Pakistani food is underrepresented and misunderstood, say the authors of three forthcoming cookbooks that highlight the South Asian cuisine, spotlighting dishes that may be unfamiliar even to those who appreciate foods from India.
Umair Khan, who coauthored Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen (Sasquach, Mar.) with his wife, Zareen Khan, says that a newfound interest in Pakistan as a culinary travel destination has ignited broad curiosity in the cuisine. “Mark Wiens called Pakistani food the best food he’s ever had,” Umair says of the popular travel YouTuber. “Vloggers and TikTokkers with millions of followers have proclaimed Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad as ‘in.’ ”
The couple’s book focuses on dishes from their hometown of Karachi, a port city on the Arabian Sea; an early chapter leads readers on a midnight food crawl through its streets. It also draws on Zareen’s Indian Memoni Muslim roots: her mother grew up in Mumbai and her father, in Gujarat. Chicken Memoni samosas, filled with minced meat seasoned by an herby paste, are a bestseller at Zareen’s, the Khans’ Silicon Valley fast casual chain with a cult following among South Asian tech workers.
In Pakistan (Hardie Grant, Mar.), journalist Maryam Jillani takes a wider geographic approach. Jillani, who grew up in Islamabad and now lives in Manila, traveled across her home country to collect 100 recipes that span dozens of subcuisines: they include Giyaling, a whole-grain crepe dish from the Hunza Valley in the mountainous northern region of Gilgit-Baltistan; aush (ground beef and noodle soup) from Baluchistan, which also straddles Iran and Afghanistan; and chicken tikka from Punjab, which was split during partition. “Pakistani cuisine is the sum of its communities, and there’s a lot more to Pakistani food than dishes from Urdu-speaking states,” Jillani says. She includes desserts such as Black Forest cake and a trifle, European sweets that were introduced through colonization. “Both of these dishes have enjoyed such a long history in Pakistan that, for the purposes of the book, they are Pakistani.”
Yasmin Khan’s Sabzi (Norton, Aug.) began as a project to reimagine the traditional Pakistani and Iranian dishes that Khan grew up with for her vegetarian partner. Pakistani cuisine is meat heavy, she concedes, but also draws on a rich tradition of crop cultivation. Her recipes upend the notion “that vegetarian dishes can’t be hearty, filing, and comforting,” she says. Broccoli and lentil salad with curried tahini and dates nods to her Persian and South Asian roots; a mung bean, tomato, and spinach dal elevates an everyday Pakistani pulse.
Iranian and Palestinian foods, Khan says, are well represented in food media—and much credit belongs to her, as the author of The Saffron Tales and Zaitoun—but Pakistani foods are less so. “There’s such a diversity of food on the Subcontinent, and it’s a joy to see so many authors celebrating that diversity. It will only enrich everyone’s kitchens.”
