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3 places in Kashmiri — touch one for what it's known for.
Kashmir and Jammu — the Kashmir Valley and the hills below it, in India's far north · its own page

Kashmiri

Also Koshur, Wazwan, Kashmiri Pandit, Dogra
One of Indian cooking's regional kitchens · all 7 side by side

Lamb, saffron and fennel in a high valley ringed by mountains: meat slow-cooked in yoghurt or red with Kashmiri chilli, greens from the lake, and kahwa against the cold.

Where it comes from

The Kashmir Valley sits high in the Himalaya, and its cooking is shaped by long winters: rice from its paddies, mutton, fish from the Jhelum and the lakes, and summer vegetables dried to see the cold months through. Its spicing is its own — dried ginger, fennel and Kashmiri chilli, which gives colour more than heat — and saffron grows on the plateaus around Pampore.

Two traditions share the valley. Kashmiri Muslim cooking is best known through the wazwan, a feast of many courses of meat cooked by hereditary cooks called waza; it's often traced to cooks who came from Central Asia or Persia, though the story is told many ways. Kashmiri Pandit cooking eats meat too, but traditionally without onion or garlic, leaning on yoghurt, asafoetida, fennel and ginger instead.

South over the Pir Panjal range, Jammu cooks differently again. Its Dogra kitchen is closer to the plains: rajma, sour-sweet pumpkin, and kalari, a cheese fried in its own fat.

Where in it

  1. Srinagar and PamporeThe valley's capital on the Dal Lake, home of the wazwan, with vegetables grown in the lake's floating gardens. Just south-east, the plateaus around Pampore grow Kashmir's saffron.Rogan joshKashmiri yakhniGushtabaTabak maazHaakKahwaModur pulav
  2. Anantnag and the southThe south of the valley, where the Jhelum rises from springs at Verinag, Achabal and Kokernag: rice paddies, orchards, trout streams and a farmhouse table of greens, lotus stem and dried vegetables.
  3. JammuAcross the Pir Panjal, on the edge of the plains: the Dogra kitchen of rajma from the hills, sour-sweet pumpkin ambal, and kalari cheese fried and folded into kulcha.Kalari

How it cooks

Cooking in yoghurt
Whisked yoghurt added to the pot bit by bit and stirred so it doesn't split — the base of yakhni, gushtaba and much else.
Colour, not fire
Kashmiri chilli, and sometimes cockscomb flower or ratan jot root, give rogan josh its deep red without making it very hot.
Pounding
For gushtaba and rista, the waza pounds mutton on a stone with a wooden mallet until it's almost a paste, working in fat as he goes.
Ver
Ground chilli, fennel, dried ginger and other spices bound with mustard oil into a cake, dried, and crumbled into dishes as needed.
Drying for winter
Tomatoes, turnips, gourds, aubergines, greens and fish are sun-dried in summer and soaked back to life in the cold months.

Always in the kitchen

muttonmustard oilgheeKashmiri chilliground fenneldried ginger (sonth)saffronyoghurtasafoetidablack cardamomgreen cardamomcinnamonver (a Kashmiri spice cake)short-grain ricehaak (Kashmiri collard greens)lotus stem (nadru)

Cook from it

Its classics

KashmiriRogan joshMutton on the bone, browned in hot fat and simmered with yoghurt, fennel, dried ginger and Kashmiri chilli into a deep red gravy that's fragrant more than fiery.No one here has made it yetKashmiriKashmiri yakhniMutton simmered in a pale, gently sour gravy of yoghurt scented with fennel, dried ginger and cardamom — no chilli, no turmeric.No one here has made it yetKashmiriGushtabaLarge, soft balls of mutton pounded smooth with fat, simmered in a spiced yoghurt gravy — traditionally the last meat course of the wazwan.No one here has made it yetKashmiriKashmiri dum alooSmall whole potatoes, pricked and fried golden, then simmered slowly in yoghurt with Kashmiri chilli, fennel and dried ginger.No one here has made it yetKashmiriKahwaGreen tea brewed with saffron, cardamom and cinnamon, sweetened and poured over slivered almonds.No one here has made it yetKashmiriHaakKashmiri collard greens, left in large pieces and simmered plainly with mustard oil, water, dried chilli and asafoetida or garlic.No one here has made it yetKashmiriTabak maazLamb ribs simmered in milk with whole spice until tender, then fried in ghee until crisp and glossy.No one here has made it yetKashmiriModur pulavRice cooked in ghee and milk with saffron, sugar, cinnamon and cardamom, studded with dried fruit and nuts.No one here has made it yetKashmiriKalariA dense, fresh cheese from the Jammu hills, fried dry in a hot pan until blistered outside and stretchy within, and folded into kulcha.No one here has made it yet

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Kashmiri yet.