Zulfiqar and Asifa Butt prepare fried aubergine with yoghurt and spicy tomato sauce. Zulfiqar holds the pot of sauce. Photo / Sonya Holm
Zulfiqar and Asifa Butt prepare fried aubergine with yoghurt and spicy tomato sauce. Zulfiqar holds the pot of sauce. Photo / Sonya Holm
Having the colour and sponginess of a stranded whale, the aubergine (or eggplant) is a strange beast and personal favourite.
The botanical berry can be cooked in countless ways – barbecued, roasted, stuffed, grilled – but fail on technique and it’s bitter and tasteless polystyrene.
Get it right, and it’sa succulent melty delight.
I caught up with Zulfiqar Butt and his wife Asifa, and they talked me through their aubergine and rice dish, a traditional fusion of flavours.
From Pakistan, the couple is marking 23 years of home being New Zealand.
Living in Palmerston North and bringing up three sons, Asifa is a housewife and Zulfiqar is an active member of the Muslim community and the Labour Party.
The Butts own the Cook St store Palmy Food City, selling a range of imported foods. The store has a halal butchery and food truck out front providing curries and kebabs.
The shop is for sale as Zulfiqar intends to find employment related to his science qualification, the completion of which initially brought him to New Zealand.
For Zulfiqar, the Christchurch terror attacks of 2019 are a marker in time, with events happening before or after the attacks.
He started the year working at Massey University in international relations and by the end of the year, after the attacks, he was elected to the Palmerston North City Council as the city’s first Muslim councillor.
“I enjoyed it thoroughly. And I wanted to stay on.”
He was unsuccessful in the 2022 local government elections.
Zulfiqar likes “each and every bit of New Zealand”, saying there are big differences in how services are delivered and politics in general.
The experience of social services in Pakistan, including hospital care, “depends on how connected you are with the elite or with the bureaucracy”, he says.
“If you are a person who is not known to anyone, you don’t have any money, then you have nothing.
“While in New Zealand, it doesn’t matter whether I’m a GM or whether I’m a CEO or whether I’m a sweeper, if I go to hospital I’ll be treated equally, everywhere.”
Sliced aubergine with a sprinkling of curry powder. Photo / Sonya Holm
He is the chairman of the Labour Party’s Palmerston North Local Electoral Committee. Since this interview was conducted, he announced he is standing for Labour in the Rangitīkei electorate for the general election.
Asifa is the main family cook, and while we talk she prepares fried aubergine with yoghurt and spicy tomato sauce.
She says people tell her she makes “the taste of home”.
Fried aubergine with yoghurt and spicy tomato sauce. Photo / Sonya Holm
The succulent aromatic shallow-fried aubergine topped with fried curry leaves is a taste sensation.
Accompanied by rice cooked with chickpeas, homemade stock and onion, Asifa says she likes to try different foods and flavours, and merges recipes and ideas.
It made me realise I need to up my rice game, and – like the Butts with their fresh curry leaves – I am going to plant a curry tree.
The first time I tasted aubergine I was 20 and backpacking around Turkey.
The aubergine was cooked in the ashes of the barbecue, imbuing a smoking flavour. It’s a technique Asifa also favours.
It was many years after first eating aubergine that I attempted to cook it.
When I picked up the dark bluey purple fruit with its smooth skin covering a spongey texture, I was transported back to saving stranded whales in Golden Bay.
Aubergines feel just like whales, I have said ever since.
Sonya Holm is a freelance journalist based in Palmerston North.
