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Then I followed the five instructions on the box as closely as I could I took out est stockpot,with the nihari hteen cups of water and two kilos of marrow bones

The sheer proportions unsettled ht But I had to trust the box, since it was uide I waited six hours, after which I was meant to add one cup of flour, dissolved in two cups of water, and bring everything to a boil for fifteen minutes

I waited until the last minute to do this, until her train had nearly arrived My stockpot was already full al, so I used far less water tothis would cause probleht make, exactly I drove off to pick her up as the pot si awry I cooked for gatherings often; I went against what I already knew in cooking a new dish for a guest, rather than one I was confident in

“You“But it takes so long to cook”

I returned to find clots of what looked like fat rising to the surface I ski that the flour was puffing itself into duravy, as it was meant to

“I don’t know if it’ll taste like nihari,” I warned her “It may not turn out at all”

“It s seen ht, but the textures of the dish were all wrong The gravy never thickened, and so instead the dish became a soup of sorts, with a thinner, watery consistency

The last step was to fry a whole sliced onion in olden, and then top the stockpot This at least I did successfully Nearly everything else rong with my execution of the dish The tendons in the beef shank becootten was drier, firmer I served the meat with brown rice, when it’s typically eaten with naan

She said kindly, “The flavors are there

“It’s nihari,” she said happily, as she ate “You made me nihari”

Certain areas of culture are so prie, food When she speaks in Urdu with family and friends, when she translates for me, I’m reminded of how inaccessible certain fundamental parts of ourselves are to those who don’t share places of origin

Language is harder to learn—I doubt I’ll ever learn fluency in languages I’d like to speak, even ones I’ve studied for decades, like Spanish Food is a different story Food is easily shared

I’lad to no longerthe nihari that someone else has more capably made As she tried to warn me, it’s a dish well suited to fa tiredients too difficult to buy We eat often at her favorite Pakistani restaurant, where the surroundings are bare-bones, but the food announces itself Thethere nearly always slide extra food onto her tray before beckoning her over

We tear off pieces of freshly er than a plate, pinch bits of beef shank with the bread, drag the sara