Pakistani Cooking Shows

Chappati in the making!

When I went to Pakistan last year - I saw an explosion of cooking shows, morning shows, curret affairs or breaking news - this defines television in Pakistan. I think TV means entertainment but if this is an entertainment then I'm better off without it. The result was to move TV from my room and keeping it to a minimum operational level - it turned out much entertaining!

I will talk only of cooking shows which I have no clue who do they cater to? The ingredients that they use (which actually make any recipe tastes good) such as chicken, mutton, dry fruits, cheese, mushrooms, broccoli, endless quantity of oils and ghee (purified butter) etc are not in a common man's reach with many mouths to feed and meagre salaries that the majority gets - such programs are of no help to these folks however, they do create a kind of categorization within masses within the food culture. Food for "haves" and "have nots"!

In a country where people have to wait a whole year to get hold of meat which they get during Eid ul Azha (in charity)- what sort of a purpose do these programs serve??
Use of ovens and high tech gadgets in a country which has severe power shutdowns - it is beyond my comprehension! I have personally emailed a few TV shows to do variations within Pakistani cuisine, trying fusion...but to no avail. I also suggested to inculde palak/saag (spinach), dal (lentils), yogurt to add to their receipies...but well, this fall on deaf ears!

Will we be able to create a cooking show with a premise of creating tasty, creative, budgetted and nutricious recipes?? Recipies for all - recipes for someone who doesn't have much more than the super basics in the kitchen?? Recipies for "haves" on our cooking shows must avoid to try them out if they want to live longer and healthier because these folks are already over weight - having problems such as high cholestrol levels, heart diseases, diebetes etc.

All I have to say is that these cooking shows must follow some ethics, some considerations and some basic common sense: "A Sense To Cook with a Purpose" - here I mean keeping in view our economic, cultural, religious, agricultural and most important of all the nutritional and weather related needs!


I will conclude by saying that simpler and easy to cook foods are the best. If I were to ask to give suggestions to these dorks - I would have suggested them to travel to villages and request these folks to share with us their age old "food habits", "their traditional recipies and ingredients" - no wonder people are still healthier in rural than in urban areas - physically, spiritually and mentally!