If this Eid gets your goat, I’ve got your back

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

It’s that time of year again when your inner vegetarian makes its annual appearance to remind you that butchering was never on your top 10 — no, top 100 — list of dream careers.

Deciding which bits of your now-pet Vincent van Goat (or Elle Cowchino, as the case may be) will end up as tomorrow’s karahi gosht (or Nihari beef), let’s face it, isn’t the ideal way to go about it. a festive occasion. when freshly cut clothes do the talking and blow-dried hair awaits you.

Blood, bones and meat

Both karachi gosht and beef nihari may dazzle the sun with their culinary finesse, but to participate in their culmination at this embryonic stage of the cooking process (sorting the blood-soaked pieces of goat into plastic bags and dumping them in deep freeze) Well, that’s better left to someone else. Not only did you spend a week emptying and defrosting that freezer (a task you should definitely and actively wish upon your worst enemies), now you have to fill it with that special smell of raw meat that once was Vincent van Goat , and then pass the next three months without eating anything else. Of course, you don’t dare speak out loud about your treacherous vegetarian tendencies to the elders of the family, lest you end up following the same path as Vincent.

If you work in a kitchen with many volunteers on whose sad shoulders fall the sorting and labeling of meat, I suggest you quickly choose the “label” part of the job, which, involving just a plastic bag and a marker, will At least leave you with a desperate, furtive search for those K-95 masks. If you’ve historically been weary of meat-related jobs, this is not the year to boldly announce that you’ve mended your errant ways. Someone will take you at your word and you can say goodbye to the label forever.

Of course, there’s no escaping food-related trauma on this festive occasion, because once you’ve passed the meat factory in the morning, you might as well come from a family that believes there can be no better meal for lunch than kaleji ka salan (not exactly Nihari’s culinary finesse, I’m afraid), or fried steaks that are mostly bone and contain about a person of meat. If you’re lucky enough to be spared the cleats and steaks at home, you’ll likely be visited by someone who reveals their cleats with Dynamo’s flair for pulling an ace out of thin air. In return, your host will expect a standing ovation and the obligatory consumption of at least one dish. And don’t think the difficulties end there, by the way, unless your kinship web ends with that one kaleji-loving family.

Once you’ve completed your Oscar-winning nutritional performance, you’ll need to reset it for each house you visit. In this case, I have no useful advice. I only offer my deepest apologies.

(I’ve since been informed that kaleji is actually a little crazy in the nutrition department and keeps those red blood cells pumping iron, so please don’t follow me for health advice.)

Sly inoffensive alternatives

For those of you who want to go rogue and cook chicken but don’t want to risk being surrounded by your family, there are still ways you can survive qurbani gosht. You can always throw your turkey meat into the food processor and turn it into qeema for lasagna. If boneless beef can survive a sojourn in the food processor while turning it into shamikabab, it can certainly do the same to produce qeema lasagna. I tried it successfully with chicken (one day I forgot to take the qeema) and both the chicken and the food processor survived with no ill effects. Cook your stuffed lasagna the same way you cook your qeema lasagna and throw it into the food processor. Just don’t get carried away and drop a whole kilo at once. this is how food processors die. (Don’t ask me how I know.) Do it in three sections. Once you have the desired consistency, assemble your lasagna as you always do. If you have never made lasagna in your life, check out any Pakistani food channel for recipes. Do not attempt western (or even Italian) sources. we must bravely sacrifice authenticity if we have any hope of taste here. Go overboard with the garlic and you can even reduce that special raw meat flavor by the tiniest of fractions.

Once you survive all of this hideous cuisine, what you deserve is the dessert gold medal. Forget buying a standard valve tender from a bakery. Baking is healing and today you’ve earned it in spades. For me, the ultimate reward dessert is a Hummingbird bakery cold caramel pecan cheesecake. Google your heart out and get to work.

If you’ve never made cheesecake before, don’t put it off. Cheesecake doesn’t need to bother with baking powder or baking soda and is generally forgiving, as long as you remember to cook it in another pan of hot water so it doesn’t burst. And most important of all – I can’t stress this enough – don’t serve it to your guests. These egotists won’t spare you a crumb, not even serial gym goers who otherwise fear cheesecake. This beautiful dessert is yours for the taking. Save it and don’t let it go.

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