You always remember your first time. Mine was on the Super Highway between Karachi and Hyderabad in the middle of nowhere. As we left behind the false security of civilization, the fear of dacoits and the broad featureless landscape proved oddly invigorating. Once ensconced on a rug-covered takht, the heady breeze of the sea and open space made us forget we were in the middle of Karachi’s sticky summer. And then it arrived – white chicken karahi. The restaurant was al-Makkah, one of several open-air restaurants on Super Highway where ambience owes more to desolation than decoration and you are educated in the many kinds of karahi dishes.

As I understood it, there is chicken and mutton karahi. But it’s not really about the meat. The sauce – tonnes of tomatoes, fresh thinly sliced ginger, the clean aromas of coriander and green chillies, the complicated earthiness of garam masala and the tang of lemon – is what separates it from other Pakistani salan or curry dishes. Cooked in a karahi, a deep round dish with handles, the best combines the flavours of fresh, sweet, tart and spicy. And it isn’t real karahi unless its deep red – the bride or dulhan of desi dishes if you will.

Like an American bride, a white karahi looks bland. The white version essentially replaces the tomatoes with yoghurt, which is to South Asian cooking what cream is to French. But the al-Makkah dish was surprisingly complex, obviously more subtle than its flamboyant red version, and more tangy.

I have not had it since, but I remembered the al-Makkah white chicken karahi as I strolled the aisles of my neighbourhood supermarket. I love the shelves of masala mixes with the glamorous and well-lit pictures of food, and their promise of easy haleem and 10-minute ras malai. It’s as if the gamut of subcontinental cuisine is now one snip of a scissor away. A lot of other women buy the myth too, judging by the numbers of food companies producing Delhi nihari, Peshawari chapli kebab and Lahori murgh cholay mixes. As Habib and National compete with that old spice hand Shan in the race of who can put out the most kinds of biryani spice mixes (Sindhi, Bombay, plain, Malaysian, Mughlai), I love how geography and royalty provides the marketing edge.

But while tinned desi food has been available for a while (a friend of mine took tinned koftas on a trip to China 14 years ago, and never have processed and preserved meatballs tasted so good after ODing on soya and sesame oil), I have recently discovered ready-to-eat packaged meals. The difference is that tinned food may appeal to the expats, but ready-made meals now draw domestic consumers.

Subcontinental cuisine is terribly tricky and time-consuming – all that frying of meat to obliterate the odour and blending ground and whole spices just so. While Shan eliminated the bother of mixing spices, ready-to-eat meals do away with everything else. Pop it in the micro for two minutes and a meal for two steams up the door: perfect for busy mums and bachelors yearning for a bit of curry in a hurry.

Or so I thought. As culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal has proved, food can be scientific too. I bought a packet of White Karahi mix, Chicken White Handi and a kilo of boneless chicken. I wanted fast desi fare, and no meat cooks faster than de-boned chicken. I followed the package instructions to the letter, marinating half a kilo of chicken in ginger paste, green chilli paste, yoghurt and the spice mix for about 30 minutes. With the other half, I did something similar, except instead of the long list of spices on the package, I simplified it to pinches of salt, red pepper, coriander and cumin powder. The two took 20 minutes to cook and I added whole green chillies, freshly chopped coriander and lemon juice as a finishing touch in the end. In total, both took me about an hour to make from prep to plate. The ready-to-cook meal took a couple of minutes in the microwave, although the package says it can be heated on a pan or in boiling water.

That's when I became really clever. I put all three on three identical plates labeled A, B and C garnished with a sprig of coriander each and invited some test subjects to a blind tasting test. It was a solemn occasion, as a 12-year-old foodie, a Pak-Canadian food connoisseur and cook, two thirty-something men, and two home chefs par excellence filed into the kitchen for the tasting. Unanimously, the spice mix karahi won hands down, getting top marks for complexity and aroma. My modest effort was second, while the ready-to-eat meal was declared ready-to-bore for its blandness. And really, the secret was in the spices – garam masala in this case. The packaged meal looked unappetizingly white and smelled too meaty. My karahi suffered for its simplicity, fresh herb and ginger being the dominant flavours.

In vain I looked for dubious additives and preservatives. The ready-to-eat meal package claims there are none, while the masala mix includes only citric acid – an acidity regulator and flavour enhancer - and amorphous silicone dioxide – which prevents the powder from clumping. Neither are on the watch list of chemicals with potentially harmful side effects often found in processed and packaged foods.

I have to confess that while the masala mix got the white karahi I wanted, it took away the fun of cooking: the experimentation, the aromas, the deep satisfaction of a job done from scratch. If the Oriental East is mysterious, its cuisine even more so. But while I like a good mystery, I like it even better when Sherlock Holmes explains why it’s elementary to Dr. Watson.

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