Cranberry Beans

It’s nippy tonight – it has snowed in the mountains and it is raining in Delhi.  Some beans and rice is just what I would like…

I was lucky to get a little of the stash of fresh cranberry beans that a cousin brought over from a visit to the valley and shared with my mom who, indulgently, shared it further with me.  I had never seen these beans fresh before.  They are called thool razma in Kashmiri. Much rounder than the regular kidney beans, they do indeed, resemble tiny spotted eggs!  I had never cooked with them or even eaten fresh ones before so I asked my mom for some general directions.  She suggested I cook them with potatoes using the usual Kashmiri combination of fennel and dried ginger powder.

Walking down memory lane…

If you take a good look, you will find that the majority of the posts on this blog are around memories. Mostly memories about food. Yet, from the moment Manisha announced her IFR: Memories I seem to have been at a loss for words! Her deadline, extended, is looming and I can feel the pressure as she churns out post after daily post on IFR.

Many of my vivid memories are around food, which must be true for a lot of you. Despite nostalgia rendering most things pink, resurrecting food of our memories usually turns out well. Unless you are attempting to recreate your mother’s cooking. That one is hard to get spot on. Few can rival a mother’s prowess. Hopefully, our children will look at our cooking the same way, and we will have our spot in the limelight.

Just like this summer, before leaving for college, the son finally awarded me a 10-on-10 for my rogan josh. He also added that not only had I cooked a swell rogan josh, I now had my own secret ingredient for it! Which was true – I had tweaked my mother’s recipe a tad – I added a teeny weeny bit of ground mace. What was I to do – after trying in vain to match her rogan josh for ten years, I rebelled and made it better . Well, not really. By that time I had likely put in my time – the minimum requisite to get certification – behind cooking rogan josh to have finally got the art down. Yes, recipes evolve…in an effort to better your mom’s cooking when you can’t make it just like her. I bet my son’s food memories are starting to stack up.

Ver – the opposite of Kheer

As I said earlier, there is much Kashmiris make with rice. Besides being the staple on our plate it is also our preferred ingredient when it comes to celebrations of all kinds. All auspicious occasions begin with rice in some avatar or the other. Barring one sweet made with dry fruits all Kashmiri desserts have rice as the main ingredient. [Therein lies a lesson for all of us to look at statistics with a sharp eye - Kashmiri cuisine has 3.5 desserts in all!]

Kheer is the offering of choice for most Goddesses.  When a sweet offering will not fit the bill, taher is cooked to mark the happy occasion. Similarly, cooking and eating ver marks the beginning of important celebrations such as weddings and yagnopavit ceremonies.

Birthdays and other days

Kashmiri Pandits, just like Bengali Brahmins, are known for their love of mutton and fish.  Just the sight of a goat can make my Bengali professor salivate.  Likewise, a Kashmiri is within her rights to discount a meal that did not include meat.

Food is perhaps amongst the most gossiped topics in the Kashmiri community.  The usual greetings and hugging are always followed by queries regarding the last meal.  How do you do?  What did you have for lunch?  The aunt will barely keep herself from clucking if you omit to mention some meat dish, real or imaginary, in your previous repast.  And you had better include the leftover morsel from yesterday’s meal while you are recounting the feast which is obviously your norm.  You can see the mental balancing underway as the relative from one side (paternal or maternal) weighs the meal in question (enjoyed at the other side) and determines who the winner would be after they are done serving you next. I have been accosted on the street – and after the pleasantries were done with -  “Ah, on your way from your maasi’s eh? So, what did you eat?!”  Now I look back at it with nostalgia; it did make our once-upon-a-time annual summer visits to Srinagar all the more colourful.

Yet, this blog speaks little of my nonvegetarian heritage.

Haak Time – It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

If you are surprised at how heavily the dice is loaded towards Southern India on our dining table, then I have also been amazed to meet non-Kashmiri souls that have haak-rus ( haak- broth) flowing through their veins. Some even wrote poetry in the praise of haak! But for them, I would have never thought of writing about this most favourite of our greens – haak. Haak is the Kashmiri equivalent of the term ‘greens’ or the Hindi ‘saag’. So, we have monjji haak (cohlrabi greens), mujj haak (radish greens), vopal haak (dandelion greens), and vast haak. But the greens we love the most, we just call haak.

Whew! It’s Over! Time for Some Breakfast

Party fatigue took over. But since I promised a concluding post, I will tell you a little bit more about the wedding and the events after the mehndiraat.

