Mother-in-law's Eggs

And other family favourites

My mother-in-law had been fading away, quietly, for quite some time, and last week she died peacefully in her care home. She had dementia, which progressed rapidly through the lockdown years when there had to be less contact and masks made recognition even harder. We knew it was imminent for several weeks and while in some ways it was a relief – she had had no quality of life for such a long time - it was of course still upsetting when it happened. We have spent a lot of time talking and reminiscing over the past few days.

I’ve been thinking about our relationship, which was at its strongest – and also conversely at its weakest (no one came out of Partyringsgate well, including me) – around food. She didn’t really enjoy cooking, but she loved food and was able to recreate the dishes she grew up with in Karachi. She was the eldest child of 8 and although her family life was one of privilege – her father was a commercial airline pilot – she still came to England able to churn out endless roti and paratha and cook the meals she loved.

We spent many hours together in the kitchen with me shadowing, weighing and recording her recipes in a notebook. I learned all the family favourites as well as a new lexicon along the way. Jeera aloo (potatoes spiced with cumin), Haleem (a celebratory potage of wheat, lamb and lentils), yakni pilau (lamb again, this time with rice, often the centrepiece of the Eid dinner table), a multitude of gamey and offaly dishes including maghaz (a brain curry I love, but prefer with sweetbreads), all kinds of masalas to flavour everything from lamb kidneys and chicken livers, to whole birds like partridge, split urud dal – the white ginger infused lentils which remain to this day my favourite lentil dish, shami kebabs which are fragile things to perfect, because the meat has a lentil puree added to it which softens the mixture, but much loved by the children. She loved a chicken or turkey neck and lamb or mutton bone marrow and she had a very, very sweet tooth.

I can see her laughing at me as I struggled to get perfect rounds of roti, elbowing me out of the way to take over when it just got too painful for her to watch. I have practised a lot since and don’t do so a bad job, but can still hear her at my shoulder saying “Thinner! Thinner!” I check this with Shariq these days – he always says “Thinner!” too. And he’d be right.

Could be thinner….and rounder

Learning some of these recipes coincided with the writing of my first pressure cooker book when Adam was a toddler. It felt a bit like worlds colliding. I grew up eating game (cheap, frequently free in Lincolnshire, and then later when I lived in Norfolk) and offal, and applying my mother-in-law’s masalas to very familiar ingredients which I (erroneously) thought of as very traditionally rural was quite revelatory. Close readers of my books will know how many of her recipes I have written up or adapted for the pressure cooker. Nuzhat (or Dadi as well all called her, the name traditionally given to paternal grandmothers in Urdu) did not like pressure cookers – she was a bit nervous around them – but was quite happy for me to convert her recipes to them. I have a sneaking suspicion that she converted them from pressure cooked recipes in the first place – she grew up in South Asia after all. Eventually I took over a lot of the cooking, decanting to take to their house for family dinners. She would make the rice as well as kebabs and fish fingers for the children and made a ritual of slicing up mangoes for their dessert – it was always a big deal every year when the first Pakistani mangoes hit the shelves.

So I am just taking a moment to thank Dadi for the time spent teaching me about her food - I am grateful for the instruction and the imparted knowledge but also glad that I have a record of them for my children. Today’s recipes are two family favourites. The first is an every day comfort food dish which I can’t cook without thinking about the first time it was cooked for me - so simple and with humble ingredients but it absolutely blew me away, and I was very happy to learn it. The second is definitely not every day, but comforting all the same.

(My) Mother-in-law’s Eggs

Not be confused with the classic Son-in-law eggs which coincidentally are turning up in my next book. No, this is a comfort food dish from Shariq’s childhood, first fed to him by one of his aunts, adapted by his mother, and then in turn by me. I am sure that it will become part of Lilly and Adam’s repertoires when they leave home too, and that they will also put their own personal spins on it. I hope so anyway, we ate it this weekend and I couldn’t understand why we’re not doing so more than every few weeks or so, it is so comforting and easy to eat as well as being quite cheap and storecupboard too.

