Tag: gujjar and bakarwal community

Maeshi Kreaj: Kashmir’s Butter Bread

[ad_1]
Buffalo herdsmen convert milk into sundried cheese that is stored, cooked and sold as a speciality, explains MJ Aslam
Maeshi’ Kraaji, the famous milk bread, and Nadur make a great preparation. Photo: Shahnawaz Taing
Unlike Kashmir plains, the hills of the valley have always been buffalo-abundant. Between Baramulla and Jammu, the pasturage-rich temperature on both sides of the mountains is higher than the plains and suits the production of milk, ghee and butter.
Buffalos comprise the main wealth of Gujar, who live in hill log houses over the mountains from Poonch to Udhampur. Buffalos love to be in moist climates and they need to be immersed in water daily.
Given the fact that the buffalos were the main livelihoods of a huge hill population, the Dogra despots had imposed a tax on milch buffaloes and cows. Named Shakh Shoomaree, the tax was collected at Re 1 and 8 annas per buffalo and 12 annas per cow. However, if a buffalo gave birth to a calf, it was exempt like that of a barren buffalo, Phundir.
Traditional Herdsmen
The owners took their buffalo herds to mountain pastures for grazing in the summers. They lived by making and selling ghee, butter and cheese from the milk. Though buffalo are not indigenous to Kashmir, a number of Gujjars do possess and rare the animal. Unlike Gujjar, the Bakarwals prefer rearing goats. Given the fact that the Gujjars in Kashmir lived far away from the markets, they could not quickly take their produce for sale, they have been producing a rare milk product, the Maeshi Kraj (Mounsheh Kreaj). It is sort of a cheese produced from buffalo milk.
Technically, it is a cake made of dried buffalo milk. Dogras call it Kalari. Normally, the Gujjars living uphill bring this “bread” to the market across Jammu and Kashmir.
In Gujjar ecosystem, buffalo are basic. They are basically cattle graziers and not cultivators. However, they do grow maize around their hill kothas and the grain goes into the use of cattle as well as the people. They used to follow the Arab farmer’s custom of contributing Friday’s milk production to charity. It may not be around now but certain families make charities-in-kind on Friday. Cattle are so vital to this socio-economic ecosystem that the death of an animal triggers routine mourning.

Milk Bread
In Kashmir, buffalos are less visible even in hilly areas. However, the markets like Shopian, Kupwara, and Baramulla do get some supply of Maeshi Kraji almost on a daily basis. Usually, it is barely a fraction of the demand that the supply meets. Foreigners call it milk bread.
Based on buffalo milk, it is made by churning it with sour milk or curd. The fat cheese appears at the surface which is separated from the leftovers and then pressed into a cloth. The paste is made into cakes or balls of cheese. Before sale and use, these cakes are allowed to dry up in sunlight.
Maeshi Kreji are very tasty with a pungent smell and sour taste. It is harder, however than cow cheese. Even though it has gone missing from most of the Kashmir markets, Maeshi Krej remains available throughout the year in Jammu at Samroli, Udhampur and Pahalwan Di Hati.
In South Kashmir, people cook sun-dried Maeshi Kraji with Nadru (lotus stems) during summer. The sun-dried Maeshi Kraji with Nadru is ground with onion in a stone mortar (Vokhul] with a pestle (Kajve or Choteh). The spices are added to the paste, which is cooked with milk or water to avoid stanching the cheese. It is allowed to boil for some time, till it thickens and then it is eaten either at lunch or dinner with cooked rice or roti.
Not In Kashmir Alone
In Italy, Buffalo milk cheese is mozzarella; in India, Khoya cheese is mostly buffalo milk. Afghan nomads and peasants used to make ghee, butter, curd and also a kind of cheese of cow and buffalo milk called Quroot which is still a living culinary tradition of the Taliban territory.
The milk was boiled with the dried fruit of a solanaceous plant. The cheese was freed from water by pressing in a cloth just as the Maeshi Karji are prepared. After adding salt to it, handfuls are made into small balls, dried hard as stone in the sun and kept for any length of time for consumption. It is reduced into a paste in a wooden bowl called Quroot Mal. It was fried in a quantity of ghee and eaten with bread, meat and vegetables. In the past, it was the national dish of Afghans. However, more refined Persians disliked this food and ridiculed Afghans, parodying the Arabic anathema into the words, La houla wa la illah Quroota Khuri. (God protect us from Quroot-eating-Afghans).
With the passage of time, however, Quroot is still prepared and consumed within and outside Afghanistan. Quroot-like dairy products were also known to some Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. They made it into lumps and cakes with their hands and dried it in the sunshine before use.
[ad_2]
#Maeshi #Kreaj #Kashmirs #Butter #Bread
( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

