Comment by Riaz Haq on June 19, 2016 at 7:32am

An Overview of Poultry Industry in Pakistan by J. HUSSAIN, RABBANI, S. ASLAM and H.A. AHMAD:


Pakistan industry still attained 127% growth in the total number of birds produced, 126% growth in the total meat production and 71%growth in terms of total eggs produced between 2000 and 2010 (GOP, 2013). The reason behind this extraordinary growth is the existence of the strong base of this industry inPakistan. Presently the cheapest available sources of animal protein in Pakistan are the eggs and meat from the poultry sector (PPA, 2013a). 


Despite showing excellent potential and growth over the years, per capita availability of poultry meat in Pakistan is still 5 kg and 51 eggs per year, compared to developed countries where these figures are 41 kg meat and 300 eggs (PPA, 2013b). According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the average daily requirement for animal protein is 27 g per person, whereas in Pakistan it is only 17 g (Memon, 2012). Out of this 17 g,the share of proteins from poultry is just 5 g, causing a gap of 10 g per person per day. If calculated on an annual basis, bearing in mind the present population of Pakistan (180million), this gap is 788,000 t of meat. In the national meat pool the share of beef and mutton is either constant or decreasing steadily and the poultry sector has the potential tofill this gap


Poultry production has increased its share steadily in the total meat pool of the country(Figure 5). In 1971, the market share of beef was 61%, mutton was 37%, and poultry meat a mere 2-2.5% (GOP, 2013). In 2010 the market share of poultry meat had increased to 25%, whereas beef and mutton had reduced to 55% and 20%respectively (GOP, 2013). It was this dynamic increase in the overall magnitude of poultry sector that decreased the gap between the supply and demand of animal proteins in Pakistan, and also assisted in stabilising beef and mutton prices, making meat affordable to most of the Pakistani population.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285673061_An_overview_of_p...

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 19, 2016 at 9:34am

Pulse (Daal) crops in Pakistan:

Understanding the importance of pulses United Nations ‘s(UN) 68th General Assembly declared “2016” as “International Year of Pulses”.

Pulses are cultivated all over the world but in Pakistan it is being cultivated on 5% of total cultivated area of crops and chickpea,black gram,mung bean.pigeon pea, mash,masoor and few others are grown.

In Pakistan pulses are grown on 1.5 million hectors of land. Chickpea play a vital role in country’s pulses production as it is cultivated on 73% of the total area occupied by pulses cultivation and its contribution to the total pulses production is 76% while mash and masoor consumes 2%( each )of

area under pulses cultivation and share 1.4% in total pulses production.

Mung Bean an easily digestible item is one of the important pulse crop of Pakistan, it is mainly grown in southern parts of Punjab and Sindh. Punjab alone provides 88% area for its cultivation and share 85% in its total production in the country.

On an average every Pakistani consumes 6-7 kg of pulses annually which shows the interest of Pakistani people in pulses which is increasing demand and supply gap as Pakistan doesn’t have enough domestic production to meet the requirement of its country men, its domestic production of pulses was 0.45 million tonnes in 2014 which was 0.75 million tonns in 2013 much lower than demand.

Pakistan spent $139.096 million of foreign exchange in the fiscal year 2010-2011 to meet the domestic requirements of pulses by importing 628.508 thousand tonnes of pulses. 444.7776 thousand tonnes were imported during 2009-2010 according to available reports, these reports show increasing import trend as country spent $224.135 million in July2014-january 2015 and imported 370,181 metric tonns compared to $165.160 million in July2013-January2014 and imported volume of 262,509 metric tonnes, Country’s import volume of pulses was raised by 32.41 % as 63,130 metric tonnes were imported in January 2015 compared to 47,679 metric tonnes in same period of 2014.

Pakistan is mainly depended on Canada,Australia,Burma,Tanzania,Euthiopia to full fill the domestic requirement of pulses which is about 0.6 metric tonnes every year.

