Editor's Choice
Photographs: Farzana Contractor
Ican’t have enough of Kashmir, says Farzana Contractor. I was hooked as a teenager when I first went there on a school 'Lala' tour. And then three consecutive winters during college to do the basic, intermediary and advance ski courses of 21 days each! Believe me, those were hardship days, we slept in sleeping bags on the floor! But worth every bit of it when we skied down like in a dream, on the powder-snow, quaint ski slopes of Gulmarg.
The Kashmiri cuisine has always enticed me. Quite easily, it’s the gushtaba which wins hands-down. Followed by Tabak Maaz and then the Mutton Yakhni.
In Sonmarg this September, I stayed at the lovely Rah Villas by the river – and discovered with great joy the most amazing recipe for Mutton Yakhni, using just three main ingredients. No ginger, no garlic either. Not even pepper! Chef Mujawar Hussain Manhas, rural and rustic at heart, said it was an age-old family recipe being used by them for decades. I didn’t quite believe the yakhni could be made so simply, using just a few ingredients, so I stood and watched him cook it the next day just so I could come home and replicate it. It’s my pick of this quarter and perfectly suited for the theme of this issue, which celebrates old-world living; old is gold after all and sometimes silver!
Mutton Yakhni A La Rah
Ingredients
• 500 g boiled mutton, in its stock
• 500 g yogurt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 big and 3 small cardamoms
• 1 tsp aniseed (saunf) powder
• 1/2 tsp dry mint powder
• salt to taste
Method
Put some yogurt in a casserole and place it on the stove, on low heat.
Whisk it swiftly as it starts to cook and continue doing so, so that the yogurt does not curdle.
Within 5 minutes of cooking, add a little milk. Raise the heat to medium, but keep stirring (Chef did not use a spoon, just the whisk).
Add the aniseed powder and the cardamom, and then ladle in some mutton stock from the mutton you have boiled, and the salt. The concoction will now be boiling and reducing.
Cook for 5 more minutes and add the boiled mutton.
Turn down the heat and let it simmer for another 5 minutes and add the dry mint powder.
Turn off the stove, you are done!
Simple, easy and quick.
