The establishment is throwing its toys out of the pram, with old-guard political broadcasters struggling to cope with change writes Faiza Shaheen in The Guardian
BBC viewers used to the genteel, unflappable Andrew Marr might have had a shock on Sunday morning when the veteran broadcaster suddenly snapped. His guest, Shami Chakrabarti, explaining how Labour would follow through the Brexit referendum result, said: “I don’t know about you, Andrew, but I’m a democrat.” To which he barked, jabbing his crib notes in her face: “Don’t try and patronise me – I’m as much a democrat as you are!”
Change is hard to deal with – especially, it seems, for old-guard political broadcasters. Right now the number of women and people of colour coming forward and challenging the establishment is growing and the establishment is not taking it at all well. Yes, we can read their behaviour as bullying and obviously unacceptable, but Marr’s retort to Chakrabarti is just another sign that they have their knickers in a twist.
As well as Marr’s aggression, in recent weeks we’ve had Andrew Neil tweeting an outrageous insult about the award-winning journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Adam Boulton retweeting people who chastise me for sounding like I’m from east London, and Piers Morgan telling people of colour they should leave the country if they don’t take more pride in Britain.
The more I find myself in prestigious TV green rooms, traditionally not the spaces for women of colour from a working-class background, the more I see how establishment biases play out both on and off screen.
The first time I went on the Andrew Marr Show I was struck by the “in-crowd” cosiness of it all. In the green room the guests’ conversation consisted of showing off about who’d most recently had dinner with David Davis. On another occasion a Tory grandee completely ignored me. He said hello and goodbye to everyone else (all older, middle-class and white) on the panel and just looked straight past me as if I were invisible. This was particularly weird given that I directly addressed him while we were on air.
It’s no coincidence that before before last year’s election Diane Abbott, a black woman, received more online hate than any other politician
Sometimes the bias is more subtle. The organisation I run, Class, is often introduced on air as a leftwing or trade-union-supported thinktank. This doesn’t bother me – we’re transparent about where we get our money from and our political stance. However, it does irk me that my counterparts on the right are almost never introduced with their political bias upfront – and they are rarely transparent about where their funding comes from, which means that their vested interests are never called out.
And let’s consider why Marr might have had so much latent anger towards Chakrabarti: could it be that he no longer understands the world around him? He probably never imagined the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, whose shadow cabinet includes more working-class people, women and ethnic minorities than any before.
We cannot let the media dinosaurs – people who should be taking a long hard look at their prejudices – make us feel we’re the ones in the wrong. And this has real-world consequences: it’s no coincidence that before last year’s election Diane Abbott, a black woman, received more online hate than any other politician.
Nowadays I’ve taken to drawing satisfaction when seeing outbursts such as Marr’s: it’s the privileged white-male equivalent of throwing toys out of the pram, and shouting: “It isn’t fair!” We need to fight their attitudes and demand fairer representation, but we should also take pride in the fact that they’re finally being forced to acknowledge us.
Showing posts with label Shami. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shami. Show all posts
Tuesday 20 November 2018
Wednesday 12 October 2016
Grammar schools are unfair. Principled parents must refuse to encourage them
Louise Tickle in The Guardian
‘A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. ‘You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?’’ Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
When my son was six months old, I agreed to move to Gloucestershire. It’s lovely here in the Stroud Valleys – or it is until your child reaches the second half of primary school, and everyday chats about school stuff with friends suddenly start to veer off into shamefaced mumbles about tutoring, and how if Charlie or Clara want to take the 11-plus with their mates, “then who are we to stop them?”
You’re their parents, who make a heap of choices about your children’s lives based on your political beliefs, is my answer. So why crumble now?
As an education journalist who is opposed to selection – because it disproportionately benefits an already vastly advantaged middle-class minority, and actively harms the educational prospects of other, often poorer children – I find negotiating these conversations with people I know painfully fraught. I have not yet found a polite way to tell a friend who allows their child to take the 11-plus that, while I cling to the idea that they are not at heart a shit, they are doing an exceedingly shitty thing.
A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. “You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?” is intoned with a phlegmatic sigh, lips pressed together in wry acknowledgment that the situation isn’t ideal, but life’s a bitch, and one’s own child’s interests – obviously– trump every other consideration. The listener’s agreement is automatically assumed.
