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Valley calling!
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Radisson MBD, Noida, is hosting a Kashmiri food festival
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test your taste buds Roganjosh on offer
Winter is here and Made In India restaurant at the Radisson MBD, Noida, has used it is as an opportunity to give the Delhiites a chance to savour Kashmiri food by organising a festival. Opulent and redolent with spices like cinnamon, cardamom, cloves
and saffron, people in the plains can’t have the Kashmiri food in summers. “We have reduced the amount of oil to suit the absorption levels of people here but the spice and the flavour are the same,” says Rajesh Variyanth, the hotel’s Executive Chef.
But this reporter went with the idea of having something called wazwan. “Wazwan is the traditional Kashmiri Muslim banquet. The word ‘waz’ means chef and ‘wan’ means the shop with its full array of meats and delicacies. It consists of 36 courses of which 15-30 dishes are varieties of meat. Here, we have reduced the number to the crucial seven to keep it functional,” says Rajesh.
Rista and tabak maas
So for the non-vegetarians, the showcase includes roganjosh, which is spring lamb made in a cockscomb flower extract gravy. Then there is muss which is hand-pounded lamb dumplings with saffron flavoured gravy. There is yakhni and gostaba, which are pounded lamb dumplings in a yogurt gravy, flavoured with mint. Also on offer is rista and tabak maas, which is braised lamb ribs made in Kashmiri spices.
Vegetarians can relish regular delicacies like dum aloo, rajma and paneer kalia. Then there is haakh, which is a stir fry of Kashmiri spinach with spices and al yakhani, bottle gourd in yoghurt gravy flavoured with fennel and mint. For rice lovers, there is the signature Kashmiri rice, full of flavour. Kashmiris use a variety of breads seldom seen elsewhere, which add their own taste to the meal like sheermal, bakharkhani, khameeri roti and Kashmiri nan. There are varieties of shorbas and kababs on offer as well.
“Kashmiri cooking has two great schools, Kashmiri Pandit cooking and the Kashmiri Muslim cuisine. The basic difference between the two is that the Hindus use heeng and curd to flavour their food while the Muslims used onions and garlic,” explains Rajesh. He goes on to add that though Brahmins, Kashmiri Pandits have generally been great meat eaters. This is due to the fact that the snow-bound areas of the valley made it very difficult to cultivate food and almost impossible for food supplies to be taken in. “Goat is usually preferred. Meat is usually cut into somewhat large pieces. Curd plays an important part in the cuisine. No meat delicacy, except certain kababs, is cooked without curd.”
The festival will last till this Sunday.
ANUJ KUMAR
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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