, fried crackerlike wafers, piled up high with chutneys and sev—thin, crunchy gram-flour noodles broken into bits to garnish. But a chaat could also be made of fruit, and fair warning to anyone who bites into a fruit chaat expecting a refreshing, cool fruit salad. Instead, you’ll find a perplexingly delicious combination of diced fruit, often mixed with chickpeas, in a saucy dressing of mango pulp and its very own special masala blend. There are dozens of variations, but every chaat has that masala blend in common—chaat masala, not to be confused with the heady, deep combination of spices known as garam masala. Chaat masala is its rebellious, tangy, pungent cousin, a mixture of at least a dozen dried, powdered ingredients like red chili, dried mango, and asafetida, but the only one that really matters is the star ingredient: Indian black salt. The only resemblance on the tongue that black salt has to regular table salt is that it’s salty. But to really savor the saltiness, you have to first get past its sulphuric, gassy smell, which is also what you first taste when ...

We always had pounds and pounds of ground beef stacked in the freezer, after all; we had to buy nearly a quarter of a cow at a time from the halal butcher, and we never had anything smaller than a twenty-pound sack of basmati rice at home. It wasn’t the regular, stodgier American white rice, which was probably best used in the recipe, but at that time I had no idea there was even a difference between them. We didn’t have parsley, we never used parsley, but we had a veritable harvest of cilantro Ami planted everywhere we moved. It seemed close enough. Worcestershire sauce? I had never heard of it. But we had soy sauce, and they looked similar, so that would do. Breadcrumbs weren’t ever a staple in our house, but I knew Ami added besan, chickpea flour, to her meatballs to keep them soft, so besan it was. If you know the show Nailed It!, in which contestants try to recreate exquisite dishes, often with disastrous results, well, my meatloaf “nailed it” decades before the show was a twinkle in the eye of a network executive. I seasoned the beef with spices as close to the recipe as possible and flattened it out on a piece of foil. I layered on steamed basmati rice and began rolling it up, like a meaty, garlicky yule log. Finally I topped it with plain ketchup because we didn’t have brown sugar to make the tomato sauce, which seemed like a weird thing to add to a meat dish anyway.

That may have been the first and last time in history that besan and soy sauce met in a dish.

“They’re shaami kabab, made from daal and beef ground up together. Watch how he makes a burger of them.” I realized then that this was not going to be the kind of burger I expected, and clearly my aunt had never had a real burger. The vendor pressed the patties on the tawa and poured a ladle of ghee on them, and as they began sizzling he threw a few boiled eggs on the pan, too, and began roughly chopping them up with his spatula. He tossed the patties over and covered them with two buns, pried open, as the chopped egg bits popped and hissed, the egg whites slightly browning. Finally he took the patties, and instead of placing them in a now warmed bun, he smashed them into the bread, spreading the patty like a hunk of butter, before topping them with a pile of egg crumbs, all of the fresh fixings, a sprinkle of chaat masala, and spoonfuls of ketchup and spicy green and sweet red chutneys. The burger had every texture possible. Soft patty, chewy egg, crunchy onion, juicy tomato. It wasn’t a burger in any way I could have imagined, but that vendor was light years ahead of the recent egg-topped burger trend in the US. We stood by the side of the road and scarfed our burgers down, chutney dripping down our fingers, and then washed our hands with the jug of water at the cart.

Iffi Mamu was absolutely unable to drive past a junk heap of broken old furniture and household goods on a curb without stopping to comb through it. He had thus collected nearly a dozen PC units and monitors, none that turned on; busted-up, unmatched furniture; pots and pans and dishes; strange sculptures; and fake plants. You name it. Nothing was irredeemable and thrift was king. He bought discounted fruit and vegetables and bread that had begun going bad, collected thousands of packets of condiments and pilfered napkins from fast-food restaurants and 7-Elevens. One day I found cans of infant formula in his kitchen. There was no baby in the house, there never had been. He explained that a neighbor was getting rid of them, samples from the hospital, since she was breastfeeding and didn’t need formula. Milk is milk, he figured. So he brought it home to use as creamer in his chai. He insisted we all try it in our tea and it was as awful as you’d imagine.

The predawn prayer wasn’t until 5 a.m., but the mosque made it their business to start harassing believers well beforehand. It was enough to turn you into an infidel. Khan Gul Mamu and Pummy Mamu snored through it, having been thoroughly conditioned all through childhood to zone it out, as it seemed had much of the neighborhood. How they kept from murdering the roaming devotee, I’ll never know.

One day, Pummy Mamu asked if I wanted to have seekh kabab and I remembered the tiny, thin kababs I had eaten by the dozen the last time I visited. Yes, absolutely. This time there was no motorcycle ride. I followed him on foot through a labyrinth of blocks and alleys until we reached an open storefront with a four-foot line of skewers sizzling over coals. They looked amazing. There was seating behind the men who worked the grills, so we headed over and sat down. I watched as trays of skewers were carried from where the kababs were being shaped to where they were cooked. And then. Then I saw the man who was mixing the meat. He sat on a high stool with a big plastic tub full of raw ground beef in front of him. I watched him add onions, green chilis, cilantro, and fistfuls of spices. Once the meat was thoroughly covered in all the mixings, he pulled up his pajama legs, lifted his feet into the tub, and began kneading it. With his feet. Pummy Mamu saw my face change. “What’s wrong, moti? So what if he’s using his feet, they’re clean, washed.” The meat squished up around the man’s toes and ankles, clinging onto the hairs on his legs. “No. Oh no no no. I will not eat here, let’s go.”