Major challenges faced by pulses sector in Pakistan are, farmers get lower prices for their outputs due to this farmers are switching to another crops for their bread and butter, role of middle men, lack of modern technology, machinery ,improper harvesting, improper sowing,delay or early sowing of seeds, non certified seeds, less resistant varieties of pulses, lack of interest of Government or improper Government policies and lack of research on pulses to increase productions. if work is done on these issues Pakistan will be able to produce and full fill domestic needs and it will also create more employment opportunities where other cash crops cant be grown.

http://www.agricorner.com/status-of-pulses-crops-in-pakistan/

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 12, 2017 at 9:33am

#Halal Guys eatery coming to #SanFrancisco Bay Area with first outlet at Union Square. @BayAreaMuslims http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2017/01/11/san-franciscos-firs... The Halal Guys, New York City’s immensely popular street eats brand, will officially open its first brick-and-mortar in San Francisco on Jan. 27.

 

The new spot, located at 340 O’Farrell St. in the old Naan N Curry, will be the first step in what’s a miniature Bay Area takeover for the East Coast food cart. (They have plans for another spot in Berkeley). Right now, the Halal Guys have 200 locations in development across the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia.

 

We’ve been following the news of Halal Guys setting up shop in the Bay Area for the last few months now. This latest update means they’re less than a month from dishing out those renowned chicken gyros or falafel between Taylor and Mason streets for both Union Square and Tenderloin audiences.

 

Stay tuned for more coverage.

 

Halal Guys: 340 O’Farrell St., Sunday through Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. and Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 4, 2019 at 4:45pm

Michelin-starred #restaurant. New Punjab Club was awarded a Michelin Star, just 18 months after it opened its doors in one of Hong Kong’s prime localities. https://images.dawn.com/news/1181591

LIFESTYLE CONTRIBUTOR

Asim talks about how New Punjab Club became the first Pakistani eatery to earn a Michelin star

33-year-old Syed Asim Hussain recently become the youngest restaurateur in the world to hold two Michelin stars.

In December, his ambitious and extremely personal Pakistani restaurant New Punjab Club was awarded a Michelin Star, just 18 months after it opened its doors in one of Hong Kong’s prime localities.

With this, the New Punjab Club is also the first Pakistani restaurant in the world with a Michelin Star. Hussain’s other Michelin honour has been awarded for his French bistro, Belon.

Hussain shared his excitement about the Michelin honour with Images in an exclusive chat over the phone from Hong Kong, "I feel very proud to have received two stars this year. I sort of expected it for the French restaurant, but to have the New Punjab Club recognised so early on is exciting.

Hussain continues, "It’s the first Pakistani restaurant to have a Michelin Star, and I was just telling my team that we have to make sure it stays. Initially, I was convinced someone was pranking us, or we got a call by mistake. I didn’t believe it until the morning of the awards. It was a cool honour for me personally as well. In some ways, it belongs to my father also, for the work he was doing with his restaurants in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Hong Kong. Still talking about it gives me chills; it sure is hard to believe.”

The New Punjab Club and Belon are just two of the 22 restaurants under the Black Sheep Restaurants umbrella that Hussain co-founded with his business partner, Christopher Mark, in 2012.

Hussain was born in Hong Kong, but spent his formative years in Pakistan when his father, businessman and diplomat Syed Pervaiz Hussain, sent him - at age five - and his six-year-old brother off to boarding school at Lahore’s Aitchison College.

“The key element in the story of the New Punjab Club is nostalgia, of which Aitchison is a very big part of. Everyone at the restaurant knows about the school; they’ve seen pictures. My Aitchison stories have now become their Aitchison stories. So, the 13-14 years I spent there, have helped create the New Punjab Club. The essence that comes from Aitchison is very aristocratic and regal. As a kid, I also spent a lot of time at the Punjab Club in Lahore, which is why I affectionately named the restaurant after it.”