On the morning of the wedding, preparations were on for the Devgon – a ceremonial cleansing of the self to get ready for the next phase in one’s life – entering the grihasta (family) ashram. In India, it has always been said that a marriage is a relationship not just between two individuals but between two families. The living members and those who have passed on to the other realm. On this day the groom and his family first seek the blessings of their ancestors by performing the pitr pooja.

Hindu philosophy believes agni (fire) to be the ultimate cleanser – it can never itself be sullied or polluted, and all are equal before him. Devgon is performed around this sacred fire. The groom-to-be sits by the fire after a ceremonial bath and offers prayers to Goddess Parvati and Lord Shiva. All the elders of the family participate in the ceremony and fast till the conclusion of the havan.

Daughters of the family are always a part of the ceremonies with the bua (father’s sister) enjoying an enviable position. She prepares kheer and monjjvor (flattened moong dal vadas) on this day which are offered to the Gods and then distributed to all family members to break their fast. The function is usually followed by a simple vegetarian meal of rice and vegetables. Our lunch that day comprised of a yellow subzi of pumpkin, a fiery red dish of radish and potatoes cooked with nadur (lotus roots), and served over steamed rice with yoghurt. (Read more about Devgon and Kashmiri wedding rituals here).

The Big Fat Kashmiri Wedding and Stuff

mere hathon me mehndi lagi hai!

There is a very good reason for my disappearance. My cousin is getting married – one of only two boys in our generation on my dad’s side. This is (almost) the last wedding in this generation so we are making the most of it.

Weddings are when I catch up with the extended family. I even get to meet more-than-once-removed cousins now that they are mostly settled outside Kashmir. I am almost caught up .

Zafraani Zamodod

plain dahi

Zafraan (Persian)/kesar (Hindi)/kong (Kashmiri) or saffron, is the most expensive spice in the world, worth more than its weight in gold. In India it has always been measured in tolas, a unit of measure used for weighing gold (approximately 12gm). Kashmiri saffron with its long and deep maroon strands and a delicate aroma is the most valued in the world.

If you were ever disappointed with your Kashmiri saffron, and wondered what the fuss was all about, it is likely that you received saffron that was blended with the less expensive Spanish or Iranian saffron. A few months back my Mom got hold of a little of the real stuff through a cousin working in Kishtwar (Kashmir). Despite having all her culinary secrets revealed here she gave the entire lot to me! Isn’t she the best?

Very little Kashmiri saffron is exported, most of it being consumed within India. It is an ideal flavouring for Indian desserts which are mostly milk based. Occasionally it is also used in savory preparations such as pulaos and biryanis.

In Kashmir, it is primarily used in desserts such as the Modur Polav, and Kheer. On special occasions it may also be used to flavour Kahva. During weddings it gets sprinkled on top of our much loved zamodod/dahi (yoghurt) served in earthen pots to guests at the banquet, and also on the larger pots of dahi that make up the goodies (including nuts, fruits, and giant balls of rock-sugar, called nabud in Kashmiri, and mishri in Hindi) that the new bride brings with her to her new home. Those of you who have had Shrikhand will know how special dahi becomes with the addition of saffron.

Monjji Haak…at long last

For all their love for goat meat Kashmiri Pandits love their greens with an almost equal passion. There are many types of greens, wild and cultivated, that find their way to balance the daily meals.

If that be so, you might well wonder how come there has been no Kashmiri greens recipe on this blog yet. The fact is that the most common way with our most popular green, the haak, is also the least spectacular. In a matter of speaking, you may say they are just blanched greens. My non-Kashmiri side of the family didn’t think it was anything to write home about. So I didn’t. And my son and I continued to secretly also relish the fact that there would always be more for us!

Kahva – no ordinary Cup of Tea, and a Quiz

A cup of tea is just what I need tonight. Even in this stifling heat. Just the act of making the tea is a sort of unwinding. The relaxation comes as much from the process of making tea as it does from the cup itself. And a cup of tea is what we are going to have.

As a typical Indian, I am a die-hard tea-aholic. And no matter how low-brow it may be, I really love black tea served with milk and sugar. I love the Punjabi tea which is more milk than water that has been boiled with black tea leaves, and some ginger (during cooler weather), and not a little sugar. I also like what I drink everyday – a mix of equal parts (by volume) of granular black tea (Brooke Bond Red Label) and green tea (Brooke Bond Green Label) steeped in hot water for a few minutes to which I add a little milk and just a wee bit of sugar.

