Opinion | Kashmiri Cuisine Beyond Wazwan A Culinary Identity Worth Preserving

When one speaks of Kashmiri cuisine, especially among non-Kashmiri people, the discussion often revolves around Wazwan, the traditional, elaborate, and multiple course meal of up to thirty-six courses served during marriages on a copper dish called traem. This is a worthy topic to discuss. The Wazwan cuisine is unique, an ancient style of cooking that was introduced into Kashmir via the influence of Persian and Central Asian styles of cooking, made overnight in huge copper pots called degs through firewood cookers by the community of professional hereditary chefs called wazas, whose family members learn about cooking techniques of various dishes such as rista, gushtaba, and tabak maaz exclusively from their forefathers. However, Wazwan is just a single style of Kashmiri cuisine; there are others too. The more one studies about the cuisine of Kashmir Valley, the more he/she realizes that the other aspects of the Valley’s cuisine deserve appreciation in their own right.

One of the clearest examples would be the dish called haaq. This dish of green leafs can contain either collard greens, spinach or knol khol fried with spices in mustard oil. Haaq is regularly present at tables of Kashmiris to the extent that no dish from the menu of Wazwan could compare with it. While Wazwan is grand in its essence and nature, this dish is humble and easy to prepare and represents life rather than celebration. Another dish known worldwide thanks to Wazwan but at the same time being a dish of daily use in many Kashmiri families is rogan josh. This dish, whose recipe is inspired by Persians and which uses Kashmiri chillies instead of tomatoes, which can be found in many other versions of the recipe. Apart from that, dum aloo – potatoes fried in yogurt and spices and Kashmiri pulao – pulao with origins in Persian zerkish pulao are some other dishes that Kashmiris eat daily but are not recognized in Kashmiri cuisine understood through Wazwan.

The Valley’s Hindu and Muslim communities have historically maintained distinct culinary traditions that nonetheless share a common regional foundation and vocabulary. Kashmiri Pandits mark festivals like Herath, the local celebration of Shivratri, with elaborate vegetarian feasts built around dishes such as dum aloo, chok wangun and nadur yakhni, a lotus stem preparation that draws on ingredients abundant in the Valley’s wetlands and water bodies. Kashmiri Muslims, in turn, prepare specific dishes for Ramadan and Eid, including phirni, a rice pudding dessert, harissa, a slow-cooked meat and wheat preparation traditionally associated with winter mornings, and shufta, a rich dried fruit and nut preparation. Despite these community-specific traditions, both groups share an underlying culinary vocabulary and, notably, a similarly high regard for hospitality, known locally as mehmaannawaazi, a value that shapes how food functions socially across Kashmiri society regardless of religious community.

Dishes that are associated with particular regions or seasons add additional layers to this picture, which is largely still taking place within home kitchens and not on restaurant menus or in tourist schedules. Rainbow and brown trout, introduced to the chilly streams of Kashmir in the early years of the twentieth century by the British, continue to be an important protein-rich dish, often fried or cooked in traditional ways, with considerable breeding efforts focused on places like Kokernag. Tabak maaz, lamb ribs cooked in milk and spices then fried crispy, falls somewhere between regular treat and special dish. Eating according to the seasons has its own significance in Kashmiri culinary tradition, as the arrival of spring is celebrated through dishes made from gadi, or fish, prepared with tamarind or dried plums; Kashmiri authors have described such dishes as symbolizing renewal following the winter months.

Literary treatment of Kashmiri food has increasingly drawn attention to this dimension of everyday culinary practice as a form of cultural memory and resilience. Writers exploring Kashmiri fiction have documented how careful literary references to traditional dishes, the precise order of courses on a traem, the preparation of charvan, a finely minced mixture of liver and lung traditionally prepared by wazas, or the closing sweetness of halwi, a semolina and dried fruit dessert, function as more than descriptive detail. These references evoke an entire world of ritual, memory and belonging for readers who recognise them, allowing food to carry emotional and cultural weight that goes well beyond nutrition or even celebration. Newer additions to the Wazwan repertoire itself, such as chicken badaam korma and safeed rista, demonstrate that even the most ceremonial end of Kashmiri cuisine continues to evolve, incorporating new elements without necessarily abandoning the essential techniques and presentation that define the tradition.

The push to promote Kashmiri cuisine beyond its Wazwan stereotype has practical stakes beyond cultural pride alone. Food entrepreneurs and hospitality advocates argue that an overly narrow international association with Wazwan, however impressive as a singular culinary showcase, leaves considerable economic and cultural value on the table. Promoting the Valley’s broader everyday food culture, its greens, its fish preparations, its distinct festival dishes across communities, offers a more complete and arguably more sustainable culinary tourism proposition than one built entirely around an elaborate feast that most visitors encounter, if at all, only in a scaled-down restaurant version rather than its authentic wedding-tent form.

However, there is also a dimension of preservation which is analogous to issues related to Kashmiri handicrafts and language. The ceremonial aspect of Wazwan, which has been meticulously preserved by the traditional cooks or wazas, using recipes which have been jealously kept secret among family lines, is still essential for the marriage celebrations and all the cultural gatherings. It is very important for keeping the tradition alive because it helps to maintain the livelihoods of the wazas and their skills. However, the common dishes such as haaq, dum aloo, nadur yakhni, harissa seem to be in much greater danger because they do not have any ceremonial aspect or economic infrastructure like Wazwan. They continue to exist today only at the kitchen table, passed on from generation to generation, in the same way as the endangered language and traditional music of Kashmir are being inherited. Understanding and promoting this broader perspective, instead of allowing the tradition of Wazwan to represent the food of Kashmir in the general perception, seems to be one of the most easily achievable ways of preserving the cultural identity which is clearly valued by Kashmiris in spite of the ignorance of the rest of the world.

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