No, I increasingly want to yell. Given that their offspring, and pretty much all their friends, are among the luckiest children in the history of humankind, choosing to construct a more divided society via our taxpayer-funded education system that disadvantages other kids – some with unimaginably difficult home lives that make it harder for them to do well at school – is not something I think should be encouraged. But it appears to be viewed as aberrant or just plain weird by many middle-class parents not to grab every possible personal advantage and hug it tight to the family bosom, while still maintaining they want the best for all.
We’re animals. I get it. We’re programmed to chase advantage for our young, even to the detriment of other people’s children. And so while it’s particularly pernicious that some parents pay for months, sometimes years, of tutoring to get their child through an exam that they might well otherwise fail, I know it’s because they are desperate to secure for their child any extra benefit going in a country that is becoming ever more unequal.
But inside, I seethe. Often I do so silently, because with so many parents actively pursuing the advantages that selection confers, confronting them has become deeply socially uncomfortable.It’s incongruent with many people’s view of themselves as good folk who believe in fairness and equality. And facing this paradox head-on in conversation has, in my experience, become something of a taboo: how do you call out friends and stay friends, when you’re accusing them of hurting other people’s children? I try, but the discomfort it prompts is palpable, and defensiveness is rife. The fact that researchers have concluded that there is “no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils” makes the unedifying scrabble even more sad.
It’s the system that stinks, of course, and it has to be fought at the policy level, not by individuals at the school gates. Parents mustn’t set themselves against each other. While that is true, it doesn’t let parents off the hook. It may be possible – I guess – to be opposed to selection in principle even while sending your children to a grammar school. Yet in practice parents cannot challenge a system with any authority when they have cut the ground from beneath their own feet. When prominent people such as Shami Chakrabarti express concerns about selectionand then admit they opt out and write a fat cheque when it comes to their own kids, asking ordinary parents to stand up and be counted becomes tricky. Within the education sector too, people give up their power by acquiescing with a system they think is wrong: I know a headteacher who believes passionately in comprehensive education, whose child attends the local grammar: it is now impossible for that head to speak out without being called a hypocrite. We all make compromises in life, but this one comes at a high price paid by children who aren’t “selected” and who have no power and no say.
No unfair system was ever overturned by people carrying on using it for their own selfish ends while spouting their dismay. If the government sees parents urgently ushering their children into the 11-plus queue, then there is no debate left to win. Arguments against selection are fatally compromised when the very people one might normally expect to challenge unfairness, and who have the political heft to do it – articulate, middle-class parents – wave Charlie and Clara off to the local grammar every morning and, perfectly understandably, then feel too embarrassed to raise their voices.
‘A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. ‘You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?’’ Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
When my son was six months old, I agreed to move to Gloucestershire. It’s lovely here in the Stroud Valleys – or it is until your child reaches the second half of primary school, and everyday chats about school stuff with friends suddenly start to veer off into shamefaced mumbles about tutoring, and how if Charlie or Clara want to take the 11-plus with their mates, “then who are we to stop them?”
You’re their parents, who make a heap of choices about your children’s lives based on your political beliefs, is my answer. So why crumble now?
As an education journalist who is opposed to selection – because it disproportionately benefits an already vastly advantaged middle-class minority, and actively harms the educational prospects of other, often poorer children – I find negotiating these conversations with people I know painfully fraught. I have not yet found a polite way to tell a friend who allows their child to take the 11-plus that, while I cling to the idea that they are not at heart a shit, they are doing an exceedingly shitty thing.
A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. “You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?” is intoned with a phlegmatic sigh, lips pressed together in wry acknowledgment that the situation isn’t ideal, but life’s a bitch, and one’s own child’s interests – obviously– trump every other consideration. The listener’s agreement is automatically assumed.
No, I increasingly want to yell. Given that their offspring, and pretty much all their friends, are among the luckiest children in the history of humankind, choosing to construct a more divided society via our taxpayer-funded education system that disadvantages other kids – some with unimaginably difficult home lives that make it harder for them to do well at school – is not something I think should be encouraged. But it appears to be viewed as aberrant or just plain weird by many middle-class parents not to grab every possible personal advantage and hug it tight to the family bosom, while still maintaining they want the best for all.
