Kashmiri food: wazwan, nun chai and bakeries

How Kashmiri food is different

Kashmiri cooking grew out of a cold valley with short summers. Rice is the staple, grown in paddies across the valley floor. Mutton is the prized meat. Vegetables are dried in autumn for winter, and gravies are coloured deep red with mild Kashmiri chillies and, in some kitchens, the dried flower of the cockscomb plant, called mawal, rather than made hot.

There are two great home traditions. Kashmiri Muslim cooking uses shallots, garlic and a spice cake called ver, and is the source of the wazwan. Kashmiri Pandit cooking, the food of the valley's Hindu community, avoids onion and garlic and leans on asafoetida, dry ginger powder, fennel and yoghurt. Both share many dishes, such as rogan josh and dum aloo, cooked in different ways.

Meals at home are simple: a mound of rice, a bowl of haak or a lentil, and a meat or vegetable dish, eaten with the right hand. Bread belongs to breakfast and teatime rather than lunch and dinner. Hospitality is serious; if you are invited into a home, expect several cups of tea and more food than you can eat, and it is polite to accept at least a little.

The wazwan, course by course

A wazwan is the formal feast cooked for weddings and celebrations by a waza, a master cook from a line of cooks. Traditionally guests sit on the floor in groups of four and share a large copper platter called a trami, heaped with rice and topped with kebabs and meats, while more dishes are served course by course. A full wedding wazwan can run to more than a dozen meat dishes.

You do not need a wedding invitation to taste it. Srinagar restaurants serve wazwan dishes a la carte, and some offer a smaller set trami for two to four people. These are the dishes to know:

At a wedding, the meal is opened with a ritual hand-wash: a server brings a copper jug and basin, the tash-t-nari, to each guest. Eat with your right hand, take from the part of the trami in front of you, and leave the gushtaba, the final course, as the sign that the meal is ending.

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Nun chai, kahwa and the kandur

Kashmir drinks two teas, and neither is the milky sweet chai of the plains. Nun chai, also called sheer chai, is a pink salt tea. Green tea leaves are boiled long with a pinch of baking soda, then milk and salt are added, and the tea turns a pale pink. Kashmiris drink it at breakfast and again in the afternoon, often with bread dunked in it.

Kahwa is the guest tea: green tea brewed with saffron, cardamom and cinnamon, poured over crushed almonds and sweetened with sugar or honey. It is traditionally made in a copper samovar, and roadside sellers in Srinagar and the hill stations pour it by the cup.

Breakfast bread comes from the kandur, the neighbourhood baker, who fires a clay oven before dawn. Queue with local families for girda, a round, soft flat bread marked with fingertips; lavasa, thin and crisp; tsot; and the sweeter, layered bakarkhani. Two breads and a cup of nun chai cost under ₹100.

• Girda: soft round bread for breakfast with butter and nun chai
• Lavasa: thin, crisp flat bread
• Bakarkhani: layered, flaky bread, sometimes with sesame
• Kulcha: small, crumbly biscuit-like bread eaten with tea

Harissa and other winter food

Harissa is Srinagar's winter breakfast. Mutton is cooked overnight with rice, spices and fat in a deep copper pot over a wood fire until it becomes a smooth paste. Shops in the old city, especially around the Jamia Masjid and Khanyar areas, open before dawn from about November to March and sell out by mid-morning. It comes on a plate with hot mustard oil poured over, a seekh kebab and fresh bread, and costs about ₹250–500 a plate.

Winter is also when you see the stored foods of summer: dried tomatoes, turnips, aubergines and gourds, called hokh syun, and smoked fish. Families cook them with mutton or beans through Chillai Kalan, when fresh vegetables are scarce.

Vegetarian Kashmir

Vegetarians eat well here. Kashmiri Pandit cooking has a full range of dishes without meat, and most restaurants in Srinagar and the hill stations serve them.

Haak is the everyday green: collard greens cooked simply with mustard oil, green chilli and asafoetida, eaten with rice. Nadru, lotus stem harvested from the lakes, is cooked in yoghurt as nadru yakhni or fried in batter as nadru monje, a street snack. Dum aloo, whole small potatoes in a red gravy, and chaman kaliya, paneer in a gravy of milk, turmeric and fennel, are both widely available. Rajma from the hill districts, cooked with rice, is a cheap and filling lunch at any local restaurant.

For snacks, look for nadru monje stalls on the Dal boulevard and in the old city in the evening, and for roasted corn on the meadows in summer. Many hotels in Gulmarg and Pahalgam cook for vegetarian Indian families as a matter of course, so ask for Kashmiri dishes by name if you want them rather than a standard north Indian menu.

Saffron, dry fruit and what to take home

Kashmir saffron grows mainly on the karewa plateaus around Pampore, south of Srinagar, and carries a Geographical Indication tag. The flowers are picked by hand from late October to mid-November. Buy sealed packs with the GI label from known shops or growers' outlets, not loose saffron from roadside sellers. Prices are high, often several hundred rupees a gram.

Walnuts and almonds from Kashmir's orchards, dried apricots, and packs of kahwa mix make good gifts. Shilajit and so-called rare herbs sold to tourists are best avoided. Take sealed food packs in checked luggage, and check airline rules for liquids such as honey.

How to eat well in Srinagar

Ask hotels and houseboats which family-run restaurants they use for wazwan, and go at lunchtime when dishes are freshest. Ahdoos on Residency Road has served Kashmiri food for about a century and is a reliable first stop. In the old city, food is cheaper and more local, but dress modestly and avoid the hour around Friday prayers.

Wazwan dishes are rich. Share plates, order rice by the half, and drink kahwa after the meal, which Kashmiris say helps digestion. During Ramadan many local eateries close by day and open after sunset, while hotel restaurants stay open for guests.