Before opening up the restaurant, the duo already had 15 restaurants to their credit under their group. Yet, Hussain says it wasn’t easy convincing Chris to open up a restaurant that serves Pakistani and Indian cuisine. “Pakistani cuisine is white-labelled all over the world as Indian food. I had been talking to [Chris] about this and had a hard time convincing him. So, I took him to Lahore in 2016, and in a week I showed him around Aitchison, Punjab Club, Gowalmandi, Lakshmi Chowk and even Cocoo’s. I was trying to make him look at this the way I did, to show him that we could build a story around this.”

The research and convincing didn’t end at Lahore. “We then went to London. The city has neighbourhoods that have great Pakistani food, which is not white-labelled as Indian food. We saw great modern Indian restaurants like the renowned Gymkhana, Dishoom, and Indian Accent among many others. This was all part of my attempt to convince him that we could do this - we would tell an original, interesting and sellable story.”

The duo was lucky, and got Chef Palash Mitra, of London’s Gymkhana on board for the restaurant. In Hussain’s words, “Mitra is one of the best South Asian chefs in the world.”

Hussain talked about the hurdles they faced during menu development, “We couldn’t get the seekh kabab right; they weren’t the same as they are in Main Market, Lahore. I then realised the issue was that the diameter of the seekh in Lahore is larger than that in India. So, I got some seekhs from Lahore just for this.”

The young restaurateur is proud to have created a mixed essence of both his school and his hometown in his restaurant. “One special thing about the New Punjab Club is that it isn’t modern, it’s traditional. My father belongs to the generation that doesn’t throw anything away. When his restaurants shut down, they stored everything; including the tandoors he had brought from Pakistan. So I took those out, restored them, and have been using them here. The essence of Punjabi cuisine is in the tandoor, so anything that comes out of it, is the star of the show among the customers, be it protein or kababs.”

But the New Punjab Club isn’t easy to get into. It is a high-end, premium restaurant that, in Hussain’s own words, costs a person $100 on average. It is also almost impossible to get a table there, he says.

Another interesting aspect of the restaurant is the fact that the paintings displayed are works of some of the biggest artists of the South Asian region, from the legendary Saeed Akhtar to AS Rind and Mughees Riaz, to name a few. And all of these paintings come from Hussain’s personal collection. “The restaurant represents Pakistan, post-liberation. There is a whole theme to it that is regal and aristocratic. Waiters wear beautiful safari suits in the summer and short sherwanis in winter. I got them designed exclusively by Bareeze. When you walk through the doors, you’ll feel you’re not in modern day Hong Kong, but transported to some other place, in another time,” Hussain says, dissecting the ambiance.

Hussain is part of the fourth generation of his family in Hong Kong, that has been there for about a 100 years. His great-grandfather moved to Hong Kong after World War I. “My father was raised in Hong Kong. His first language is Cantonese, which he speaks better than Urdu and Punjabi, or even English. He had a burning desire to send his children to Pakistan. Today, looking back, they had correctly felt that we would lose our connection to Pakistan.”

Hussain appears to be a hardcore Lahori at heart. “Lahore is in my blood. If you meet me in Hong Kong and ask where I’m from, I’ll say Lahore.”

Sharing fond memories of Lahore and his school, Hussain remembers himself to, although do well in school, also be a naughty boy. “I got into a lot of trouble too. I remember running away when I was in class 7 or 8, to go to the zoo, Lakshmi Chowk to eat takatak, and even Cocoo’s Den with friends on foggy winter nights in A-levels. I would also go out to get qeemay-wali naan from somewhere on The Mall Road. All these things in some shape or form are represented in the New Punjab Club. Lahore is a big part of my identity, who I am, and what I do. In a lot of ways, the restaurant should have been the first to have opened up when I started Black Sheep Restaurants six years ago. But its story is so personal and important to me, that maybe back then, I didn’t have the confidence. It’s like a filmmaker making a personal film, or a writer telling a personal story. Maybe I needed the confidence to tell the story,” he reminisces.

After finishing school, Hussain went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to study finance. After graduating in 2007, he says he wasn’t sure about what he wanted to do.

