Pakistani halal recipes

Pakistani cooking is the food of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi, with a long tradition of slow-cooked meat, flatbreads and lentils. It is also the food many British Muslim families grew up on, and several of these dishes are cooked overnight or for hours because the time is the point.

Our Pakistani recipes start with nihari, beef stewed slowly until it falls apart and eaten with naan in the morning, and haleem, meat, lentils and wheat cooked down together into a thick stew that families make in large pots during Ramadan and Muharram. There is chicken karahi, cooked fast in a wok-shaped pan with tomato and green chilli, Lahori chargha, a whole marinated chicken, paya, lamb trotters simmered for hours, and the kebabs: seekh kebab on skewers and chapli kebab, flat spiced patties from Peshawar.

Everyday dishes include daal chana, aloo keema and saag. For the iftar table there is fruit chaat with dates and chaat masala, a chickpea chana chaat, and tamarind and date sharbat to open the fast.

Each recipe gives its calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre per serving, worked out from its ingredients. How we work out our numbers