Mint and Walnut Chutney

Mustard fields, Punjab

Spring arrives early in the Northern Plains of India. The Hindu calendar marks Basant Panchami as the first day of spring. Basant coincides with blooming mustard fields, and it is from these perhaps, that the colour yellow has come to symbolize spring to us. If you have ever seen a mustard field in spring you will know the magic I am talking about. Reading about spring and cherry blossoms on other blogs also reminded me of Kashmir. Blossoms of the cherry and the almond trees herald the arrival of spring in the valley.

If anyone likes warmer weather it is my potted mint. After looking sad all winter it perks up at the sight of spring. As the bright green leaves begin to grow they find their way into a lot of things in my kitchen – omelettes and scrambled eggs, cold soups and salads, refreshing jal jeera, and into many a chutney. All of you probably have your favourite recipe for mint chutney. As do I.

Relishing the Radish

Here is another Kashmiri vegetarian recipe. It is special because it is one of the few accompanying dishes that make up Kashmiri cuisine. The rest of India has a mind boggling variety of things to be ‘served on the left side’ of the thali. Let me explain this. There is a specific sequence to serving food in Maharashtra. You start with a bit of salt on the left side. This is the side reserved for all accompaniments: chutneys, pickles, wedges of lemon, koshimbirs (salads) or raitas. Bhajjis (pakoras), if part of the meal, will also find room here. Next will be a katori of daal, and then to the right of the thali is the main subzi. Rice and roti are towards the lower centre of the thali. The sweet, somewhere in the middle, is always served along with the meal. Even for everyday meals you will have something served on the left, even if just a pickle, though chutneys are served frequently. It would sadden my MIL to serve just a pickle ‘daavi kade‘ (on the left side!).

I have no idea why the Northern most state of our country is so lacking in this category. Maharashtra, Gujarat and all the Southern states lay as much emphasis on this ’side’ to introduce a complexity of texture and flavour into their cuisine. It might have something to do with Kashmiris being obsessed with their meat or the harsh climate making cooking harder with women concentrating on getting the meat cooked in time for the unusually early meal times. Lunch, in most houses, would be ready and served before 10:00 in the morning. Everyone ate and went to work or school. Where was the time to sit and pound different things together in a pestle and mortar? The plentiful fresh fruits and vegetables such as radishes and cucumbers are perfect for snacking and getting the crunch that might have been missed at meal time.

Though there are just a few chutneys and raitas but these are much loved and used over and over. One loved vegetable is mooli (daikon radish). It is cooked with fish or nadur (lotus stem) to lip-smacking results. It is also the vegetable of choice for making our most popular raita – mujj chatin. For some reason it is called a chutney. Grated mooli added to thick salted dahi with chopped green chillies mixed in. Red chilli powder and a pinch of shah zeera (black cumin) is totally optional. This is the only Kashmiri dish in which I will use a garnish of coriander leaves. I love coriander, but it is not traditional to Kashmiri cuisine.

The Last Word on Kheer

Well, as I was saying (paraphrasing Ammini) “Much is made of rice in Kashmir.” It is the staple at meal times, naturally. For most ‘holy’ days and special days like birthdays, as also to mark new beginnings, we make taher (soft ta – her) – rice cooked with turmeric and mixed with salt and heated mustard oil as naveed (prasad); more delicious than you may think. Any function in the family – weddings, yagnopavit (the thread ceremony) – the bua or maasi (aunts) will make ver, a risotto like preparation in which rice is spiced with caraway seeds, heeng, and vari-masala, and creamed with the gradual addition of water and mustard oil (what else!), quite the olive oil to us. There will be walnuts added, or in the non-vegetarian avtar, chichir (bits of, ahem, intestine). While modur polav is usually served at weddings, the sweet at other less-extra-ordinary occasions is the Kheer.

Now, this is again where Kashmiris are at loggerheads with Maharashtrians. Maharashtrians serve rice kheer only for shraddha! And we think the(ir) sevian (vermicelli) kheer is nothing to write home about (no relation of the muslim seviyan, mind you, which is an altogether different delicious animal). We serve rice first on our thali which then receives all the gravied dishes – katori being used only to serve yoghurt. On a Maharashtrian thali, rice is served last; except, again, when observing a shraddha. If they serve the rice to the front of the thali, we serve it on the other end away from you, and you bring forward, a little at a time, mix it how you want and eat. They serve a dainty handful, we upturn an entire bowl-full. Yet the twain has met!