“Everyone else was working at an investment bank, so thought I should do too. I moved to New York, picked up a job and lived there for five years. But the pull to move back to Hong Kong started getting stronger and stronger.”

A serial entrepreneur, his father owned a restaurant called The Mughal Room, which remained very popular with the Hong Kong elite through the ‘80s and ‘90s. “I grew up in and around the restaurant. Every summer, my brother and I would go back to Hong Kong from Aitchison and work at the restaurant. This went on until I was 17. So, if I look back the seed was planted then,” Hussain explains how and when he found out he wanted to open his own restaurant one day.

“My father did okay, but I saw him struggling with his restaurants; he wasn’t doing well. This is, in some way, me picking up from where he left off, putting right his wrongs. I know, in some way it’s a continuation of the story he was trying to tell in Hong Kong in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In fact, on the New Punjab Club menu, one of the dishes is affectionately named after his restaurant. I’ve called it ‘The Mughal Room Makhani.’”

Finally having had enough of his investment banking job in New York, Hussain quit and returned to Hong Kong in 2010, with a burning desire to work in a restaurant and to pick up where his father had left off. This led to a two-year apprenticeship with a prominent restaurant group, which as compared to his finance job, he found difficult and humbling. “I was 26 at that time. It was challenging, difficult and scary, but deep down, I knew this is what I wanted to do, that this is where I belong. This is also where I met my business partner Chris, who was group chef for that group of restaurants. We talked about what we both wanted to do and I thought we had similar ideas. And rest, as they say, is history.”

Since the New Punjab Club opened its doors 18 months ago, Hussain and Chris have opened up six more eateries. Running 22 restaurants in only six years is no mean feat, but Hussain derived the motivation from his love for food, art and storytelling. “When you’re small, the goal is survival. The idea was always to bring personal stories to life. I think a lot of our restaurants are extensions of us as people, inspired by our travels, childhood memories, incidents, people, or a particular time in history. I look at these restaurants as story books; I almost have an abstract romantic view of how restaurants are created, I look at them as art pieces.”

With both father and son having experience with restaurants, one wonders why the father failed, and what the son has that the father didn’t. “We both have doggedness. You knock me down 10 times and I’ll get up 10 times. My father was a hard-worker and I learnt a lot from him, but he didn’t have mystique, magic, nostalgia and romance. That’s how I look at restaurants.”

Hussain claims to be a big foodie himself, of course, and says; even if he wasn’t running so many restaurants he’d still be travelling for food and trying out various cuisines. However, he has a hard time choosing what his favourite type of food is. “I travel a lot and eat everything. But the food at the New Punjab Club is very nostalgic. They say food memory is emotional, so that is what it is for me. It reminds me of Lahore, Aitchison, being a teen in Pakistan in the ‘90s. I’m a big eater and love eating. I always come back to Pakistani food.”

Besides running his string of restaurants and planning new ones, Hussain tries to play sports in the little time he gets in between. “I played a lot of sports since Aitchison, and music is also a big part of who I am, but this is mostly everything. I would be lying if I said I had other passions that I pursue.”

The future for his Black Sheep Restaurants looks bright, but Hussain still has no plans to come up with something in Lahore, or Pakistan. They recently opened up their first restaurant outside Hong Kong, in Shanghai, back in the summer. Their next stop is Paris. “I’m not sure about Pakistan. If we do something there, it’ll be something more ambitious than a restaurant. I have other compelling ideas for Lahore, Pakistan, in the hospitality business, something more ambitious.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 23, 2020 at 7:48pm

#Curry’s Journey From #Pakistan to the #Caribbean : Trace curry's journey around the world. Curry originated as early as 2500 BCE in what is modern-day Pakistan. It has since evolved into a truly global food. | CNN Travel

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/curry-origins-history/index.html

In 2019, ubiquitous Japanese curry house chain CoCo Ichibanya restaurant announced plans to bring its popular "curry rice" to India in 2020.

It might seem counter-intuitive to eat CoCo Ichibanya's relatively mild, sweet Japanese dish in the land of curry.
But the move underscores the sheer variety and complexity of curry -- a word that's long been misunderstood.

