Read Online India on My Platter by Sanjeev Kapoor, Saransh Goila - Free Book Online
Authors: Sanjeev Kapoor, Saransh Goila
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plates. At first, I was shy and felt odd but as I shared that trami with them I realised the importance of a family eating together. It gives you more satisfaction and peace. I couldn’t thank the ladies and Javed enough, so I promised to make them look good on TV and headed to my next destination, which was my bed. Imagine having eaten a kilo of meat all by yourself? A bed is all that you need after that.
D AY 18
24 August / Pampur
It was a hot sunny day and before we started for Jammu there was one thing that was yet to be experienced, and that was the saffron culture in Kashmir. There are very few, only about two or three, places in the whole world where saffron grows and Kashmir has the privilege of being one of these places. We visited one of the plantations on the city outskirts—Pampur, 13 km from Srinagar—for information on saffron, a spice used for its beautiful colour, medicinal properties and fragrance. I met Kedar there who took me through the process of producing saffron. Kedar explained, ‘The saffron plant is very small and its flower is the only part which is seen above the ground. The blooming time of this flower is autumn. There are only three stigmas in it when the flower blooms. This is painstakingly harvested manually.’
The aroma I got while sorting saffron was enchanting. These strands were also incredibly fat, as big as aloo lachas (potato finger fries) and a deep purple in colour. I just couldn’t miss this opportunity to make something with saffron. So I chose to make a chilled saffron-flavoured milk with it. Meanwhile, the weather turned beautiful, it started raining heavily, both of us raised a toast with our saffron milk and I wrapped up my Kashmir visit with beautiful memories. I will agree with the saying, if there is heaven on earth, it is right here in Kashmir.
D AY 19
It took us the entire day to reach Jammu.
D AY 20
25 August / Jammu
Jammu is famous for rajma, or kidney beans. I spoke to one of my friends and he told me there was a certain sardar ji in the Nandini locality, who owned a small dhaba at some hidden corner there and served the tastiest rajma chawal. So after an hour of making ‘U’ turns and trying to locate the shop, we entered the quaint little dhaba. Sardar ji greeted me and I replied, ‘ Sasriyakal paaji, do you serve rajma chawal here?’ He smiled, asked me to have a seat, and explained, ‘Not just any rajma chawal, we serve it with lots of desi ghee .’ They get the beans from a region called Bhaderwah, in the foothills of the Himalayas, which is said to produce the best rajma in India. People from different parts of the country ask for rajma as a gift whenever somebody is travelling to Jammu. So it was a great idea to pick some for my grandmother.
Sardar ji further explained, ‘Usually, people who go to Vaishno Devi come here to eat rajma chawal made in desi ghee. This is a famous dish here.’ Though I wasn’t very enthusiastic about having it there, since I get to eat it almost every Sunday back at home, I was curious why it was so popular? Soon a steel plate arrived in front of me, and I was overwhelmed by the aroma of ghee. It was a very traditional way of serving rajma chawal ; there was rice on the bottom topped with rajma, a bit of sliced onions and dollops of ghee on top. The beauty of this rajma was that it was buttery and melted in your mouth, so soft, unlike the ones served in Mumbai or Delhi that takes hours to cook. Using the Jammu rajma I decided to make a Mexican bean salad for sardar ji and his co-workers as a token of appreciation for cooking such fabulous food for the past 40 years. Mexican bean salad was pretty desi in nature. It had fried nachos-shaped papad (thin, crisp disc-shaped food typically based on seasoned dough made from black gram, fried or cooked with dry heat), topped with thick rajma plus curry, finely chopped mixed salad tossed with chaat masala and lemon juice and lastly garnished with grated cottage
D AY 18
24 August / Pampur
It was a hot sunny day and before we started for Jammu there was one thing that was yet to be experienced, and that was the saffron culture in Kashmir. There are very few, only about two or three, places in the whole world where saffron grows and Kashmir has the privilege of being one of these places. We visited one of the plantations on the city outskirts—Pampur, 13 km from Srinagar—for information on saffron, a spice used for its beautiful colour, medicinal properties and fragrance. I met Kedar there who took me through the process of producing saffron. Kedar explained, ‘The saffron plant is very small and its flower is the only part which is seen above the ground. The blooming time of this flower is autumn. There are only three stigmas in it when the flower blooms. This is painstakingly harvested manually.’
The aroma I got while sorting saffron was enchanting. These strands were also incredibly fat, as big as aloo lachas (potato finger fries) and a deep purple in colour. I just couldn’t miss this opportunity to make something with saffron. So I chose to make a chilled saffron-flavoured milk with it. Meanwhile, the weather turned beautiful, it started raining heavily, both of us raised a toast with our saffron milk and I wrapped up my Kashmir visit with beautiful memories. I will agree with the saying, if there is heaven on earth, it is right here in Kashmir.
D AY 19
It took us the entire day to reach Jammu.
D AY 20
25 August / Jammu
Jammu is famous for rajma, or kidney beans. I spoke to one of my friends and he told me there was a certain sardar ji in the Nandini locality, who owned a small dhaba at some hidden corner there and served the tastiest rajma chawal. So after an hour of making ‘U’ turns and trying to locate the shop, we entered the quaint little dhaba. Sardar ji greeted me and I replied, ‘ Sasriyakal paaji, do you serve rajma chawal here?’ He smiled, asked me to have a seat, and explained, ‘Not just any rajma chawal, we serve it with lots of desi ghee .’ They get the beans from a region called Bhaderwah, in the foothills of the Himalayas, which is said to produce the best rajma in India. People from different parts of the country ask for rajma as a gift whenever somebody is travelling to Jammu. So it was a great idea to pick some for my grandmother.
Sardar ji further explained, ‘Usually, people who go to Vaishno Devi come here to eat rajma chawal made in desi ghee. This is a famous dish here.’ Though I wasn’t very enthusiastic about having it there, since I get to eat it almost every Sunday back at home, I was curious why it was so popular? Soon a steel plate arrived in front of me, and I was overwhelmed by the aroma of ghee. It was a very traditional way of serving rajma chawal ; there was rice on the bottom topped with rajma, a bit of sliced onions and dollops of ghee on top. The beauty of this rajma was that it was buttery and melted in your mouth, so soft, unlike the ones served in Mumbai or Delhi that takes hours to cook. Using the Jammu rajma I decided to make a Mexican bean salad for sardar ji and his co-workers as a token of appreciation for cooking such fabulous food for the past 40 years. Mexican bean salad was pretty desi in nature. It had fried nachos-shaped papad (thin, crisp disc-shaped food typically based on seasoned dough made from black gram, fried or cooked with dry heat), topped with thick rajma plus curry, finely chopped mixed salad tossed with chaat masala and lemon juice and lastly garnished with grated cottage
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