Here are the recipes you’ve been looking for…

I find nothing more gratifying than watching people devour and enjoy the food I make, their eyes widening as they try their first bites, their palates lighting up as the flavors hit their tongues. Hence, over the past decade of my life in America, I have more than gladly hosted hundreds of desi dinners and lunches, breakfasts and brunches for South Asian food enthusiasts.

It is extremely humbling when I am able to take people on a rich, flavorful, colorful culinary journey, spanning the entire Indian Subcontinent. Gathered around my modest dining table, which has grown as the years have passed, I have had the pleasure of introducing many to the incredible zests and aromas of the East. It was only a matter of time that I wrote down the spells to the magic that is desi food, giving you a way to recreate it around your own table.

My cookbook American Desi Kitchen – named after my favorite desi comedy – is my grandmother’s, my mother’s and some of my own food wisdom combined, put into delicious, undemanding recipes that you can make just for yourself or to share with a loved one or four. A lot of these recipes date back to my childhood and still remind me of the spread at my grandparents’ house and the one on our dining table back at my mother’s house in Karachi, Pakistan.

What makes these recipes unique from those you can find online is that I have taken the time to tweak them all in a way that allows them to retain their traditional taste and flavor but require fewer, more easily acquirable ingredients and a more simplified method of cooking.

I’m dedicating the enclosed recipes to my Naani, my Ammi and to my darling daughter, Eva. May she grow up to love, to cook and eat them all in her great grandmother’s memory.

Food, I feel, has no boundaries. If anything, it erases them, allowing people to experience flavors from other cultures and places, sitting around their own dining tables. So for your next meal, try one of these spicy, flavorful South Asian recipes in your kitchen.