Haleem: Spiced Wheat-and-Meat Porridge

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 16:30:00 +0000

Haleem is a dish that tastes of celebration and takes the patience of a monk. It is a thick, savoury porridge of wheat, mixed lentils and slow-cooked meat, simmered and stirred and pounded until the individual ingredients dissolve into one another and lose their separate identities entirely, leaving a smooth, glossy, deeply spiced whole. You cannot tell where the meat ends and the grain begins, which is exactly the point. Across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the wider Muslim world it is a fixture of Ramadan, ladled out at sunset to break the fast because it is filling, restorative and slow to digest, carrying the eater gently through the evening.

Nihari: Slow-Cooked Beef-Shank Curry

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Nihari is a dish built for the very first meal of the day, and its name says so. It comes from the Arabic nahār, meaning morning or daybreak, and the traditional story is that it was cooked overnight on dying coals and eaten at dawn, a rib-sticking breakfast that would carry a labourer through until evening. These days it is more often a weekend feast or a special-occasion centrepiece, but the character is unchanged: a dark, deeply spiced gravy, meat so tender it gives way to a spoon, and a slick of ghee on top that tells you exactly how serious this dish is about richness.

Pakistani - vo.rs

Haleem: Spiced Wheat-and-Meat Porridge

Nihari: Slow-Cooked Beef-Shank Curry