Three parts recipe, two parts memoir, one part history -- the latest cookbook on the shelves tells us the story of Kashmir through Sarla Razdan's experiences of growing up in firdaus

Sarla Razdan is out with her first book, but for the 60 year-old debutante author, it has been in the making for a long time. Kashmiri Cuisine Through the Ages is not just an ordinary recipe book -- it's two parts memoir and one part history.


Red chillies hang outside windows to dry

Razdan, who has cooked for the likes of former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, singer Lata Mangeshkar and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, peppers her recipes with memories they invoke. We learn, for instance, of the time when Tendulkar visited Razdan's New Delhi home without informing her, for fear of a crowd collecting.

Unfazed, Razdan whipped up four exquisite dishes for the Little Master, including the Yakhni (lamb cooked in yoghurt) and the Kabargah (fried lamb breasts), which Tendulkar later tried to make at home with little success.


Townsfolk gather scented saffron flowers. Both ingredients are specific
to the region's cuisine. Pics/Mukhtar Ahmad for Kashmiri Cuisine
Through the Ages

The footnotes make for interesting reading too -- the Shufta (sweetened cottage cheese with dry fruits), we are told, is Lata Mangeshkar's favourite dish, and the plain-looking Roth (sweet fried flour bread), is the centrepiece of the Kashmiri Pandit festival, when the entire clan comes together. It's a pity, there are not too many of these footnotes, though.

The book also has some breathtaking photographs of Kashmir, and while there may be little connection between the recipe of Nadir Monjvor (lotus stem cutlets) and photos of a papier mache merchant from the 1900s that flanks it, you remain absorbed by the Kashmir Razdan reveals through her book.

Excerpts from an interview with Sunday MiD DAY:

Why is Kashmiri Cuisine Through the Ages such a personal book?
I took me seven years to write it, and in it, I have included stories of the Kashmir I grew up in. The book is a dedication to my father-in-law, Jia Lal Razdan, who inspired and motivated me to jot down my recipes and publish them. I started cooking at the age of 14 under the watchful eyes of my mother. I was lucky because I found the best teachers inu00a0 my mother and later, in my mother-in-law. In here, I have written whatever they taught me.

But I also interacted with many experts on Kashmiri cuisine, while writing this book.