Eid ul-Fitr baking and sweets: what to buy ahead.

Why chaand raat is the wrong night to shop

Kiryana shelves across Lahore empty in the same order on the last night of Ramzan: fine seviyan first, then dried fruit, then full-cream milk. Chaand raat is also the night the entire city is out, so a twenty-minute errand turns into two hours, and it turns into them at exactly the moment you were meant to be cooking.

Then there is the moon. Nobody can tell you the day of Eid in advance, because it depends on the sighting and the month can run twenty-nine days or thirty. That uncertainty is an argument for buying early rather than late. The shelf-stable list keeps either way, so buying it a fortnight out changes nothing if Eid lands a day later than the household expected.

The buy-ahead list: everything that keeps

This is the half that can sit in a cupboard for a fortnight without anybody worrying about it. Get it in while the aisles are still quiet, and chaand raat becomes a milk run instead of a full shop.

• Seviyan, both kinds. Fine pale vermicelli for sheer khurma, and the thicker roasted strands for kimami or muzaffar sewaiyan.
• Suji, and a bag of fine white flour for nankhatai, cake rusk and biscuits.
• Sugar, dried milk powder, and a tin or two of condensed milk.
• Dried fruit: almonds, pistachios, chaar magaz, dried dates and raisins. This is the shelf that empties first as Eid gets close.
• Elaichi, a small bottle of kewra, and saffron if your family uses it.
• Baking powder, soda, vanilla, paper cases, foil trays and cling film.

The last-minute list: what has to be fresh

Three days out, and no earlier, add the fridge half: full-cream milk in quantity, cream, khoya if you are turning it into something, butter, eggs and dahi. Milk is the one to be generous with. Sheer khurma alone drinks litres of it, and it is always the item that runs short on the morning itself, when the whole street has had precisely the same idea at precisely the same time.

Buy khoya as late as you reasonably can and keep it cold until it goes into the pan. It is the least forgiving thing on the list, and a warm kitchen full of cooking is not where it should be waiting.

Sheer khurma and sewaiyan are not the same dish

They come from the same vermicelli and get confused constantly, but they behave differently and want a different shopping list. Sheer khurma is a milk dish: fine seviyan simmered in plenty of milk with dates, nuts and cardamom until it thickens slightly, thin enough to serve in a bowl and eat with a spoon. It is the dish that empties the fridge.

Kimami or muzaffar sewaiyan is dry. Thicker roasted strands are cooked in fat and a sugar syrup until every strand stays separate and glossy, then strewn with nuts and khoya. It needs almost no milk but a proper quantity of ghee, and it is the one to make if you want something that sits on a plate for guests all day rather than being ladled out hot.

Biscuits, cake rusk, and what the flour is doing

Eid baking is mostly three doughs. Nankhatai is a short dough that lives on fat and on suji, and the suji is what gives it that sandy crack instead of a soft crumb. Cake rusk is a plain sponge baked twice, so it wants a fine, low-bran flour that dries evenly rather than going leathery. Biscuits sit between the two.

All three are written for refined flour. Whole-wheat atta can be substituted in part, but it carries bran and drinks more liquid, so the result comes out heavier and darker. That is fine for a rustic biscuit and wrong for cake rusk. Replacing about a quarter of the refined flour is usually the limit before the texture changes character, which is a decision about milling, not about brand.

Eid morning, set out the night before

The morning itself is namaz and then a house full of people, and there is no time in it to cook. Lay breakfast out the night before: something from the bakery shelf that only needs warming, the pot and cups ready for chai, juice cold in the fridge, and the sheer khurma already made and chilled. It is better on the second day anyway, once the seviyan have taken up the milk and the cardamom has spread through it.