Mutsch: Kashmiri Meatballs

Naani’s much talked-about mutsch!

It’s time we talked Kashmiri food. Kashmiri cuisine derives its unique flavouring from regular Indian spices used somewhat differently. Fennel and ginger powder are used in most of the preparations. The colouring is important to the presentation; turmeric for yellow curries, and red chillies for the red ones, and there are the white curries that derive their colour from the use of milk and yoghurt. The word ‘curry’, incidentally, is not a part of our vocabulary.

An interesting feature of Kashmiri Hindus is the complete lack of caste hierarchy. That’s correct – we are all Brahmins. Garlic and onions may have been taboo, but please give us our daily serving of meat.

Just like the Bengali Brahmins we salivate over our fish and goat-meat, cook everything in the wonderfully fragrant mustard oil, favour rice, and worship mother Goddesses with fervour. And like them, we also have the loochi, maida pooris fried in mustard oil. Oooh, they taste super with Kahva, and are intertwined with my memories of visits to the Kheer Bhavani shrine, many kilometers outside of Srinagar city. A tiny temple inside a water tank (a natural spring), it sits in a large paved area shaded by giant Chinar trees (Oriental Plane trees). A typical visit to the temple would involve an early morning rise, a head-bath (this is Indianese for washing hair as part of the bathing process; most of us women keep long hair, or used to, and daily shampooing is neither practical nor necessary), trekking to the bus-adda to take the bus into the countryside. The mothers, grandmothers and aunts would have gotten up even earlier to prepare a packed lunch of rajma, dum aloo, and such delicacies, to be had later under those magnificent Chinars in true picnic fashion.

The bus would wind through the most beautiful (the word – beautiful – being very inadequate here) landscape of paddy fields and rustling (Lombardy) Poplars. There is hardly a stretch on that picturesque narrow road where you are too far from a brook or a stream to not hear its gurgle. The droopy willows by the brooks add to the idyllic picture.

Roth, Pun, and Vinayak Chaturthi

Well, I forgot completely about this one occasion on which Kashmiris do use flour!! It is one day in a year so I can be forgiven my oversight.

Ganesh Chaturthi or Vinayak Chaturthi, as Kashmiris know it, is the day when some Kashmiri families perform a small puja which includes a katha (story) on the lines of the Satyanarayan katha. There is the standard do-this-ritual-or-else-face-the-consequence line of reasoning in the story. If you do the puja in good faith then you look forward to prosperity…naturally. Otherwise, the gallows you shall face.

Interestingly, there is no idol that is worshipped, at least not in my family. There is druva, a type of grass, akshata (rice), and flowers offered in return for the blessings wished.

The naveed (neivaidyam) is of the roth (ro- as in ‘road’, and -th as in the second letter of the tavarg of the Hindi varnamala, the Hindi alphabet). Hey, it’s important to get the pronunciation of the topic of the post right! And this sound is missing from the English language!

So you may make as much or as little roth as you decide and most of it is then distributed among friends and family. The mimimum predetermined amount could be sava seer, for example. But it is usually cooked in greater quantities so that there is plenty to share and enjoy. The performing of the puja (the story-telling and all) and the sharing of the Roth is called Pun dyun (translated- ‘giving of Pun’ alluding perhaps, to the sharing of it).

The roth is in essence a cooked dough of whole wheat flour, sugar, and ghee. Similar to the Maharashtrian shankar para dough but not the same. There are different methods to the cooking which make the roth different in texture and taste. For the Pun, the dough is usually rolled like a thick poori, pricked or patterned with implements (we used to use metal lids with sharp edges to make intersecting circle patterns) and deep fried. My mother would always use metal lids, the kinds with sharp edges, to make impressions. When I and my sisters were little girls she would let us help with this part and we would get fancy with the intersecting circle patterns. This time I helped with the frying, big girl that I am.

Since you are not supposed to eat till the puja is over, we always sit for a breakfast of these to be washed down with Kahva, the fragrant spicey Kashmiri tea. These make a filling and wholesome breakfast. Yea, they are deep fried, but once a year, c’mon? Also, I think because they are not leavened, they don’t soak up much oil/ghee while frying. And if you make them like my mom’s, you cannot have more than one for breakfast.

Roth is also made for weddings, but that kind is usually baked in an oven. My sister and my mom worked on a recipe for that in her CT kitchen. Another time…

Al Yakhni (Bottle Gourd in a Yoghurt Sauce)

Agar firdaus bar ru-e zamin ast
Hami ast o-hami ast o-hami ast…If there is Paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this…goes this famous Persian couplet

describing Kashmir, not the humble ghia (doodhi, bottle gourd) of course, or al (pronounced ‘ul’ as in ultra) in Kashmiri.

