Karachi Chronicle: Eid feast

Ramazan and Eid have food traditions upheld since ancient times, such as dates and drink to break the fast, followed after evening prayers by the sole meal of the day; and on Eid one of the sweet dishes made with vermicelli such as surgary sevaiyan with lots of pistachios and almonds and the soupy, milky sheerkhorma. Though the menu of the month of fasting remains more or less intact, what is served on Eid is not.
Last Ramazan Eid none of the homes I visited of friends or family served one of the vermicelli dishes. This is because modernised Karachiiets have cut down on their intake of surgary foods. There were sweetmeats, but it was disappointing to be offered ones made with sugar substitute. The methaiwalas have introduced these sweetmeats so that they do not lose business to the health conscious citizens of Karachi.
It is strange how deep rooted is this new tradition of using sugar substitutes for sweetmeats. Even small shops in the working class area have gulab jamuns and barfi made with what is called 'diabetic sugar'. As for the vermicelli sweet dishes for Eid, they have more or less disappeared because not everyone thinks of purchasing diet sugar (thats another popular name for sugar substitute) with which to prepared the traditional dishes.
Modern Karachiites are paranoid about sugar. You would think everyone, including your guest, are diabetic patients. This is just a silly fad. It reminds me of my elder sister who would gulp down fatty foods but piously drink diet coke with her meal. There are lots of fatty foods offered on Eid day, such as fried samosas, chicken nuggets. The afternoon meal will also be very rich in fat, such as biryani or qorma and paratha.
One Karachi innovation is the Eid cake. Every bakery offers it. As I ignore this ghastly modernisation, I have never tasted an Eid cake, so I do not even know if they make them now with sugar substitutes.
For me Eid is not Eid without sheerkhorma. In my grandmother's day the preparation for the dish was quite exciting. We lived in a town where you had to make the vermicelli at home. A woman would sit on a high chair balancing a long wooden board before her, on which she would roll a lump of dough sending down thin threats of vermicelli which were then spread on a clean sheet on the floor. A long stick was used for this and we children enjoyed swishing it back and forth. The vermicelli was dried and roasted, ready for Eid day. On Chaand Raat the ladies of the family would settle down to slice almonds and pistachios into fine slivers. Our milkman, Soanba, would deliver milk very early on Eid day. It was one day he did not dare water down the milk. It was cooked on a slow flame till it thickened. The ghee was not store bought. It was home-made and smelled like butter when it was cooked. My youngest sister hated almonds, so grandmother would make a separate small pot of sheerkhorma without almonds just for her. Trouble was, we shared the sheerkhorma from the common, large pot which soon finished while she had a lot of her sheerkhorma still left. But she never shared it with us no matter how much we bagged. Machine-made vermicelli we first saw after Partition when my aunt would send packets to us from Karachi.
Previously, visitors often brought a box of sweetmeats. Now even that tradition is more or less discarded. People now bring decorated baskets of fruit. Again, it is this health conscious nonsense. Depends on the pocket of the visitor. The affluent bring baskets of fruit which also have packets of almonds, pistachios, walnuts and dry fruit.
Eid lunch was once a grand occasion. It was usually a family gathering. Aunts and uncles and married sisters and daughters gathered at the house in which the patriarch of the family lived, which was ours as longs as grandmother was alive. There would be biryani, qorma, raitha and kheer or sweet rice called 'zarda' because it was yellow. In olden days, my grandmother would recall nostalgically, there was no shortage of saffron which was used to add flavour and colour to the zarda. She regretted having to use yellow colour. I have never tasted zarda with saffron. It is very expensive. It is sold like gold by the 'tola' rather than ounce or gram measure.
I am all in favour of modernisation, but Eid menu should not be tampered with. It destroys the gastronomic joys of the festival. A TV chef once demonstrated a dish which needed a lot or ghee. He said, either make it with lots of ghee or do not make it at all because it won't taste like it should. Forget diets and food fads on Eid and bring back the sevaiyan, muzafar and sheerkhorma, please. EID MUBARAK.