Black cumin is the default variety that grows all over the Kashmir valley. Though the higher the altitude, the better, and more fragrant the spice, writes Marryam H. Reshii in ‘The Flavour of Spice’.
Food critic and writer Marryam H. Reshii has had a relentless love affair with spices. She has travelled across India and to various corners of the world—crushing, grinding, frying, and tasting—in a bid to understand every aspect of these magnificent ingredients.
The Flavour of Spice: Journeys, Recipes, Stories brings together stories about the origins of spices and how they evolved in the cuisines we know and love; colourful anecdotes gleaned from encounters with plantation owners and spice merchants; and beloved family recipes from chefs and home cooks. From the market yards of Guntur, India’s chilli capital, to the foothills of Sri Lanka in search of ‘true’ cinnamon, and from the hillsides of Sikkim where black cardamom thrives to the saffron markets in the holy city of Mashhad, Iran—this account pulsates with exciting tales of travel and discovery, and an infectious love for the ingredients that add so much punch to our cuisines.
Read this short excerpt from a chapter on cumin, included in a section titled ‘The Big Four’, along with chilli, turmeric, and coriander. While you will read about black cumin here, the chapter also covers the origins of cumin, its etymology, and aspects of its cultivation in India.
Black cumin is the default variety that grows all over the Kashmir valley, though the higher the altitude, the better, and more fragrant the spice. It even grows in rather unexpected places, for example, along the runway at Srinagar airport. It is tended to assiduously by the maintenance men of the Airport Authority of India, who then sell it at the downtown market on their day off. Once I got to know about this, every time I was on a flight from Srinagar to Delhi, I’d keep my eyes peeled on the strips of wild grass that grow on either side of the runway!
Kala zeera, or black cumin, is also called shah zeera. But Gernot Katzer, the author of the definitive Spice Pages on the internet, suggests that ‘shah’ may be a mispronunciation of ‘siyah’, the word for black in Persian. With a far more flowery flavour, as compared to the stronger, more robust but less refined product that we all use in our kitchens, black cumin grows wild in Himachal Pradesh and in Kashmir.
Within Kashmir, there is a huge difference between the cultivated product of, say, HMT (around the now extinct watch factory), on the outskirts of Srinagar, and the wild product of the Gurez valley. The former is fairly fragrant. But put it next to what suppliers bring to Srinagar from Gurez, and it suddenly seems a rather sorry specimen. When professional cooks, or wazas, make lists of things for their customers to buy, they invariably specify that they want shah zeera from Gurez. And because wazas are notorious for wanting only the best (and, in the process, wringing their customers’ pockets dry), one can presume that Gurezi cumin is indeed the finest. By comparison, what grows in HMT sells for one-sixth of the price.
With a far more flowery flavour, as compared to the stronger, more robust but less refined product that we all use in our kitchens, black cumin grows wild in Himachal Pradesh and in Kashmir.
Does black cumin make the journey to the plains well? Well, yes and no. I buy a couple of months’ supply at a time, either during my visits to Kashmir or ask for it when family comes visiting from Kashmir. As this happens to be a continuous process through the year, I have never had to stock more than 100 grams of it at a time. It survives well in a tiny, air-tight steel jar, which I keep especially for black cumin.
On the other hand, every time I have had occasion to ask for it in a grocery store in Agra or Delhi, I have been handed some musty-smelling substance—that I would not otherwise touch with a bargepole—usually from the back of a store where no more than a few hundred grams of it are lying in a giant grubby plastic jar that would comfortably fit over two kilograms of the spice.
So is it poor planning on the part of shopkeepers or the too-short shelf life of the spice? I haven’t quite figured out that one myself. However, what I do know is that when I first visited Srinagar as a newly-wed in the early 1990s, you couldn’t find regular cumin in the valley at all, only black cumin. Because regular cumin is hardly used in Kashmiri cuisine, nobody ever needed it. Now, with several thousand people from the plains living in the valley, you can find lads selling piles of common Indian spices in each of the main markets: Lal Chowk, Maisuma, Kokur Bazar and Maharaj Bazar—areas in the centre of the new part of town.
In the heart of the old city, however, you still won’t find any other type of cumin except the fragrant variety that grows in the valley. Slowly and inexorably, things are beginning to change. Even in the old city, families now use spice mixes like Bawa Masala Company’s (BMC) meat masala and garam masala. A few years ago, BMC would not have been sold in Srinagar at all—so minuscule would have been the demand. Kashmiri families are still traditionalists who believe that their way is the best, particularly in the most vital matter of food.
Garam masala, containing as it does a plethora of aromatic spices, is never used in its ground form in Kashmir; instead, what goes into a dish a second after it is taken off the fire is the fragrant Kashmiri zeera. Crushed between finger and thumb, it releases its full aroma, whereupon it is sprinkled—uncooked and unbroiled—over any finished dish that contains lamb, which is to say, virtually every preparation in the valley, at least in Muslim families.
I have heard praises being sung of green split moong dal with a tempering of kala zeera sizzled in ghee. If it is true, it is certainly a novel use for shah zeera, quite different from anything that Kashmiris do with it. However, in Himachal Pradesh, kala zeera is used quite widely, a corollary of it being grown there. Housewife Rashmi Sood from Kangra sautés and uses it in those dishes that contain curd. For everything else, she sticks to regular, or safed, zeera. The only exception is kadhi. Though its base is curd, she uses regular cumin.
My friends, Yatish and Minu Sud of Shimla, show me the stash of Kinnauri cumin they have. Used only by the pinch, it goes into any dish where it does not have to be cooked. They claim that the higher the altitude, the better the quality of cumin: exactly like in Kashmir.
This is an excerpt from ‘The Flavour of Spice’ published in 2017 (Hachette India). Excerpted with permission from the author and Hachette India.