Let’s go back to Kashmir for a bit, away from the hot sultry environs of stuffy (at the moment) Delhi. While half the country is drowning in floods, there has been hardly any rain here in Delhi. The clouds come raising our hopes and then the winds just blow them away.

And the bottle gourd is the kind of mellow vegetable that sits well in this weather. Nature knows how to balance cravings with abundance. There is plenty of good gourd in the market. Cooked in a light sauce, not greasy, not spicy. Perfect with steamed rice. And I have been craving rice.

The other day my cousin’s wife was shocked that we, in this house, cook roti for both meals. Actually, I think she felt a little sorry for me…The only roti Kashmiris traditionally had was the breads from the friendly neighbourhood naanwai (baker). It is not that rice is not important in Maharashtrian cuisine. It is. In fact, in most homes, it is served as the first (with dal) and last course (with dahi) at all meals. But, as in my family here, roti is still the main course.

Kashmiri cuisine makes room for roti and breads only at breakfast and afternoon tea. And these are never made in the house. Rice is the main staple as it is in Southern India where all the dosas and idlis, so popular even in the North, are served only as tiffin, as ‘minor’ meals.

So, with all the roti around me at all meal-times, there are times when I need to get back in touch with my Kashmiri side. There is a deep satiation that can only be brought about by a meal of rice and curry. With nothing coming between you and your rice – mixing in bits of chunky vegetables or meat into the rice using your fingers and taking it from hand to mouth in a loving graceful move. It is an almost complete sensual involvement – the visual, the smell, the taste, and the touch.

The use of saunf (fennel) as an integral spice in Kashmiri cooking separates it completely from the other cuisines of North India. In fact, coriander, the most common of Indian spices, is not much used. And the coriander leaf (cilantro), never. I think the fennel is a Persian legacy, as are all the breads from the naanwai. The Mughals were in love with Kashmir as is obvious from the Persian couplet quoted at the beginning, and must have cooked up quite a Wazwan with their spices which, over time, got assimilated into the local cuisine.

Yakhni is the common name for all yoghurt based sauces. I don’t use the word ‘curry’ here because there is no such term in Kashmiri cuisine. This recipe for the bottle gourd is subtly spiced with fennel and dry ginger powder. It is mildly spicy without much heat since cayenne is not used (surprise, surprise). I do, however, like to add some green chillies (surprise, surprise!) which impart another degree of subtleness to the dish. Other vegetables that may be prepared in a similar way are the lotus stem (kamal kakdi – Hindi, nadur – Kashmiri) and karela (bitter gourd). The meat based yakni is different and uses additional spices.

Al Yakhni (Bottle Gourd in a Yoghurt Sauce)

Modur Polav (Sweet Pulao)

Indira’s Independence Day Parade precipitated this…this blog, I mean. And immediately I thought of this fragrant pulao that I haven’t made in a while. It is one of the few sweet dishes that we Kashmiris have. It is not an exaggeration when I say that you can count all of them on one finger, if you count like my husband.

And I thought why not showcase one of them (how exclusive is that!) to celebrate our day of Independence. It is sweet, and it has saffron as its primary colour, the top colour in our tiranga. When served at wedding wazwans it is always the first course – that should tell you something about its stature for a people who don’t care much for the sweet stuff! In old days, sugar must have been dear in a place connected to the rest of the subcontinent only by treacherous mountain roads. The pulao is, quaintly, always paired with a tangy north-Indian kind of achar (the Pachranga kind).

After a few anxious moments on seeing Archana’s entry (Whew! That was close!) I present to you the Modur Polav (sweet pulao) from Kashmir, the northern-most state of India, as my entry at Mahanandi, the very inspiring blog by Indira. In my search for Andhra food I stumbled on her blog some time back and …you surely know what happens to foodies in places like that?

This pulao uses saffron as one of the main spices, the most exclusive variety of which grows right here in Kashmir. This is an authentic recipe from my Mom. I can vouch that it comes out great every time I make it – which is as well – imagine the benchmarks I must have had to confront marrying into a Maharashtrian household! All them varieties of sweets and me with my ‘repertoire’ of all of three. But to tell the truth, I have needed just two of those to have family and friends raving about my dessert-making abilities!! Those have been two real Aces up my sleeve.