The dish is like a spiced creamed spinach, except the spinach is given time to cook down as you would in any palak dish so it is dark and murky, then hard boiled eggs are pushed into it, cheese goes on top and left to melt or put under a grill if you have a pressure cooker that fits. To be honest, I rarely bother because it is one of those dishes which is best if everything is soft and melding together, rather than developing a crust. And this is also why I don’t fry the hardboiled eggs too – I do in quite a few of my other dishes, including the Breakfast curry which is also going in my next book, but it isn’t what you want here.

When I first started making it, it was deliberately very mild to suit the palates of very young children and made with ground spices. I now make it slightly hotter and incorporate a few whole spices for health, but only those which are palatable eaten whole and don’t need fishing out. But I still put green chillies, or chilli flakes or hot sauce on the table for everyone else if they want them, as well as a bit of lime pickle just in case half way through eating a bit of sour is wanted to cut through the richness (it isn’t always).

It is best served with flatbreads – my mother-in-law was excellent at eating this without cutlery, scooping it up with a piece of roti - she could eat anything, including the runniest of dals, without cutlery, but for the children she would make little “cones” out of roti or paratha and drop some of the spinach and egg mixture in.

I also throw other vegetables in if they need using up – a grated courgette or carrot is especially  good, so would be a few frozen peas. And don’t feel confined to spinach – I would always use it as a base, but if you have a glut of chard or kale use the leaves (finely chop the stems and add with the onion, or leave out and use the stems for something else). They just won’t break down to the same silkiness as the spinach.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil or 15g butter

½ tsp cumin seeds (you can add mustard and nigella too, but just ¼ tsp each)

1 large onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tbsp curry powder or see spice mix below

750g frozen whole leaf spinach

4-8 hardboiled eggs, depending on appetite/leftovers (see note)

2 tbsp crème fraiche

100g cheese, grated (a bog standard cheddar is fine, but make sure it is mature)

A small bunch coriander, finely chopped

To serve:

Flatbreads of choice

A few green chillies, finely sliced

For the spice mix (optional)

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp chilli powder (strength up to you)

½ tsp ground coriander

¼ tsp each cinnamon, ground fenugreek

Pinches of asafoetida, allspice and cloves

Heat your pressure cooker and your choice of oil or butter. Add whole spices and saute until they start to snap, crackle pop, then add the onion, garlic and curry powder or spice mix. Stir for a minute or two, until the spices form a bit of a paste, then add the spinach. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Stir the frozen blocks of spinach to deglaze the base of the cooker. When you can see steam coming off the spinach, close your lid. If you are very nervous, you can add a little water – no more than 50ml, first, but I never find it necessary. Bring your cooker up to high pressure, then adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain pressure, then cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally.

Return to a low heat and remove the lid. Stir to break up the blocks of spinach – you should find that it forms into a thick texture, not remotely watery. Stir in the crème fraiche and half the cheese, and keep stirring until the cheese has melted into the spinach.

Cut the eggs in half and push into the spinach. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese and either put the lid on to help the cheese melt, or make sure your pressure cooker handles are covered in a double layer of foil and place under a grill. If you are making in an electric pressure cooker which has an air fryer lid, you can use that too.

Serve in shallow bowls with a sprinkling of coriander and flatbreads.

NOTE: Hardboiling eggs – you can do this one of two ways in the pressure cooker – either put a piece of fabric in the base to stop the eggs rattling around, add 1 cm of water and place room temperature eggs on top. Bring up to high pressure and cook for 2 – 2.5 minutes depending on size, then fast release. OR steam them in a steamer basket instead at low pressure. For a hardboiled egg you will need 4 minutes. You can also lightly wrap them in foil, put in the steamer basket and add to the pressure cooker while the spinach cooks if you want to cook everything together.

