Warmth, Served Slow

You will never hear the word Ayurveda mentioned in the same breath as Kashmir, yet the food of the Valley—its seasons, and the moment when each ingredient comes into its own or recedes until the following year—mirrors Ayurvedic principles to a remarkable degree. Foods here have long been codified as ‘cooling’ or ‘warming’ and are eaten accordingly. There are no melons or cucumbers in winter, and no fish in summer for most residents of the Valley, as fish is considered heating to the system. Somewhat curiously, meat—almost invariably from sheep, never goat—is par for the course, come rain, sun, or snow.

Seasoned by Cold
Mutton—the meat of the sheep—is eaten virtually every day of the week, every week of the year, by every resident of the Valley who can afford it, regardless of religious faith. Ask anyone on the street, and they will vehemently deny that mutton is heating or heavy to the system. Every meal has a component of lamb, except for breakfast. And in winter, when the mercury plummets, even breakfast makes room for lamb, for that is when harissa comes into its own.

Harissa is chunk meat with bones attached, slow-cooked with warming spices like cinnamon and clove, dried ginger and garlic, in a large copper vessel until the meat is fork-tender. The bones are then separated, the liquid allowed to reduce almost completely, and the contents of the pot stirred tirelessly with an imposing wooden pestle for over an hour, rendering the meat into a paste. Harissa may best be described as the pâté of Kashmiri cuisine.

By the time it is ready, every fibre has dissolved into oblivion, leaving behind only the essence of lamb and a rich, unctuous body, with spices offering a faint background note rather than overt flavour. It has texture, yet is never fibrous. A piece of tchot—the baker’s bread eaten across Kashmir every morning—is torn and dipped into the harissa.

It is not a morsel easily described. The texture is smooth and creamy, with the faintest suggestion of chew. It is the product of long, slow cooking over a wood fire through most of the night. Black cardamom and cinnamon leave their subtle imprint. Garlic is almost certainly present—Kashmir holds firmly to the belief that meat must be cooked with garlic to counter the lamb’s natural odour—yet it never announces itself as a distinct flavour.

The Making of Harissa
The first time I encountered this ambrosial dish, I had to be dragged, more or less kicking and screaming, into a harissa-gor’s eatery in Ganz Khod, Srinagar’s Old City. I was never much of a red meat eater and assumed harissa would be overly spiced and ‘too meaty’—a term I privately coined for meals dominated entirely by red meat.

Inside, the shop was disarmingly ordinary. There were no women present, but the warmth radiating from the cooking area was deeply comforting. A couple of dozen men sat cross-legged on thick carpets, dunking bread into steaming bowls of pâté-like meat, eating with unmistakable pleasure. That was an invitation enough.

The harissa-gor—the man who cooks and sells just this one dish through winter—needed no prompting. There was no menu to study. Harissa shops sell one item, its price prominently displayed.

Fire, Patience, Ritual
What sets winter preparations of mutton apart is their unapologetic richness. When warmth is the goal, digestion is secondary. In that sense, harissa is the natural corollary to wazwan, Kashmir’s elaborate banquet of multiple lamb-based dishes prepared by professional cooks for weddings and milestones. Wazwan requires teams of specialists cooking in courtyards over wood fires, while the harissa-gor works alone, producing a single dish using little more than a copper pot, wooden oar-like spoon, pestle, and patience.

Wood fire, expertly butchered lamb, a handful of spices, and the quiet genius of an anonymous originator—harissa remains Kashmir’s most comforting answer to winter, warming the body even as snow falls silently outside.