As a kid, a Pizza Hut ad in the daily 6pm screening of The Simpsons caught my eye. I was always vigilant of anything to do with pizza given my upbringing as an overfed child, but this ad displayed a radiant slice of cheesy glory that I had never before witnessed.
“La-saag-knee,” I clarified, in attempts to convince my confused parents to take me to Pizza Hut. Growing up there were not many times where dad refused to provide me with something I wanted.
When I showed an affinity for music, he invested thousands of dollars into violin tuition, ensemble fees, music camps, and of course the $5000 violin that currently wastes away in a crevice of my childhood bedroom. He didn’t even protest when, in my ‘experimental’ phase as a teenager, I decided to pick up the double bass – the behemoth version of the violin – and showed no anger when I gave it up after only two months of lessons.
Nayeem Halim. Source: Supplied
After weeks of whinging, mum had one day clearly had enough, and announced that she was going to make lasagne herself. Mum concluded that there were only five ingredients to your standard lasagne. She already had four of these at home - cheese, pasta, minced beef and Dolmio Bolognese pasta sauce – so she just needed to pick up the last item from our local Bangladeshi grocery store. That last item was paratha.
The sun setting that day marked the beginning of preparations. The first ad break during The Simpsons was my cue to race into the kitchen to see how mum was progressing. She began the lasagne construction by setting out small foil trays on the kitchen countertop, which would hold just enough so that we each could have an individual portion to ourselves. Because mum was unaware that lasagne sheets were readily available for purchase, she had come to the decision that this type of subcontinental flatbread would act as the perfect substitute, and so proceeded to place one paratha in each tray to make up the base. She then followed this with a layer of boiled pasta spirals, a layer of Dolmio Bolognese pasta sauce, and a layer of minced beef.
The mince was pre-cooked with onions, and her trusty assortment of spices, including garlic and ginger paste, turmeric, cumin and coriander powder. Seeing me buzzing excitedly around the kitchen, mum invited me to put on the final layer of cheese. I graciously accepted, simultaneously sprinkling cheese onto the trays with one hand, and stuffing bits of shredded cheese into my mouth with the other.
Nayeem Halim. Source: Supplied
Twenty minutes of oven time later and I was shovelling down my first ever mouthful of lasagne. It actually had quite a familiar taste – I guess because it was your standard homemade pasta with a curried mince twist. What I could not taste in that first bite however, was the defining layer of paratha. Unlike lasagne sheets which are easy to cut into, and unlike roti which is a thinner type of Indian flatbread, paratha’s texture is thick. The paratha in mum’s lasagne was not only thick, but cooking it through the oven had made it sturdier, and so some concentrated effort was required to be able to cut through it effectively.
Even so, much of the paratha was unrelenting and ended up becoming stuck to the foil. Despite the struggle, and the fact that it was clearly just a curried version of pasta with an accompanying Bangladeshi flatbread, my eight-year-old, child-of-immigrants self, could not imagine a better introduction to lasagne. In fact, mum’s paratha lasagne became an instant success in our family, and it was not the last time she cooked up this fusion delight.
Nayeem Halim. Source: Supplied
Over the years my religious devotion was overcome by Pizza Hut’s haram lasagne. Today, as I sit alone with Uber Eats and the sound of Netflix blaring, it is hard not to reminisce about the warm glow the television box provided over a decade ago, as we gathered around it to share our first bites of mum’s lasagne. I cannot articulate how quickly I would trade it in for my mother’s Bangladeshi take on an Australian-adopted, Italian-classic: the paratha lasagne.
Nayeem Halim is an emerging writer who is passionate about increased representation of the South Asian diaspora within contemporary discourse. This is his first published story.
This story was originally entered in the 2020 and forms part of a special SBS Voices and SBS Food collaboration series: 'Food of My Childhood'.
