Jolly in Jammu

Jammu is in Kashmir in the north of India and is full of great Kashmiri food. There are so many dishes that appear on restaurant menus that owe its origins to this wonderful cuisine and I sampled some of it in places known for them. I tried the much-loved Wazwan cuisine that is the food known as wedding cuisine. Kashmiri weddings are full of traditional food, often hundreds of dishes, cooked using family recipes that have been passed down through the generations of cooks. These artisan recipes taste very different to dishes cooked at home and are not meant to be eaten everyday.

I had a delicious Kashmiri Lamb Kurma that was worlds apart from the kormas we know here. This northern version gets its vibrant red colour from the beautiful Kashmiri red chillies that have little heat. I tasted simple spices of fennel and ginger and the mutton fell off the bone with ease. It was not creamy and the rich flavour comes from pure ghee. Not a dish I will make often, in fear of my waistline rapidly changing, but a little bit of ghee now and again won’t do any harm.

I tried Gushtaba, which is a first for me. Lamb meatballs that have been pulsed until fine and hardly spiced as the flavour comes from the sauce it’s steeped in. A thin silky yoghurt sauce flavoured with ginger, turmeric, coriander and a few other spices. Perfect for dipping a naan into. Although I couldn’t sample everything on the menu I can safely say that Wazwan recipes are def worth trying.