Pasta & Nihari In The Italian Countryside
Fatema NuruddinI plop the plastic bag on the kitchen counter, the contents clinking together. Panic bubbles up as I take in the unfamiliar kitchen around me.
Do you have a pressure cooker?
He nods and wanders off, his footsteps echoing in the empty bed and breakfast.
I pull open every drawer until I find a knife.
I call my mom. She picks up on the first ring.
Beta, where are you? Are you traveling with your friend?
I tell her plans have changed. My friend had to go home last minute, and I’ve now spontaneously decided to volunteer in the Italian countryside.
But what I don’t mention is that I ended up taking 3 local buses and an overnight ferry from Albania without knowing where I was going to stay. I don’t tell her that train strikes and cancelled ride shares left me stranded on the side of the road for hours. I don’t tell her that not only am I this bed & breakfast’s first volunteer, I am also their only guest.
I also conveniently forget to mention that there’s nothing but rolling hills for miles, and that the only way in and out is by riding shotgun in my host’s clunky old white van.
Instead, I ask her how to cook nihari.
It’s not a FaceTime, but I can picture the confusion splash across her face.
After all, I’m in a country that is known for their culinary excellence, and here I am, embarking on a quest to craft a complicated meal I’ve never made before.
I fill her in on the conversation I had with my host this morning over espresso. He wanted to learn more about my Pakistani culture. Before I knew it, I was whisked away to his local grocery store, hunting the right cut of meat and gathering spices in unfamiliar packaging.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that my cooking skills are limited to following instructions on boxes.
She sends me a link to the YouTube video she made a few years ago on how to make the perfect bowl of nihari. After repeatedly consoling her that I am, indeed safe, I rewatch her video again and again until her Urdu plays on a comforting loop in my head.
I close the tab and increase the volume as I press shuffle on my Anuv Jain playlist. As his sweet voice and strums of guitar fill the air, my host returns with a dusty pressure cooker in his hands.
You’re really in touch with your culture, huh? Not something I’d expect from a young American.
I nod with a tight lipped smile. As I wrap my scarf tighter around me, I can’t help but feel like a fraud. Sure, I listen to a few catchy songs from the subcontinent. But what does that matter if I can’t hold a conversation in Urdu with my own grandmother for more than a few minutes?
As I nervously stir the pot, worried the liquid isn’t thickening as it’s supposed to, my Italian grandmother wobbles over to me. She inspects the pot. We don’t share a language either, but found that we can both piece together broken fragments of Spanish.
Es picante?
I place my thumb and pointer finger slight apart to show that yes, it’s a bit spicy. I hand her the spice packet to smell, and her eyes widen.
Me vas a matar.
Our giggles fill the room as I tell her not to worry, and that I won’t add that much in - she’ll live.
She leaves the room to lie down, and I’m alone again.
I guard the pot as if my entire culture is simmering inside. It’s a bridge between a random Italian family and my roots in a faraway land, which I try to grasp at as best as I can through online Preply language classes and renewed library books on the Partition.
The table is cleared, glasses filled with water, clean plates carefully set. With a deep breath, I hesitantly place my first pot of nihari directly in the center. My host brings over a fresh loaf of bread. I instruct them to dip it in the thick brown liquid and tear off pieces of the tender meat.
I carefully watch their faces as they taste Pakistani cuisine for the very first time.
Despite their kind words, it’s only until the next day that I get the real verdict - my host adds my leftover stew to his fresh orecchiette pasta.
That tells me more than words ever could.