When Zareen Khan’s new cookbook arrived in the mail, I turned the pages quickly in hot pursuit of a chicken biryani recipe. A couple of weeks earlier the Khans—Zareen and husband Umair—had sent me home with a jam-packed to-go container of this delicious rice dish.
After one bite, I was hooked. Each mouthful is packed with rich, satisfying flavor combinations: rice and chicken; chicken and potatoes; potatoes, cilantro and caramelized onions. It’s one of those transcendent dishes that nourishes the body and the soul.
I found the recipe for “Karachi Biryani” on page 178 of Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen: Recipes from a Well-Fed Childhood. In a preface titled “On Biryani,” Zareen explains that the foundation of the dish is a chicken korma that’s “merely the first step.”
After the chicken korma is nestled amongst layers of basmati rice, she writes, “This assembly is perfumed and colored with saffron, pandan flower water, fresh mint, coriander leaves, and caramelized onions, then sealed and steam-cooked for several hours.”
In addition to that splendid but complex biryani recipe, Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen includes much easier dishes for the home cook such as kabobs, cutlets and stews. There’s a comprehensive section titled “The Desi Pantry,” which shares South Asian ingredients and techniques. The introduction is a short but compelling autobiography cum memoir charting Zareen’s journey from Karachi to Silicon Valley.
It’s followed by Umair’s “food crawl” through Karachi, a city with upwards of 20 million people. Seated at a table in their restaurant, he explained that they are co-owners of their burgeoning restaurant empire. “But Zareen is the founder and CEO. And I’m the CTO, the chief tasting officer,” he said with a smile, and probably not for the first time.
I was visiting the Khans at their Palo Alto location, currently one of three, with a potential fourth location on the horizon. We met to talk about the forthcoming publication of the cookbook and Zareen’s origin story as a chef, which reminded me of short stories I’d read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri. Stories that feature college-educated immigrant women adapting to a new country while also juggling motherhood, marriage and their careers.
“When the kids were younger and I was working, I was never satisfied with the corporate life,” Zareen recalled.
With an MA degree in economics, she hadn’t entertained the idea of quitting work, just quitting her corporate job. She began her exodus by teaching cooking classes. Meal catering followed shortly thereafter. Assisted by another cook, she rented a commercial kitchen to accommodate her growing side business.
On weekends, she and Umair would pack up meals to distribute in San Francisco and the East Bay. Sometimes their children would join them. “Somehow one thing led to another and I ended up with the first restaurant in Mountain View,” she said, truncating years of industry, focus and sustained effort.
Zareen wasn’t an amateur when she eventually left her day job and restarted her professional life as a full-time chef. Her Memon family belongs to a small ethnic minority that migrated from India and largely settled in Karachi, Pakistan. She grew up eating meals in the bustling street food scene there.
“That affected my taste and I cook a lot from memory,” Zareen said. Later, when her Lahori brother-in-law joined the family, he made different versions of familiar dishes that broadened her palate. “Our kids think his pulao is the best in the world,” she said.
Azra Syed, described in the cookbook as “the matriarch of Pakistani culinary instructions,” was another influential person in the chef’s development. “On weekends or during summer breaks in high school, I would go take her classes,” Zareen said. Syed provided her with a sense of proportion and balance in the making of a dish. “It’s the same way at the restaurant. I always look at the amount of food we’re making and, based on that, I determine how many spices [to use].”
The amount of labor that goes into Zareen’s biryani must account for the reason it’s only available at the restaurants on Fridays (for the reasonable price of $16.49). Zareen told me that it takes almost a year of supervision, of working directly with a cook before she feels they can make the biryani on their own.
The cookbook includes a three-circle scale of effort for each recipe, one filled-in circle being the easiest. With a list of over two dozen ingredients (excluding complementary sides of raita and chutney), Karachi biryani definitely qualifies as a three-circle recipe. It’s aspirational! As soon as I retire from the hustle and bustle, I plan to make it at least once a month for Sunday dinners. In the meantime, I’m willing to weather Zareen’s busy Friday lines for another container of biryani bliss.
Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen: Recipes from a Well-Fed Childhood, written by Zareen Khan and Umair Khan; published by Sasquatch Books; 288 pages. Zareen’s restaurants are located in Mountain View, Palo Alto and Redwood City. zareensrestaurant.com
