New Delhi, June 24 -- The cookbook Pakistan opens with a description of kadhi, a dish of deep-fried fritters cooked in a yoghurt-based curry with a tempering of cumin seeds and dried red chillies. It's something author Maryam Jillani found homely comfort in, at a neighbourhood Pakistani restaurant during her time in Washington DC. Like many living away from their homeland, she found an anchor in food.

"It resurrected buried memories of my childhood in Islamabad," she writes, talking about the nostalgia as she started cooking her childhood dishes away from home. "I remembered Eid lunches at my grandparents' house, during which my grandmother would reliably serve mutton pulao with a side of punchy garlic chutney that she'd caution us to ea...