Translations:Kashmiri cuisine/68/en
Meatballs
The wazas are trained for years to learn the art of making the right cuts and grounding the meat to perfection. Traditionally, the lamb is mashed with walnut wood:
- Goshtabeh minced mutton balls with spices in yogurt gravy. Also known as 'The Dish of Kings' in Kashmir region and the last dish of the banquet. Jawaharlal Nehru once named it 'the cashmere of meats'. Legendary Bollywood actor Yusuf Khan aka Dilip Kumar was said to love goshtabeh the most. In December 1955, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and Nikita S. Khurschev, the first secretary of the Soviet Communist party were captured in an iconic photograph feeding each other goshtabeh.
- Beef riste.
- Beef goshtabeh. Pulverised beef with 25 per cent fat is pounded into a pulpy mass and seasoned before being shaped into meatballs. It is then immersed in a seasoned hot water bath, before being placed in a bubbling-hot broth of well-churned yoghurt, laced with milk and some beef stock and cooked to a semi-thick consistency. The original recipe calls for very fatty buffalo meat, which can pose quite a challenge for the unprepared palate.
- Palak riste, usually four small 'rista' pieces, along with some spinach Leaves, are ladled on a 'Traem' for four guests.
- Safed riste, Goshtabeh meatballs are the biggest, next rista and palak rista meatballs are the tiniest.