Curry is not a single spice, nor is it related to the namesake curry tree (though the leaves are used in many dishes in India).
The catch-all umbrella term refers to a "spiced meat, fish or vegetable stew," either freshly prepared as a powder or spice paste or purchased as a ready-made mixture," writes Colleen Sen in her book "Curry: A Global History."
According to Sen's book, the word curry most likely comes from a misunderstanding of the southern Indian word "kari," which "denoted a spiced dish of sauteed vegetables and meat."

"In the 17th century, the Portuguese [who colonized Goa in western India] took the word to mean a 'spiced stew' over rice and 'kari' eventually became 'caril' or 'caree' in Portuguese, then 'curry' in English," Sen tells CNN Travel.
Curry, which is thought to have originated as early as 2500 BCE in what is modern-day Pakistan, has since evolved into a truly global food, having traveled the world through colonization and immigration, indentured labor, trade and entrepreneurship.
Today, curry is everywhere, from chicken tikka masala in the UK to fiery green curry in Thailand, kare raisu in Japan and curry goat in Jamaica.
"I don't think there's a place in the world that doesn't have some kind of curry," says Sen.
If you're a curry lover, follow your cravings around the world by heading to these 12 destinations:

India, Japan, Jamaica, Pakistan, Thailand, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, South Korea, Caribbean, UK.

Established in 1947 following the end of British colonial rule and the violent partition of India, Pakistan sees strong influences from the Mughals (a Muslim dynasty that ruled India from the early 16th to the mid-18th century) in its cuisine.
This majority Muslim country tends to prepare dishes with beef, chicken or fish as well as lots of spices, such as nutmeg, cumin, turmeric, bay leaves, cardamom and black pepper.

Curry is incredibly popular, with dozens of varieties on offer all over the country, from famous slow-cooked haleem (a stew-like dish of wheat, barley, meat, lentils and spices) to spicy karahi (made with garlic, spices, vinegar, tomatoes and onions with mutton or chicken), bitter gourd curry, saag (a spiced puree of spinach and mustard greens), chickpea curry and daal chawal, a must-try comfort food usually served with rice or roti.

The list doesn't end there: Don't miss a warming aloo gosht (meat and potato curry); hearty, rich mutton korma; lobia daal (black-eyed peas curry); and goat paya, a slow-cooked curry starring incredibly tender trotters.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 10, 2020 at 9:19am

#Pakistan‘s Shan masalas have a cult following in #India despite erratic supply chain. A fan says: "we just love the way it makes cooking glorious, rich, complex kormas and biryanis easy" #food #cuisine #art #culture #cooking #gourmet #SouthAsia https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/why-shan-masalas-have...

Each time the supply of this particular masala blend becomes erratic in Bengaluru, foodie groups on Facebook and WhatsApp start buzzing. “I found two packets of Sindhi Biryani Masala at Aishwarya supermarket in Koramangala." “Mega More on Sarjapur Road has Haleem and Bombay Biryani." “Amazon has some varieties but they are only selling packs of 8, anyone want to split up the order?"

Over the past decade, Shan, a packaged masala brand from Pakistan, has slowly invaded Indian kitchens. Fans of Shan follow developments in India-Pakistan relations with a hawk eye, because often, escalating tensions at the border seem to result in the supply of Pakistani products in India becoming sparse and unpredictable. Last year, a few days after the attack on Indian forces in Pulwama, my husband turned to me and said, “How are we doing on Shan?", a quiver of anxiety in his voice. I had stocked up on the biryani and korma masalas, I assured him, but we were running low on the haleem.

More than a year later, the Shan Haleem masala remains elusive (maybe it’s the covid-19 effect this time) and my annual haleem-making adventure during Ramzan had to be put on hold. Friends in Mumbai and Delhi, however, say Shan is “more or less available" in their cities. This felt patently unfair and I recently discovered why Bengaluru had these periodic shortages. According to an interview with Shan Foods’ founder Sikander Sultan by the Economic Times in 2014, while the company has made inroads into the north-Indian market and was even leading in certain sub-categories within the packaged masala blend segment, they hadn’t expanded to “some geographies like the south."