We’re animals. I get it. We’re programmed to chase advantage for our young, even to the detriment of other people’s children. And so while it’s particularly pernicious that some parents pay for months, sometimes years, of tutoring to get their child through an exam that they might well otherwise fail, I know it’s because they are desperate to secure for their child any extra benefit going in a country that is becoming ever more unequal.
But inside, I seethe. Often I do so silently, because with so many parents actively pursuing the advantages that selection confers, confronting them has become deeply socially uncomfortable.It’s incongruent with many people’s view of themselves as good folk who believe in fairness and equality. And facing this paradox head-on in conversation has, in my experience, become something of a taboo: how do you call out friends and stay friends, when you’re accusing them of hurting other people’s children? I try, but the discomfort it prompts is palpable, and defensiveness is rife. The fact that researchers have concluded that there is “no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils” makes the unedifying scrabble even more sad.
It’s the system that stinks, of course, and it has to be fought at the policy level, not by individuals at the school gates. Parents mustn’t set themselves against each other. While that is true, it doesn’t let parents off the hook. It may be possible – I guess – to be opposed to selection in principle even while sending your children to a grammar school. Yet in practice parents cannot challenge a system with any authority when they have cut the ground from beneath their own feet. When prominent people such as Shami Chakrabarti express concerns about selectionand then admit they opt out and write a fat cheque when it comes to their own kids, asking ordinary parents to stand up and be counted becomes tricky. Within the education sector too, people give up their power by acquiescing with a system they think is wrong: I know a headteacher who believes passionately in comprehensive education, whose child attends the local grammar: it is now impossible for that head to speak out without being called a hypocrite. We all make compromises in life, but this one comes at a high price paid by children who aren’t “selected” and who have no power and no say.
No unfair system was ever overturned by people carrying on using it for their own selfish ends while spouting their dismay. If the government sees parents urgently ushering their children into the 11-plus queue, then there is no debate left to win. Arguments against selection are fatally compromised when the very people one might normally expect to challenge unfairness, and who have the political heft to do it – articulate, middle-class parents – wave Charlie and Clara off to the local grammar every morning and, perfectly understandably, then feel too embarrassed to raise their voices.
Tuesday 20 January 2015
Kebab Stories - The Shami Kebab
Fawad Ahmed in The Dawn
The Shami is the king of the tea trolley in Pakistan; may it be Eid or a casual drop-in at a friend’s house, the delicious delight is always a hot accompaniment.
The kebab, with the hot pepper, red pepper and green chillies in it, brings a zing not just to the chai but the conversation too. My earliest memory of stealing a taste of the Shami Kebab is right from the pot, just before the patty was made and fried; that is the fun and versatility of Shami Kebab – it's delicious to eat and steal before it is put in a blender to be made silky and fried to a fine finish.
Historian Lizzie Collingham in her book Curry talks about the Shami Kebab at length:
Nawab Asaf-ud-Dulah’s love of food is also said to have led to the invention of the Shami kebab. This is one of Lucknow’s many contributions to kebab cookery. In contrast to the Mughal emperors who ate sparingly, the nawabs of Oudh were gluttons.
Indeed, Asaf-ud-Dulah became so fat that he could no longer ride a horse. He managed to gain vast amounts of weight despite the fact that his ability to chew was compromised by the loss of his teeth. Shami kebabs are supposed to have been created in order to accommodate this problem. They were made out of finely minced and pounded meat known as qeema. While westerners tend to mince meat as a way of using inferior grades, the Mughals would often mince the best cuts. Qeema is frequently referred to in the recipes given by Akbar’s courtier, Abu’l Fazl, as an ingredient for pulaos.
The Mughals liked minced beef, but in Lucknow, the cooks preferred lamb, which produced a softer mince. They would grind the meat into a fine paste and then add ginger and garlic, poppy seeds and various combinations of spices, roll it into balls or lozenges, spear them on a skewer, and roast them over a fire. The resulting kebabs were crispy on the outside but so soft and silky within that even the toothless Asaf-ud-Daulah could eat them with pleasure.
The silky Shami kebabs are a delicious side to any meal, but they can be enjoyed on their own with a side of hot naan, onions and spicy mint chutney. The nanbais (bazaar cooks) of Lucknow were famed for making the best Shami kebabs. Hence, the street bun kebabs sold by street vendors in the subcontinent, more so a specialty of Karachi, is a continuation of the same tradition.
