About

My grandmother named me ‘Zehra.’ Yes, I know what my name means. Everyone who can, will tell me what it means, including my grandmother. People would probably describe me as the quintessential Cali girl. While I’ve lived here the vast majority of my life, it might be surprising to know that I was born and raised a Texas girl. As a result, I like casual and laid back entertaining, with food to match. I love little bites and snacks because I love to graze. 

I’ve been described politely as ‘exotic’ but less politely as a mutt. My family is Pakistani, but our roots are in Persia and modern day Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. My partner is your typical white guy from the Irish town of Boston, Massachusetts. Together we have five kids, ranging from 24 to 2 years old. While we have quite the blended family, our kids are Californian through and through. So you can imagine that the output of our kitchen is adventurous to say the least. 

I started cooking when I was nine years old, really out of necessity. My mother had a difficult pregnancy and delivery with my youngest brother. She was usually too sick to fulfill the culinary demands of two insistent school age children, so I learned to make a few simple things on my own. By the time he was born, I could make fish sticks and tater tots in our toaster oven. I’ve since progressed to more elaborate things. 

Back then, way back in the dark ages, it was impossible to find halal restaurants in the U.S. When my family first moved here in the 60s and 70s, Americans didn’t even know where Pakistan was. By the time I was born in the 80s, we had to drive to Vancouver, BC from Seattle, WA to buy halal meat. We would split an enormous cow between three or four families and drive back over the border with our car stuffed with meat for an entire month, only to do it again the next month. Eating Zabihah Halal was not easy back then, but my family made a commitment to comply with it despite the difficulties. As kids, my brothers and I would only eat seafood at restaurants. The first time we ever had meat at a restaurant was a Pakistani/Indian restaurant that had food so spicy that two elementary school kids could only cry and sulk at meal time, and insist on ice cream afterwards to cool our blistering tongues. Our baby brother just got straight to the ice cream after his bottle. 

Consequently, my mom became really good at making a wide variety of foods at home since we couldn’t go out to eat hamburgers and burritos at restaurants. She would pore over recipe books from the library (in the pre Internet days) or on loan from other ladies in the neighborhood. Mom always made her own adjustments to the recipes to make them her own. From Mom I learned to be adventurous in the kitchen, trying new things and combinations that I hadn’t thought of before. 

Experimentation wasn’t something that was limited to the kitchen for me. As I grew up and then went to college, my views on lots of things changed. Politics, geopolitical relations, religion, even gender politics were all up for reexamination when I hit my 20s. While I am a great deal different than I was in my teens, 20s and even 30s, I am still committed to cooking Zabihah Halal in my kitchen. Most recipes you’ll find are not much different than anything else you’ll find online. But I try to make adjustments to recipes with Halal substitutions and divulge where I get some of my hard to find ingredients. 

I hope that you’ll find some of this useful to you as you try your own experiments in your kitchen!