Winter Vegetable Feast at Sarposh

Dehydrated and dried turnips, bottle gourd, dandelion leaves, tomatoes and brinjal.

So Azmat from Sarposh reached out saying she wanted to showcase Kashmiri winter food and how they use dried and dehydrated vegetables. However she wasn’t sure if people would want to eat the food and if I would mind trying some dishes and sharing some feedback.

Well she needn’t have worried because this was just amazing food. Even by the standards of Sarposh, which is one of my favourite restaurants in the country, this was a very special, very memorable meal.

It’s rare to eat food that feels like you’re eating something new, to find a truly new experience where the flavour is what hits home rather than novelty.

Chicken with dried dandelion leaves 

We had tabak maaz of course to start with but ended up with a largely vegetarian meal with rice that consisted of the following:

• Hand te Kokur : Dried Dandelion leaves with chicken. This iron-rich saag with an incredibly meaty, robust flavour, tasted almost like a mutton saag and was worth the meal in itself. 
• Ruwangan Hatche te Zombre Thool : Sun dried tomatoes with boiled and fried eggs.
• Tchok Wangan Hatche : Sour  dried brinjal. This again was spectacular. The brinjals were dried until they had an oyster mushroom like texture and there was an unexpected tartness to the sour gravy which made me wonder why restaurants don’t play with sour flavours more considering how beloved it is to the Indian palate. 
• Razma te Gogje Aare : Rajma cooked with dried turnips. I love Kashmiri Rajma but the dried turnips added a wintry note with a hint of bitterness and a textural element that made this very unique and memorable. 
• Ale Hatche Yakhin - Dried bottle gourd Yakhni. We had this within chicken but I would honestly just have had this with the bottle gourd alone. A lovely, light way to end the meal showing that the magic in a good Yakhni comes from the gravy, not the meat. 

Bottle gourd Yakhni 

I don’t know how many people will eat Kashmiri winter vegetable driven food. I don’t know if Azmat should do a special dinner or some sort of people. I don’t know if she will get five customers or five hundred.

Turnip rajma 

But I do know this food deserves a wider audience. To be served this food and to eat it is a privilege and a joy. I would go as far as to say that if Azmat does serve this food in a meal, then anyone who doesn’t make it a priority to eat one of the most special and unique meals they can have in India isn’t truly an ambassador of food. 

Sour dried brinjal