I wanted gulab jamun, kalakand, jalebi, kheer, gajar halwa, falooda, ras gulla. I wanted mithai, the confections my mother swore drove her own father into an early grave. I wanted them injected directly into my bloodstream. I couldn’t get enough.

Pakoray* are a quick, easy, cheap, and tasty snack to make for kids after school, for teatime—which was traditionally a must in Lahori homes, for a time when guests often unexpectedly popped by—and when it rains. Don’t ask, I don’t know why. But when it rains, my people sentimentally make pakoray.

Here’s how I make it: 1 cup split urad (maash) daal 1 cup split masoor daal (the tiny, orange daal) 1 teaspoon red chili powder 1 teaspoon Kashmiri chili powder (or unsmoked paprika powder) 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 2 teaspoons garam masala 2 teaspoons salt 2 whole green chilis 1 tablespoon garlic and ginger paste 1 large black cardamom (optional) 2 tablespoons butter For the tempered oil: 3 tablespoons ghee (or vegetable oil if you must, but ghee is just so much better) 3 cloves garlic 1 teaspoon mustard seeds (optional) 1 teaspoon cumin seeds (optional) 6-8 curry leaves (dried or fresh, optional) 2 dried red chilies (optional) Mix the two daals in a bowl, fill with water, swish it around a bit, and drain just by tipping the bowl into the sink carefully. You don’t need a strainer and you don’t have to get all the water out, just most of it. Do this three times so the water isn’t so cloudy anymore. The daal will “grow” when you cook it, so make sure to use a good-size pot. Bring the daal to a boil in 6 cups of water. If any white foam rises to the top, skim it off, and then lower the flame to a simmer. Add all the spices and salt, the whole green chilies, garlic and ginger paste, and black cardamom, then partially cover, simmering it for 20 minutes or until it has turned creamy and homogenized. Add the butter, cover it, and let it steam with the flame off while you prepare the tempered oil. I’ll be honest, I can’t eat daal without a tarka, it doesn’t taste finished and lacks ...

Punjabi yakhni pulao. Here’s how I make it: 2 cups basmati rice 1 whole chicken, bone in; skinned and cut into small parts 1 large white onion 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon minced ginger 2 tablespoons salt 2 sticks cinnamon 6 whole cloves 4 green cardamom pods, slightly crushed 1/4 teaspoon black peppercorn 2 black cardamom pods 1 whole green chili 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon garam masala 1 tablespoon roasted cumin seeds 1 teaspoon fennel seeds (optional) 1 teaspoon roasted coriander seeds, slightly crushed 1/3 cup whole milk yogurt 1/2 cup plus extra 2 tablespoons ghee 1/2 cup cooking oil 3 cups of water Rinse the chicken and pat dry. Heat 1/2 cup of ghee and 1/2 cup oil together in a heavy-bottomed pot. One of the things my ex-mother-in-law taught me was that rice is best cooked in a pot that is wide as opposed to high. You want to give the rice space to “grow” and fluff, and it’s more prone to get sticky and gummy in a narrow pot. Basmati has a remarkable ability to grow, so using a large, wide pot will give the rice kernels room to expand, and you’ll get the best result. Add thinly sliced onion to the ghee and sauté on medium low flame until the onions are deeply caramelized. The darker the onions, the browner the pulao will be. You want it colored like rich dark caramel, but be careful with the onions—a few extra seconds could end up burning them. Add chicken, garlic, and ginger and bhoon the chicken on a medium flame in the onions, stirring frequentl...

If we ever grill over coals, Irfan takes advantage of the dying embers to “smoke” chai. He puts a pot with everything already in it—water, milk, tea, sugar, cardamom—over the smoking coals and closes the lid of the grill. The chai cooks as you enjoy your dinner, and the smoke adds a rich layer of flavor to it.

Here’s how I make chai (makes two large mugs): 2 full teaspoons loose-leaf orange pekoe black tea, or 4 tea bags 2 cups water 2 cups whole milk 4 green cardamom pods I only buy my tea from Pakistani or Indian grocers, because nothing in a general supermarket tastes as rich and flavorful as teas imported from back home, though Tetley comes close. My favorite brand is called Vital Tea, but Tea India and Tapal Danedar are also pretty damn good. Combine the water, milk, and cardamom and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a low simmer, add sugar and tea and any other flavorings you’re in the mood for (ginger, clove, cinnamon), and let simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain and serve piping hot, preferably Abu’s way, in lovely teacups with delicate saucers.

There is an Islamic belief that God rewards actions by their intentions, which is a good thing because actions themselves don’t always give us the results we hope for. That’s the grace with which I think about my family’s many attempts at getting me to lose weight. Their intention was fueled by love, even though their attempts often ended up landing badly.