Unexpected rise of Kashmiri food

I don't know if there is a Kashmiri conspiracy afloat, but The Oberoi Mumbai has a Kashmiri wazwan festival (which will be over by the time you read this), ITC Maurya Delhi had a Kashmiri Pandit festival on more or less simultaneously, and in faraway Singapore, some friends of mine have set up a Kashmiri restaurant.

When the late Abdul Ahad Waza moved to Delhi more than 20 years ago, members of his community scoffed. His three sons now wear his mantle: they are the only waza family (www.ahadsons.com) to have stuck it out in Delhi, and have long been reaping the benefits.

They supply a handful of dishes to a slew of restaurants, cater for parties and banquets for every Kashmiri Muslim in Delhi (just try getting them on the phone two days before Eid) and are called to most hotel chains all over the country to do Kashmiri festivals. The Waza brothers are supremely confident around a hotel kitchen; they know the ins and outs of the KOT and pick-up systems.

In contrast, most other wazas fresh from Kashmir cannot function in a gleaming steel space age kitchen: they're at home in an open courtyard under the Srinagar sky. Shafiq Waza, the articulate MBA graduate member of the family, is clear that he will never ever start up his own restaurant because of the number of compromises it entails.

S Suman Kaul (sumanrkaul@gmail.com), a Pandit settled in Hyderabad since 1991, said almost the same thing to me. Essentially a housewife with a surprisingly good hand for cooking, her homely touch came through in the kabargah and the dum aloo that was on the menu the day of my visit.

However, it was the haq that was the hit of the festival. The recipe is no state secret: all you do is slow-cook haq (known as curly kale in the UK) with mustard oil, water, green chillies, salt and heeng.

The rider is that it requires a high degree of specialisation: in my extended family, all we have is a lone aunt who makes the dish with any level of expertise. Kaul's haq was buttery and soft without disintegrating, and the heeng did not shout: it whispered.

When a wazwan is held at the family home in Srinagar, Kashmir, it is nothing but drudgery for us ladies of the household. There are hundreds of onions, garlic and shallots to be peeled, red chillies to be picked over and haq leaves to be cleaned.

So it feels like cheating when you walk into a hotel and help yourself at the buffet to as much wazwan food as you want, without effort.

Kashmir, the restaurant by Singapore-based Rohit and Shweta Razdan, has taken Kashmiri food to the final frontier: outside the country. I see from their website (www.kashmir.sg) that the menu is more north Indian than Kashmiri, and is a mix of Muslim and Pandit cuisines.

marryam08@gmail.com