The company, it seems, is not actively distributing the product in southern Indian cities, and it’s only thanks to some enterprising retailers that a few of the masala varieties are available at all in Bengaluru, and this naturally suffers when the overall supply falls because of border tensions.

If Mr Sultan ever reads this, he should know that he is losing out on a lucrative and highly motivated market. “I have asked my sister to courier them to me from Delhi," says Bengaluru-based food consultant and writer Monika Manchanda. “I’ve been looking for them all over town but they seem to have disappeared from the shelves." I recently reached out to a seller on Amazon that stocks Shan but sells them only in 8 packs of a single variety and asked if they would customise an 8-pack for me. They did, and just a couple of days ago a carton of Shan made its way home (two each of the Bombay Biryani, Korma, Chicken, and Nihari masalas, if you want to know).

But what’s so special about Shan masalas in the first place, ask the uninitiated, sounding skeptical—isn’t it like any other meat masala that you sprinkle on top of your curry for that extra flavour and restaurant-like taste? “Just because it’s Pakistani?" a full-of-nationalistic-fervour neighbour recently asked me when I was extolling Shan’s virtues on a WhatsApp group, possibly suspecting me of deliberately snubbing made-in-India atmanirbhar products.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 21, 2020 at 9:13pm

#Pakistani ingredient making all the difference in #Indian food. Ranjana Kumar’s mutton & chicken korma curries are the talk of the town in #NewDelhi...a secret ingredient she's been using for over a decade — Shan Foods’ spice mixes — comes from #Pakistan https://www.arabnews.com/node/1722776#.X0CaQt0Ab-A.twitter

The Shan Foods company sells spice mixes in 65 countries including India, a nation with whom Pakistan shares decades of enmity that is dominated by their territorial dispute over Kashmir. They have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.
“I wasn’t aware it’s a Pakistani brand,” Kumar told Arab News, saying her family loved dishes cooked with Shan spices and that she always kept extra stock of the mixes at home. “How does it matter whether it is Pakistani or Indian? The taste is good. Both the neighbors share the same taste and culture and I feel both countries should have access to their products,” she added.
Kumar’s family is a supporter of India’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under whose rule the already brittle ties with Pakistan have deteriorated further in recent years.
Even so, Kumar said, there was no harm in using Pakistani products.
“Both India and Pakistan share the same history, same past, and the same taste. What’s wrong if we get Pakistani products in our kitchen or house? This should be promoted so that both countries could understand each other better.”
One shop owner said that, although he did not like selling Pakistani brands, customers came asking for Shan spices.
“I don’t like to keep the brand, but customers demand it,” Naresh Sankhla told Arab News at his New Delhi grocery store. “That’s why I keep it. I reluctantly sell this brand from the enemy country, but there is demand for it. I must be selling around 150 packets of Shan (spices) every month.”
Others say that, despite the brand’s popularity, they put India first.
“I have stopped distributing the Shan brand last year after Pakistan’s involvement in the Pulwama tragedy,” New Delhi-based distributor Gaurav Gupta told Arab News, referring to last year’s attack in a town in the Indian part of Kashmir in which 50 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed. New Delhi has blamed Pakistan-based groups for the assault. The Pakistan government denies any official complicity.
Despite his official words, however, quick market research showed that Gupta’s company remains one of the main sellers of Shan’s products.
Rafat Shahab, who runs a catering company, regretted such negative attitudes and said that culinary exchanges needed to be encouraged despite the two countries’ political differences.
“I used the Shan brand a lot whenever I got orders for parties or special occasions,” she told Arab News. “It brings an authentic taste in the food. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have that kind of relationship with Pakistan. Politics should not come in the way of people’s contacts and culinary exchanges.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2020 at 8:31pm

Asafoetida (Heeng): The smelly spice #India loves but never grew. It's imported from #Afghanistan, #Iran. Known to battle flatulence, it is often recommended in recipes that involve gassy foods such as lentils (daal) or beans. #Ayurveda #Gas https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54617077

Asafoetida, a smelly, acrid spice beloved by Indians, has been used to lace their food for centuries. But it was never cultivated in the region - until now.

