Rest assured I am no glutton, but when it comes to good mutton meat dishes, I tend to ignore the doctor’s advice. This is especially true if good friends join me in trying out a new or better still, a well-tested eatery. Moderation is a rule I seldom break. So it was last week.

A dear friend from Scotland, who I teasingly call Jock, was ‘back home’ with his family and insisted that he wanted to have ‘desi’ mutton, something he craves for in the highlands, not that better meat than ours is not available in that cold remoteness. It is the ‘desi’ thing that pulls every Pakistani's heart.

Being that my column seems to make people believe that I do know a shade or two about food, he asked me to accompany him. So I took them to Dera Restaurant in Qadhafi Stadium. This is one place where genuine chefs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa operate, and how well they produce their wares is amazing.

My order for six persons was Mutton Sajji, with Baluchi rice, a Mutton Shinwari Karahi and Mutton Sulaimani Joints.

Ufff, it was lethal all this mutton, served with genuine Frontier ‘khameeri roti’ and salads and lots of yogurt. The service was reasonably efficient. Mind you this is one place where you can order online before you get there. Amazing how people you least expect to benefit from technology are using it the most. Back to the meal.

The first thing to attract me was the mutton ‘sajji’. It virtually was like cream and came off the bone happily.

Consumed with this amazing Baluchi rice it was what my children call ‘Wow’. Happily it does not have chilies of any sort save a light dabbing of white pepper, never the black version. The taste is great.

Then I wanted to try the Shinwari Karahi, and it was also low on spices and cooked with yogurt. It just melted in the mouth. The gravy came thick and fast and soaked into the ‘khameeri roti’. By this time my eye pupils had begun to dilate as I lovingly looked at the Sulaimani Joints in a light ‘masalla’. Just one was enough to make me regret why I had not started with this dish. Great.

For sweets they served my favourite ‘firni’. It seems the Pathans make better ‘firni’ than us Lahoris. They keep a balance on the sweetness, yet load it with scented additions. We took our meals with Peshawari ‘kavah’ and even that was special. Seldom have I enjoyed such a delicious outing.

Let me mark this ‘eating out’ experience on the Michelin Scale of one to nine. For food taste it gets a massive eight out of nine, for food quality seven (they have their own ‘desi bakray’ farm and personally handle meat preparation), for presentation six is appropriate, for quality of service six, for quality of crockery and cutlery seven (posh stuff, I say), the ambiance gets six, the prices get five (no cheap place this, but in fairness appropriate) and for variety in the menu six.

This means they get an Average Eating Out score of 6.4 out of nine. Now this is good, though I have been a wee bit strict on them. Genuinely highly recommended. How was that Jock?

On halwas

Of recent I have been travelling a lot, and everywhere I go the one Pakistani sweet available in almost every store is the ‘soan halwa’, the ‘habshi halwa’ and the ‘Multani halwa’. It seems these three ‘halwas’ are available, invariably tinned, in every country where Pakistanis live.

I have an Indian friend who keeps requesting for ‘habshi halwa’ via anyone going to Delhi. In return he sends ‘kajoo ke barfi’ which I like. This is now available in one good Lahore sweet shop. Seems Lahoris are slowly returning to cow-milk sweets, more for health reasons. But then nothing like the heavy buffalo milk ‘Rafique ke barfi’ from the original shop in Lal Khoo. Phew!

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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