By IANS
New Delhi : Simmered for hours altogether and cooked sans any garlic or onion, the otherwise must-haves of north Indian food, each dish whipped up at a Kashmiri food festival is simply delectable and a gastronome’s delight.
The cuisine, unique to Kashmiri Pandits, to be more specific, was very light with each dish having a distinct flavour. Therefore, despite being served together in a platter, each dish could stand out on its own.
The food festival at the Maurya Sheraton hotel in the capital will be open to all Jan 18-27.
S. Suman Kaul, the head chef said the best thing of this cuisine is that since it’s not laden in oil or other spices, it doesn’t make you feel bloated after eating even a large meal.
“You can eat as much as you want without getting that bloated feeling!” Kaul said.
“The speciality of the cuisine of Kashmiri Pandits is that it doesn’t use garlic or onion, like other cuisines do. Instead we use lots of asafoetida (hing), fennel seeds (saunf) and yoghurt. We generally use curd in our curries, which gives it the creamy consistency. We also use saffron, pure ghee and mustard oil,” Kaul told IANS.
Chilli is used mostly to give colour to the food instead of adding pungency, which is given by dry ginger.
A typical Kashmiri fare should ideally begin with a steaming cup of kahwa or Kashmiri tea, which is laden with spices, particularly saffron, and makes your senses more receptive to the gamut of flavours and aroma to be served later.
A cup of kahwa down and it is time for the real fare to begin.
A plate of steaming rice with some lamb cooked in yellow gravy (nayne qaliya) and chicken cooked in yoghurt curry (kokar yakhni) was next. Light on the taste buds and yet titillating to the senses…the start was perfect.
Next came kabargah. A winter delicacy, this dish, which is lamb ribs cooked in milk and saffron for a good five to six hours. The result: a piece of meat that simply melts in your mouth and yet not so tender that it breaks at the touch of the fork.
The traditional Kashmiri saag or haakh, as it’s called, is another delicacy, cooked in some oil and chilli. There was also nadre yakhni, which is lotus stem cooked in yoghurt, munge chaman qaliya, which is knoll khol with cottage cheese in yellow curry and steamed potatoes flavoured with fennel seeds and asafoetida.
“The difference between the usual Kashmiri fare and this kind of cuisine is that in the former there is a lot of oil and spices used. So two pieces of Kashmiri roghan gosht and you feel full but in the latter, it’s not the case.
“Depending on the season, the food habits are also altered. In summers one eats a lot of leafy vegetables and rajma while in winters, when there is snowfall, one eats a lot of wari muth, which is a cereal cooked in water for the whole day and served with dry chilli and salt,” Kaul said.
To cap the meal perfectly, there was shufta, a preparation in which a variety of dry fruits like almonds and peanuts are roasted and cooked in honey, saffron and sugar syrup.
“I have eaten Kashmiri food before so I know that the food served in this festival has the authentic taste to it. It’s superb,” said Anjana Rai, who had come for the food festival.