Pakistan does not immediately strike one as a foodie country, but nonetheless, there has been a couple of interesting finds. The typical cuisine of the Hunza Valley (north/central part of Pakistan along the Hunza River) comprises largely soup, vegetables, chapati and little meat (scrawny chicken or beef).
I had a typical Hunza lunch today which included a soup made from torn bits of chicken and strips of chapati, spinach (sag) cooked with strips of chapati, dal (split lentils) and fresh chapati itself. Chapati is going to be a recurring theme, I think. I have always known chapati to be the simple grilled flatbread (it doesn't rise like naan) that accompanies curry or dal. In the Hunza Valley, they often tear up the raw dough that is used to make the grilled chapati and use it, in effect, as a pasta. The texture of the chapati strips in the soup and the spinach dish is almost that of fettucine. And so the spinach and chapati dish was a bit like a simple sauce-less spinach fettucine. I thought it was an interesting "palate-cleansing" back to basics meal after all of the meat that I've had in China in the last two weeks.