Carrot Halwa

This used to take me hours! I learned the long way, which involves several stages of constant stirring, but the pressure cooker really helps speed things up. It also helps cut down on the amount of sugar you need to add, because cooking carrots in the pressure cooker really enhances their sweetness. So does cooking in the butter in place of milk. It feels like the same principle as my tomato soup recipe – the butter works as a flavour enhancer, as well as firming up the texture as it cools and really helps bring out the sweetness.

You will notice a MASSIVE range in the amount of sugar that can be added to the carrots. Shariq prefers it with the smallest amount, my mother-in-law preferred with the largest and I am somewhere in between – around 50g. I would recommend starting with the smallest amount and increasing it until it tastes sweet dessert instead of sweet carrots side dish.

I serve this room temperature but always add the toppings at the last minute as you don’t want the butter to set on top and it keeps it much fresher looking. You can also serve it with ice cream or pouring cream and/or with little biscuits on the side.

Ingredients:

50g butter

500g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

4 cardamom pods

Ground cardamom to taste (optional)

35-100g sugar according to taste

75g single cream

To serve:

50g raisins, sultanas or cranberries

50g nibbed pistachios or flaked almonds

25g butter

25g jaggery or light soft brown sugar

A few dried rose petals if you have them for decoration

Heat your pressure cooker and add the butter. When it is foaming and giving off steam, add the carrots, the cardamom pods and a pinch of salt. Stir for a couple of minutes. Make sure plenty of steam is still being generated, then close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure, then cook for 5 minutes. Fast release – you do this because you don’t want all the steam condensing back into the cooker.

Remove the cardamom pods and mash or roughly blend the carrots and the buttery juices around them – there shouldn’t be much liquid in the pan. Taste a tiny bit to see whether the cardamom is pronounced enough. It should be present, but not overwhelming. Add a little ground if you think it needs it. Add the sugar and cream to the carrots and stir over a low to medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Taste and add more sugar if you like. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens and looks glossy – you should be easily able to forge a clean path through it – and the sugar and carrots will start to taste caramelised. This doesn’t take long at all at this stage!

Transfer to a container and cool to room temperature, then chill in the fridge – this will help firm up the texture further.

You can serve warm, chilled or at room temperature. I prefer the latter so remove from the fridge a couple of hours before I want to serve it. To make the garnishes, put the dried fruit in your pressure cooker and cover with 50ml water or fruit juice. Bring up to high pressure, immediately remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally – you will have lovely soft, plumped up fruit.

Heat the butter or ghee in a small frying pan. Stir in the jaggery or soft light brown sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the fruit and nuts until glossy. Spoon the halwa into small bowls (it is rich, you don’t need much) and spoon over the fruit and nuts and any pan juices.

Variations:

You can flavour the carrots with anything you like– a generous pinch of saffron is my favourite, whereas my husband likes ground ginger and my son wants cinnamon with the cardamom. If I make it with ginger, I will add finely chopped stem or crystallised ginger to the garnish too.

The Week in Pressure Cooking….

I was on the last week of my new book’s photoshoot and also came down with another stinking cold so in terms of pressure cooking there has been a lot of using it to reheat leftovers (dinner one night was a leftover chicken casserole which I took in its entirety because it had mushrooms in it and the photoshoot was still filled with mushroom haters. I did suggest picking them out which was met with horror. “But the flavour will still be mushroomy!”). There is no longer any broth left in the freezer (chicken finished end of last week, birria last night, just what I badly needed). It has been a time for comforting soups and dals. We have all wanted more Dadi food - anything that can be scooped up with a flatbread. So had a very good channa dal the other night, along with a Chicken Liver Yassa, a Caribbean style white sweet potato and cauliflower curry with a side of chickpeas and a sesame brown rice.

The thermoses - a noodle dish, a sausage and potato dish, a savoury rice, a pasta dish…..Lilly is complaining about too much pasta and of course Adam’s favourite thermos meal is pasta so I am trying to balance that one without creating extra work for myself. Children. I love them, but.

And finally, I cooked the last of these, finished for another year.