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I distinctly remember the most delicious bun kebab I used to have during the '70s and '80s. The vendour stood outside Khayaam cinema in the locality of Nursery, Karachi. I wonder if he still haunts the neighbourhood today?
My research says the first kebabs were stumbled upon by soldiers. It is believed that the Turkish and Persian soldiers enjoyed grilling fresh meat on fire, while it hung wrapped on their swords. The meat chunks were cooked in animal fat and consumed by soldiers who hunted for survival while journeying land to land for conquests.
The word 'kebab' is said to originate from the Arabic language, but the Persians, Turks and central Asians also lay claim to it. It means to fry, burn or cook on a skewer through grilling or open fire cooking.
Kebabs are almost always cooked over charcoal or shallow fried, and not usually deep fried. Kebabs in the west are mostly served on a skewer, or like doner kebab, with a side of pilaf or middle Eastern pita bread.
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In the subcontinent, there are more than a dozen popular kebab recipes; chapli kebab, boti,seekh, bihari, galavati, but none are quite as unique as the Shami Kebab.
Sanjay Thumma, celebrity chef and author, in his article 'Shammi Kebab' pens:
Shami or Shammi kebab literally means the Syrian kebab (Syria is called Sham in Urdu and Hindi) in Arabic. During the Mughal era, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East introduced this kebab to South Asia. The Mughals had employed cooks from all over the Muslim world to serve in the royal kitchens and some of the cooks were from Syria.
Another source states that the word Sham is evening in Hindi and Urdu, and Sham-e-Awadh (evenings in Lucknow), during the days of the Nawabs were unforgettable. Some people also believe that Shami Kebabs originate from the famous village of Sham Churasi in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab.
Lucknow is acclaimed for its gastronomic sophistication, extravagant lifestyle and love for the performing arts. Its kitchens (called bawarchi khanas) took pride of place in the royal courts, as did their bawarchis or rakabdars (gourmet cooks). The richness of Lucknawi cuisine is in its variety and ingredients, like the subtle flavors of a [perfect] Shammi Kebab.
The Shami Kebab recipe I share with you today comes from my dear mother’s kitchen, the very same that I was caught stealing rather sheepishly, and the Hara Masala kebabs are my dear nani’s specialty. The Hara Masala kebabs are a perfect patty for a kid’s burger, sans green chillie – my children love it in a burger.
Here it is, from my kitchen to yours.
Shami kebab
Ingredients
1 kg ground beef
1 ½ cup chana dal
1 ½ onions, large
1 inch piece of ginger
10 pods of garlic
12 whole red chillie
1 tsp. cumin, heaped
2 tsp. coriander powder
2 sticks cinnamon
3 black cardamoms
20 whole peppercorns
7 to 8 cloves
Salt to taste
24 to 30 ounces of water
1 ½ cup chana dal
1 ½ onions, large
1 inch piece of ginger
10 pods of garlic
12 whole red chillie
1 tsp. cumin, heaped
2 tsp. coriander powder
2 sticks cinnamon
3 black cardamoms
20 whole peppercorns
7 to 8 cloves
Salt to taste
24 to 30 ounces of water
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Method
Put all ingredients (mentioned above) in a pot of water, and cook until the water completely dries and lentils are cooked and soft to touch.
Let cool and grind until fine to touch.
Add 1 medium finely chopped onion, 2 eggs, 1 bunch of fresh coriander leaves (chopped) and 10 to 12 leaves of mint (chopped). Mix well with ground beef mixture, form kebabs and shallow fry.
Hara masala kebab
Ingredients
2 lbs. ground beef
8 slices of white bread, soaked in water and drained
4 tsp. corn flour, heaped
2 medium sized onions, finely chopped
2 inch piece of ginger
2 eggs
2 tsp. black pepper powder, level
1 bunch coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
4 to 6 green chillie, finely chopped
8 slices of white bread, soaked in water and drained
4 tsp. corn flour, heaped
2 medium sized onions, finely chopped
2 inch piece of ginger
2 eggs
2 tsp. black pepper powder, level
1 bunch coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
4 to 6 green chillie, finely chopped
Method
Mix ingredients together, form patty and shallow fry.
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