Cooking with Zakia

Cooking with someone is an intimate experience. You may not know one another a stitch before you start but, guaranteed, when you are finished you will know more about one another than if you'd met out AT a dinner.

Zakia has two children- a boy (five) and a girl (eight). She has left her husband (from an arranged marriage) because he is a lazy lout and would beat her. She is so proud to have won custody of her children from the local magistrate. She can handily wield a machete, but does not know how to change a lightbulb (that is man's work and she is shocked that, not only do I know how to but that I actually then proceed to DO IT). She is 28 years old.




Shortly before two in the afternoon Hussein delivers his daughter Zakia to our cottage. She is here to do some cooking for us... well WITH us... But she does not yet know that.

She has stopped off at the market to pick up the supplies she will need.




The menu is Indian fish curry and dahl soup. The mahi mahi type fish that comes out of the car is large, intact, and costs a total of $9 Canadian. The machete that comes out of the car next is a far cry from how we Canadians would fillet a fish. Hussein offers the machete to us, first asking if we would like to cut it in our preferred way- we defer. Once the hacking is complete, he politely asks if we would like to keep the head (read: "I know you would not and I would...so....").



We arrange with Hussein to drive us to the town of Lambasa on Friday and then off he goes.

I suspect there is a moment where Zakia thinks, "Oh no, these two will be hampering me for the entire time". If this thought does cross her mind, she is a master at keeping it inside. Once the ingredients come out though, it is all chat, chat, chat. We exchange recipes (she is surprised to learn the I cook Indian food myself and is excited about the recipe for dahl that I use), We giggle at the different words for ingredients (in Canada we call that an eggplant!), I marvel at the coriander which looks so different from the plant I know, and we gossip about her family.



The modern and the traditional are juxtaposed in Zakia. She uses Facebook and email and other social networking sites, but has her daughter cleaning up after her son (because when he is older he will be taking care of you and will work and buy you nice things). Her brother is having girlfriends on the side so she tells her distraught sister-in-law to go out and get her own boyfriends too, yet she will not talk to a man if she is in town for fear that someone she knows will see her and tell her dad (who will be upset).

The garlic is pounded together with salt and spices with a long stick.



This paste will be the basis of the stock for the fish curry. While that is simmering away, we start the split peas boiling for the dahl. There are a few extra potatoes so Zakia uses a Chinese recipe she knows from watching people she was washing dishes for once (is this the origin of Hakka I wonder???).


As it is, when cooking with someone, it feels as though not much time has passed ( this is, in my experience, so very different than cooking alone where time seems to stretch-enjoyably so- to infinite lengths). Around 4:30 all is complete and Zakia is on her way. "Thank you," she says when she leaves, "I had many smiles with you today!"

Aah, the joys of cooking with a new friend... and then eating it afterwards.