The last time I was in Kashmir, India, the weather was fabulous. It always is. There was mild breeze. Orange saffron pads pranced to a balmy sun. Gazelles hopped. Kashmir was festive.
Marriage ceremonies — plain euphemisms for food in Kashmir — do not have a more appropriate timing. Fall is the official season of weddings and wazwan (a multi-course meal) is a Kashmiri staple.
A multi-cuisine mutton fiesta, wazwan is prepared by wazas or master chefs.
My cousin’s wedding
Preparations for wazwan for my cousin’s wedding went on a military scale. Around evening, two red wagons drove in - carrying the cooking weaponry: ladles, pestles, knives and the army.
An army of the wazas. Super-skilled in their craft, ordinary foods give off magical aromas with an impatient flick of their wizardly hands.
At the vur — an open kitchen — cooking is done the old fusty way with firewood (logs and birch branches).
The assistant wazas pound the meat needed for making meatballs. Another group make a quick salami of the softer limbs in the lamb, for skewers.
Yet another party religiously sifted the spices. These units work as close-knit regiments and try to outdo each other, only to finish together.
The pounding and cutting, battering and smashing, slicing and hammering of mutton makes strange noises.
Minced with Kashmiri walnut wood hammers on stone, meat is beaten until it adopts a creamy consistency.
The kerfuffle of wazas declares a marriage aloud in a locality. The sounds mingle with the wedding songs sung in the women’s enclosure.
Pots, pans and magic
Meantime the degs (copper pots) simmered in soft cuddling whiffs under an autumn moon. A deg with a waza stirring it unceasingly is like Getafix, the Gaulish druid standing by his cauldron, tossing those secret ingredients in it for his magic potion. Any gourmet will tell you that wazwan is nothing short of magic!
As wazas gave their preparations some last minute touches, it was time for wazwan. Soon food began to arrive in all its grandeur in taramis (largish nickel-plated copper plates).
Four eat from one plate. Kashmir’s romance with copper, which started a long time ago, has not ended. Not yet. Not even in a disposable world.
Each copper plate is topped with hot rice enough for eight people. Kashmiri kebabs on skewers, Tabak Maaz (deep fried ribs), Meth Maz (minced meat) and marinated chicken is artfully arranged on the plate. This is the first course and people have less than ten minutes to finish it off before another dish appears.
The second course is the golf-ball like Ristas, done in a rich rouge gravy. Suddenly one feels like lunching under a spice tree.
A range of royal food
One after the other, a range of royal food like Daniwal Korma (mutton cooked in coriander), Sabz Haakh (collards green cooked in mustard oil with chilly), Rogan Josh (shoulder cuts cooked in flower essence, curd, and Kashmiri chilly), Marchwagun Korma (fiery hot Kashmiri chilly korma), Doon Chetin (Walnut chutney flavoured with yoghurt) are served.
A bevy of wazas does the rounds, carefully serving the contents of the wazwan.
It is an intangible art that they have perfected over many autumns. They pick out exactly four pieces of a course from a cauldron along with a spattering of gravy, which is served at four designated spots in the big copper plate.
There are a few things in world, which must be eaten with your bare hands and wazwan tops the list. Spoons and forks can stay in the silverware. For the real thing, you need to tuck your sleeves, as they say.
A stately full stop
As a gold-hued potion showed up, I knew it was Yekhni. Served towards the close of the elaborate wazwan, it is made of — of course, mutton, stewed in curd and some delectable herbs. It is sumptuous and thick. I licked my fingers.
Since all good things must end, the waza brings his signature speciality towards the climax. Goshtaba: A yardstick to measure the chef’s culinary skills. It is a huge ball of meat, marinated with blobs of golden fat. It has a golden soup too, which is tingling. Goshtaba serves as a full stop and looks like an inflated cricket ball or a deflated football, whichever way you look at it.
We finished the rest of it, licking the last dreamy dab of gravy.
Washing down a feast
After a meal fit for the kings, you need something to wash it down. That is when the Samovar (copper kettle), burbling with Kashmiri Kehwa comes in. Kehwa is neither tea, nor lemonade. It is Jove’s nectar.
It is a brew sprinkled with lots of local apricots and cashews, raisins and crushed almonds. Subtly rouge; thanks to the strands of priceless saffron that float in its ripples, it tastes heavenly. One feels levitated, somewhere between cloud nine and paradise. I sipped a few precious pints, made double.
Just another day in Kashmir.
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