SUMAYYA USMANI'S SINDHI KARRI

In this series, we’re celebrating the world’s best comfort food by asking chefs and food writers to share the dishes they love from their backgrounds. Here, food writer and cookery teacher Sumayya Usmani shares hers as told to TONY NAYLOR

- TONY NAYLOR

When Sumayya Usmani arrived in London in 2005, she felt she couldn’t get a real Pakistani dish in any restaurant. The Karachi-born lawyer was stung by that absence. ‘I felt this need to speak about and identify Pakistani food,’ says Sumayya, who began to write, teach, and – in books such as her 2016 cookbook Summers Under The Tamarind Tree – demystify Pakistani cuisine for a Western audience. Not that this contributor to The Kitchen Café on BBC Radio Scotland is solely focused on South Asian cooking. After quitting the legal profession, Sumayya moved to Glasgow (‘my second home’), where she runs Kaleyard, a non-profit cookery school that offers commercial classes to fund lessons for disadvantaged groups. ‘I wanted Kaleyard to celebrate Glasgow’s multi-ethnicity and sense of community.

‘My dad is a lawyer, but unlike many privileged Pakistanis, we didn’t have a cook. Mum loved cooking, and often did it with my gran, who lived next door. On dad’s side, his mum was “head chef” to five aunts who cooked every meal from scratch. Every woman in the family cooked beautifully, and loved that kitchen togetherness. One entertainment absolutely embedded in the Pakistani lifestyle is feeding masses of family. There’s no eating for two – it’s always fifteen!

‘I learned to cook not from recipes, but vicariously. You grow up in the kitchen making chapattis or sauces, and by watching, hearing and tasting, you learn without realising. In Urdu, “andaza” means “cooking from your senses”. It’s about trusting yourself and what you like, recreating the memory of a flavour by taste, touch and feel. That cooking by estimation is hard to teach, but Pakistani cooking is very sensory.