A co-worker is going to be leaving us soon and I wanted to cook something special for him as a going-away gift. I asked him what his favorite food was and he named a couple, but the one that really stuck out in my mind was a dish called nihari.
I’ve found a few recipes online, but I don’t know enough about the dish to tell which ones, if any, are authentic. I want to make it as close to possible as what he would have eaten back home (he’s Pakistani, but grew up in Bahrain, if that makes a difference). I’ll be making it in a five-and-a-half-quart enameled cast iron dutch oven.
Nihari is my personal favourite dish. Very easy to get wrong, awful tasting if you do. In Pakistan a going away gift is usually a cake or sweetmeats. Give that instead.
I’ll echo AK84 that bad nihari is…bad. Generally the Mrs. will use Shan brand masala, but even with that headstart, it’s still somewhat easy to over-do the spices and ruin it. Also, consistency seems difficult to get right (it can often be too runny).
None of the Indo-Pak family cooks I know seem to measure things, so even within one family, the consistency of nihari is a dice-roll.