Last week, scientists planted about 800 saplings of the plant in Lahaul and Spiti, a cold desert nestled in the Himalayan mountains, exactly two years after India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) imported six varieties of seeds from Iran.

"We are confident it will work," says Dr Ashok Kumar, one of the scientists who painstakingly germinated the seeds in a lab. He says this was necessary because for every 100 seeds, only two sprout. The plant, it turns out, has a vexing habit of going dormant.

"It goes to sleep to adapt to harsh conditions," Dr Kumar says.

Asafoetida, or hing as it's commonly known in India, is a perennial, flowering plant that largely grows in the wild. It thrives in dry soil in temperatures under 35C. So India's tropical plateaus and plains, humid coast and heavy monsoons rule out much of the country for hing farming.

Instead, Indians rely on imports mostly from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - worth more than $100m in 2019 - to get their fix.

This is surprising news for many Indians who would argue that hing is inherently Indian. For many Hindus and Jains, who don't eat onion and garlic because of dietary restrictions, hing's pungency makes it an ideal substitute.

"I use it in all my dals, and I don't cook them with onion or garlic," says Marryam Reshii, food writer and author of The Flavour of Spice. "When you have hing in your food, that tiny whiff of it... it just tastes so, so great!"

Ms Reshii calls herself a "hing lover" - she even put out a detailed thread earlier this week clarifying the origins and uses of her favourite spice.

She says hing's unique smell, a strong, bitter odour, makes it "unlike any other spice".

It even derives its name from that scent - asafoetida in Latin means "fetid gum". The smell is so strong that raw hing, a greyish-white sticky resin collected from the roots, is dried and mixed with flour - wheat in India's north, rice in the south - to turn it into an edible spice. Wholesalers who import hing use tiny amounts of it to make graded variations that sell in the form of blocks, coarse granules or a fine powder.

Although the Persians once called it "the food of the gods", hing is now barely found in cuisines outside of India. In other parts of the world it's either used for medicinal reasons or as an insecticide! But In India, which, by some estimates, accounts for 40% of the world's hing consumption, it's hard to overstate its role in the kitchen.

A dash of it while cumin seeds and red chillies splutter in hot ghee can make an everyday dal sing. Across the country, it seasons delicately spiced soups (shorbas) and fresh relishes (koshambirs) and spikes leafy greens and vegetables tossed in ginger, turmeric and tomatoes. In the north, Kashmiri Hindus stir it in with lamb, red chillies, fennel and dried ginger to make their classic rogan josh and southerners use it to temper their sambars, a variety of steaming lentil stew topped with mustard seeds and curry leaves. It's what sets apart Kolkata's famed hing kachoris (pastries fried to a crisp) and the fluffy idlis (steamed rice cakes) of the temple town of Kanchipuram.


-------------

But he says Kabuli hing is a "hot-selling" item, while Hadda hing, which is "sweeter and smells of oranges" is the least popular.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2020 at 9:57pm

Meet Hing: The Secret-Weapon Spice Of Indian Cuisine

by Carolyn Beans

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/22/482779599/meet-hing...

The moment my boyfriend — now husband — and I got serious about our future together, my father-in-law got serious about teaching me to cook Indian cuisine. My boyfriend was already skilled in the kitchen. But Dr. Jashwant Sharma wanted extra assurance that the dishes from his native country would always have a place in our home. Plus, as he told me recently, he thought I'd like it.



"We mix four, five, six different spices in a single dish. These create a taste and aroma that you don't get in any other food. People exposed to it usually like it," he said.

Even before our cooking sessions, I knew that cumin and coriander are common ingredients and that turmeric will turn your fingers yellow. Hing, however, was something entirely new to me.

