Wazwan

The blends behind the feast.

Wazwan is the Kashmiri banquet — a long sequence of mutton courses cooked by a waza and eaten four to a trami, the shared copper plate.

The cooking is the waza’s. The spice is ours: the same meat masala, ver and Kashmiri chilli that wazas and caterers have bought from our unit for years, in the same grind.

Some of what arrives on the trami.

A full wazwan can run past thirty courses. These are the ones a household is most likely to cook at home.

Tabak maaz: Ribs simmered in milk and spice, then fried until the edges go crisp.
Rista: Pounded mutton meatballs in a red gravy. The chilli does the colour.
Rogan josh: The one everybody knows, and the one most often made wrong.
Yakhni: White, fennel-scented, cooling. The pause in the middle.
Gushtaba: The finish. Pounded finer than rista, in a curd gravy.