Goshtaba
Srinagar, Kashmir, India
The grand finale of the Wazwan, Kashmir's legendary 36 course feast served at weddings and celebrations. Goshtaba are enormous, impossibly smooth lamb meatballs pounded by hand for hours using a wooden mallet on a stone slab until the meat becomes a mousse like paste with not a single fiber remaining. The balls are poached gently in a silky yogurt sauce infused with fennel, dry ginger, and Kashmiri saffron. A proper Wazwan requires a team of vaste wazas (master chefs) working through the night, and goshtaba is always served last as the signal that the feast is complete. Guests eat from shared copper plates called traem, four people per plate. If the goshtaba arrives and you can detect any graininess in the meatball, the waza considers it a personal failure. The texture should be so fine it practically dissolves. Outside the Kashmir Valley, almost no one makes it authentically because the pounding technique takes years to master.
Ingredients
- 500 gboneless lamb (preferably leg, all fat removed)
- 100 glamb fat or tail fat
- 2 cupsfull-fat yogurt (hung/strained)
- 2 tspfennel powder (saunf)
- 1 tspdry ginger powder (sonth)
- a generous pinchKashmiri saffron strands
- 4 piecesgreen cardamom pods
- 3 piecescloves
- 1 small piececinnamon stick
- 2 piecesbay leaves
- 3 tbspmustard oil or ghee
- to tastesalt
- 2 tbspwarm milk (for saffron)
Directions
- 1
Cut the lamb and lamb fat into small pieces. Using a heavy wooden mallet or meat pounder on a flat stone slab, pound the meat and fat together relentlessly until it becomes a completely smooth, paste like consistency with absolutely no visible fibers. This traditionally takes 1 to 2 hours.
- 2
Season the meat paste with half the fennel powder, a pinch of dry ginger, and salt. Mix thoroughly, then shape into large, smooth meatballs roughly the size of a tennis ball. Handle them gently as they are delicate.
- 3
Bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle boil. Carefully lower the meatballs in and poach them for 20 to 25 minutes until they float and are cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
- 4
Soak the saffron strands in warm milk and set aside. Whisk the hung yogurt until completely smooth with no lumps.
- 5
Heat mustard oil or ghee in a heavy bottomed pot. Add bay leaves, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, letting them crackle for 30 seconds.
- 6
Lower the heat and slowly add the whisked yogurt, stirring constantly in one direction to prevent splitting. Add the remaining fennel powder, dry ginger, and salt. Let the sauce simmer gently for 15 minutes until it thickens slightly.
- 7
Slide the poached meatballs into the yogurt sauce, pour over the saffron milk, and simmer on the lowest heat for another 10 minutes so the meatballs absorb the flavors. Serve warm with steamed Kashmiri rice.