Pakistani cooking shows – there are so many of them (!) – are moving in that direction but they are not quite there yet. Still, there is no denying the fact that they have come a very long way from the mid-90s when the culinary challenged (yes, that is a real phrase) Marina Khan hosted Marina’s Kitchen. When tested in a real, home kitchen, many of her recipes flopped big time. Dalda Ka Dastarkhwan with Zubeida Tariq added some spice and zing to the cooking show mix. Here was a real cooking expert; a veritable Delia Smith of Pakistani cooking. The perfectly creased sari, the sparse but immaculate makeup and the treasure trove of tips for every possible domestic disaster made Tariq a household name. The show was so popular that it spawned that widely recognised green cookbook of the same name, which became a must-have for every Pakistani housewife.

Many cooking shows came and went after that; the majority making their appearance during Ramazan to furnish the faithful with recipes to aid their sehr and iftar cooking. None of them had a huge impact on the public psyche.
Cooking shows would also benefit from better photography and crisper editing. And it would help a great deal if advertisers would come up with less awkward ways of promoting their products rather than filling kitchen counters with bottles of oil, packages of tin foil and boxes of margarine. There is no benefit in this kind of advertising and cooking channels need to work with advertisers to employ slicker endorsement techniques.