Europeans gave it the decidedly unflattering moniker "devil's dung." Even its more common English name, asafoetida, is derived from the Latin for fetid. Those unaccustomed to it can respond negatively to its strong aroma, a mix of sulfur and onions.


Hing comes from the resin of giant fennel plants that grow wild in Afghanistan and Iran. The resin can be kept pure, but in the States, you mostly find it ground to a powder and mixed with wheat. In The Book of Spice, author John O'Connell describes how Mughals from the Middle East first brought hing to India in the 16th century.

Many Indians use hing to add umami to an array of savory dishes. But for the uninitiated, hing can be a tough sell. Kate O'Donnell, author of The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook, says that she only included hing as an optional spice. "For a Western palette, hing can be shocking," she says

I first encountered hing in one of our early cooking sessions. My father-in-law whipped its well-sealed white plastic bottle out of the cupboard, added a pinch to the pan, and put it back so quickly that I didn't notice the smell. I was most struck by how it bubbled and then dissolved in the hot ghee (clarified butter). And I was a bit skeptical that a pinch of anything could influence a giant pot of lentils liberally seasoned with three other spices.

Later, while experimenting on my own, I got my first full whiff of the spice. To me, the aroma is far from gag-inducing, but it takes a real leap of faith to add it to food. Once you make that leap, magical things happen.

When cooked, hing's pungent odor mellows to a more mild leek- and garlic-like flavor. Some still smell a hint of sulfur, but for many that quality fades entirely. My father-in-law says that hing has a balancing effect on a dish. "It smooths out the aroma of all the other spices and makes them all very pleasant," he says.

Vikram Sunderam, a James Beard Award winner and chef at the Washington, D.C., Indian restaurants Rasika West End and Rasika Penn Quarter, says that he adds hing to lentil or broccoli dishes. But he uses it judiciously.

"Hing is a very interesting spice, but it has to be used in the right quantity," he cautions. "Even a little bit too much overpowers the whole dish, makes it just taste bitter."

Some believe that hing helps with digestion and can ward off flatulence. Perhaps that's why many — including Sunderam — add it to legumes, broccoli and other potentially gas-inducing vegetables.

Some Indians also use it as a substitute for garlic and onions — ingredients discouraged by certain Eastern religions and Ayurvedic medicine.

That substitution makes sense to Gary Takeoka, a food chemist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Takeoka studied hing's volatiles — the chemical compounds that produce smells. "A major proportion of hing's volatiles are sulfur compounds," he explains. "Some of these are similar to the ones found in onions and garlic."

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 27, 2020 at 5:02pm

Taste of #Pakistan in #Montana. University of Montana alum Zohair Bajwa is crowdfunding his dream of bringing Pakistani #food to Missoula."Predominantly we will be serving curry style chicken lentils.. for vegetarian options Samosas are becoming popular" https://www.krtv.com/news/montana-and-regional-news/this-man-aims-t...

There aren’t many opportunities to enjoy Pakistani food here in Missoula - in fact there are none - but one UM alum is trying to change that.

"I think it started with the whole idea of bringing my culture to Missoula," Zeera Food Truck creator Zohair Bajwa said. Bajwa is currently crowdfunding his dream of bringing Pakistani food to Missoula.


There weren’t any options for Pakistani food when Bajwa began attending the University of Montana about a decade ago so he started making it himself and when friends loved the food too he had an idea.

"It was very encouraging to see friends asking hey whens the next time you are going to make food and when can we come over. Just for the cultural aspect guests are always welcome so it was another chance to share my culture," Bajwa said.

So Zohair is looking to start with a food truck named 'Zeera' which will offer a number of dishes. "Predominantly we will be serving curry style chicken lentils for vegetarian options. Samosas are becoming popular here in Montana," Bajwa added.

Currently, Bajwa is crowdfunding to start the food truck and while a first campaign didn’t raise all the money needed, it was promising enough to hope a second will complete the goal.

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