Recipe2 min read
Kashmiri yakhni, and the pot that must not boil
Curd, fennel and dry ginger. A white curry with no chilli in it at all.
From the unit at Ganderbal
Yakhni is the quiet one. There is no chilli in it, no turmeric, nothing to make it red — just mutton, curd, fennel and dry ginger, cooked until the whole thing turns pale and fragrant.
In a wazwan it arrives after the heavier dishes, and it is a relief. At home it is what gets cooked when somebody is unwell, or when the weather has turned and nobody wants anything fierce.
Fennel and dry ginger are the whole dish
Take those two out and you have boiled mutton in curd. Together they make something you would recognise blindfolded.
Fennel — saunf — gives the sweetness and the perfume. It goes in ground, and it goes in generously: two tablespoons for under a kilo of meat, which looks wrong on the spoon and is exactly right in the pot.
Dry ginger — sonth — is not fresh ginger dried at home. It is a different thing: sharper, more concentrated, slightly resinous, and it cuts the richness of the curd in a way fresh ginger cannot. A teaspoon does it.
Both should be ground recently. Fennel in particular goes flat within months of grinding, and flat fennel makes a flat yakhni.
Why it must not boil
Curd is milk protein suspended in water. Heat it hard and the protein tightens and squeezes the water out — it curdles, and what was a smooth white gravy becomes grains floating in whey.
Three things keep it together: whisk the curd completely smooth before it goes anywhere near heat; add it slowly, on the lowest flame, stirring the whole time; and once it is in, never let the pot do more than tremble.
Stirring in one direction is what every Kashmiri cook will tell you, and there is no chemistry behind it. Stirring in one direction just means you keep stirring, and that is the part that works.
What it should taste like
Mild, but not bland — there is a real difference. It should be fragrant with fennel, gently sharp from the dry ginger, savoury from the mutton, with the curd giving body rather than sourness.
If it tastes flat, it is almost always salt or old fennel. If it tastes sour, the curd was too far gone before it went in.
Serve it with plain rice. It is the one Kashmiri dish that needs nothing on the side at all.
The recipe
Serves 4 · 15 min prep · 60 min cooking
What you need
- 800 gmutton on the bone, in medium pieces
- 4 tbspmustard oil, or ghee for a gentler dish
- 2black cardamom pods
- 4green cardamom pods
- 4cloves
- 1small piece of cinnamon bark
- 2bay leaves
- 2 tbspfennel (saunf) powder
- 1 tspdry ginger (sonth) powder
- 500 gfull-fat curd, whisked completely smooth
- 1 tspdried mint, crushed between the palms
- to tastesalt
What you do
Step 1. Whisk the curd until there is not a lump left in it, and leave it out of the fridge. Cold curd going into a hot pot is the single most common way this dish is ruined.
Step 2. Heat the oil in a heavy pot. Add the black and green cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and bay, and let them open up for ten seconds.
Step 3. Add the mutton and about two cups of water, with salt. No browning — yakhni is a white dish and a browned surface will colour it.
Step 4. Simmer covered for about forty minutes, until the meat is nearly tender. Skim whatever rises.
Step 5. Turn the heat to its lowest. Add the whisked curd a ladle at a time, stirring continuously in one direction, and do not stop until all of it is in.
Step 6. Now the fennel and dry ginger powders. Keep stirring for another two or three minutes, still on low.
Step 7. Bring it up to the barest tremble — a bubble every second or two, no more — and hold it there uncovered for fifteen minutes. If it boils hard the curd will split, and there is no going back.
Step 8. Crush the dried mint between your palms over the pot, stir once, and take it off the heat.
Worth knowing
- Full-fat curd only. Low-fat curd splits at half the provocation.
- If it does split, it is still perfectly good to eat — it just will not be smooth. Nobody will mind as much as you do.
- Fennel is the flavour here, not a background note. Two tablespoons is right, even though it looks like a lot.
