What better way to chase away the cold on winter days than a plateful of piping hot paaye liberally garnished with finely chopped cilantro, fresh ginger and green chillies, accompanied by freshly baked naan. Once enjoyed by royalty, paaye have found a place of honour in kitchens at home as well as among the purveyors of the very best street food.

The word paaye literally means feet in Urdu. The feet or trotters of a cow, goat, or sheep are meticulously cleaned by trimming with a sharp knife and roasting over fire. They are then slow-cooked for hours (usually overnight) in a pot of water heavily seasoned with spices. The result is a rich and spicy dish with soup-like consistency. There is very little meat, but the tendons, fat, connective tissues, and bone marrow all contribute to produce a smoky and intense flavour. And as in the case of haleem, paaye generally tend to taste even better the next day.

Usually, the most enjoyable part of eating paaye is the ardent endeavour to suck or shake out the bone marrow. This obviously does not make it the most top-ranking food to eat in polite company. No wonder then that upscale restaurants don’t feature it on their menus. Various hotels do tend to include it in their line-up at the buffet table, but one would be curious to know how many really enjoy it with the gusto that it deserves.

I remember eating paaye at my Dadi’s house for Friday lunch at least a couple times every winter. My parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins all sat around a long dastarkhawan spread out on the floor. The meal invariably tended to be a messy business with bones being sucked then piled up like war booty and the oily gravy posing a dire threat to many a starched shalwar kameez. Giggles and snorts abound during the meal as pieces of naan were skilfully wielded by nimble fingers to soak up the goodness.

Not so nimble fingers, however, suffered a heavy setback. I recall being irritated by the fact that my fingers became literally glued together after each bite. It was a real struggle to manually pull them apart one after the other in order to continue eating. At the time I did not know that the stickiness is due to the natural process of collagen being released when bones are cooked. When the irritation of glued fingers grew to be too much, I staged a protest by giving up eating paaye for some years. No one in the family bothered to convince me otherwise — obviously they were secretly glad to have more to eat themselves.

Paaye is a dish said to have originated in Persia and brought to Delhi where it found favour among the royals and their nobles. It didn’t take long for common folk to discover the delicacy, and after Partition it arrived to a warm welcome in Lahore and Karachi. Also, similar to nihari, paaye were originally meant to be breakfast fare and for a very good reason. Loaded with fat and overloaded with cholesterol, it is best to eat them early in order to allow the rest of the day for digestion.

It has now become common for paaye to be served for either lunch or dinner. And that is not the only change this once royal dish has undergone. Plain old paaye are now available in a whole range of varieties such as kunnah paaye, bong paaye, and an older variation, the mighty siri paaye.

Bong Paaye appears for all purposes to be a blend of nihari and paaye. You basically add the prime chunk of meat which is the most celebrated part of the best pot of nihari. Doing this essentially takes away from the “bare bones” soup-like consistency of the original dish and permanently alters the taste. Why mess with a good thing. Keep the bong where it belongs, I say, in the pot of nihari.

Kunnah paaye suffers the same malady. To mix kunnah, a dish which originated in Chiniot and is made by stewing mutton ribs, with Paaye somewhat seems to be an overkill. You lose the taste of kunnah and you most definitely lose the taste of paaye. What you are left with is a lot of bones swimming in spicy gravy of non-descript flavour.

And finally there is siri paaye. Talk about turning a nice simple dish on its head. Personally I am not averse to adding some broiled maghaz (brain) in my helping of paaye, even though it turns the broth murky. But adding a whole head to it makes the whole concoction rather messy. Once again, too many bones to navigate around plus the danger of biting into a facial feature you really rather not think about.

What’s wrong with keeping the royal dish of paaye as simple as this winter fare was meant to be?