April 25, 2023
Gurus: The Kashmir Drink

[ad_1]
A by-product in traditional butter making, buttermilk has been the most consumed drink in Kashmir for centuries. With machines taking over the skimming and the marketing chains renamed and rebranding the product, Gurus (Lassi) may not be as abundant as it once was, writes MJ Aslam
Milk, Butter Milk (Gurus), Lassi, Chatch). A glass of milk (left) and a glass of buttermilk (right). Buttermilk is thicker and covers the glass after taking a sip
Long before the making of Gurus (buttermilk) and Th’ain (butter) was found in created cultured cream or milk, there were traditional methods of preparing the same from unrefrigerated fermented milk. All societies in the East and West have used the traditional ways of making these delicacies for centuries.
Gurus was so vital to the Kashmir food that a lot of saying mentioned the buttermilk. One such saying suggests that Gurus (also called Lassi) should be given to a friend in autumn, while to an enemy in spring. The folklore believes that autumn Gurus is healthy unlike that of spring. Its nutritious value is linked to the quality of grass grazed by cows and goats in spring and autumn.
However, the fact is the Gurus was prepared in hot summers too when the milk, in absence of modern refrigerators, fermented automatically in earthen and copper pots. It was called Ban e Doud.
Then, Kashmir was rich in milk and milk products. The cowherds possessed a large stock of cows and goats. The Gujars in higher altitudes possessed buffalo too. They prepared Gurus. In the city, guoir families associated with dairy items of milk, curd, cheese and butter, too prepared Gurus for sale to the common people. Some village families who skimmed milk and made Gurus at their homes would often come to sell Gurus in the city.
The Process
Traditionally, Gurus means the milk that was left over after churning butter from unrefrigerated sour and fermented milk. Once the milk is ready for the process, it would take 30 minutes to 60 minutes till butter was churned from the milk in a big vessel like tchod.
Ordinarily, Gurus is buttermilk. Gurus is sour in taste. It is still popular and sold with added spices, mint, salt and sugar across most of the subcontinent as a refreshing fermented dairy drink. Its equivalent in the households of the Indian subcontinent is Chaash, which is prepared by beating curd with a churner or leftover of butter (Gurus) and taken with spices, a pinch of salt and mint. In Arabian countries, buttermilk with added ingredients of spices and salt is a favourite drink during the Muslim month of fasting, the Ramzan at Iftiari and Sehri times.

However, like many age-old valued traditions, the churning of butter from milk has disappeared from Kashmiri. Well, Gurus Mandun was an age-old tradition among Kashmiris and it was an elaborate process. The tools that were used for the process included an earthen vessel like tchod in which milk was poured. The milk was churned to Gurus and Th’ain in the vessel. It is a long wooden churner, De’on that is fundamental to the process. Gurus e De’on is a fine paddle chiselled out of a wooden log that has blunt wooden blades or wicker rings attached at one end – the one that stays in the milk vessel. Its other end is tied to a wall or a thum, a pillar in the kitchen, and in between is the Lam e Raz or Mandan Raz, a pull-push rope that the Gurus maker pulls for making the blade move. The grass or jute rope has attached two handles tied of wood or Pach-i-Adiji (bones of sheep or goat legs) for the right and left hand that is either made of grass or jute.
The vessel was fastened to thum with another rope for preventing it from slipping away during the process. De’on was held tightly with grip of hands by the churner, the Gurus-Gour. With back-and-forth movements of the Lam e Raz butter was churned from the milk with buttermilk left in the vessel. Churning was done at a steady and measured pace by the Gurus-Gour holding two ends of the Lam e Raz in his hands till layers of butter appeared, gathered and thickened at the surface.
The finest quality of milk gave a yellowish tinge to the butter with the pungent taste of the buttermilk. Then, the churner would remove the paddle and scoop out all butter leaving behind Gurus in the vessel. The handmade butter, Th’ain, was what Kashmiris knew in the past.
A Routine
Unlike Srinagar where the Gurus was skimmed by the professional Gurus-Gour families, in the periphery, almost every household had the equipment and enough milk to make Gurus. Apart from spinning wheel, almost every woman in Kashmir periphery would pick the art from the elders.
A traditional drink, Gurus is seen as a traditional coolant. Families making Gurus used to gift part of it to the neighbours. Till recently, even Kashmiri Hakims would advise Gurus intake to the patients. In certain cases, it was customary to dip some silver ornament in the Gurus before drinking it. The tradition goes that Gurus being sour in taste is helping digestion.
With Gurus consumed, the focus would remain on homemade butter. It was gathered in a separate bowl and compounded into soft Th’ain balls (manun) with a spoon. Th’ain was sold in the market in weighed quantities to the buyers. Besides local mustard oil, the Kashmiri womenfolk in the past used the traditional Th’ain for anointing their hair to strengthen and shine the hair strands. Folklore suggests using butter to keep the women’s head cool.
The Gurus may be out of fashion but its making has not ceased in Kashmir. Herders who take their sheep and cows to upland meadows are unable to take the milk down. They convert it into butter as they consume Gurus while grazing their herds.

[ad_2]
#Gurus #Kashmir #Drink
( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

April 4, 2023
The Kashmir Morels

[ad_1]
Like carpets that Kashmir weaves but ill-affords for itself, the valley produces more than 25 tons of costly morels that sell at a cost higher than silver in the global market, reports Tazeem Nazir
Morel Mushrooms, locally called Gucchi or Kan Gitch are prized wild-growing Fungi that feed a high end overseas market in Kashmir
Come spring and hundreds of people living in the Kashmir foothills will leave for, what they say, the Gucchi hunt. Usually arduous journeys, it is expertise and fate that helps collectors to locate the morels in the coniferous forests, the most expensive mushrooms that cannot be cultivated commercially. Locally, it is called Gucchi or Kan Gutch.
A major Kashmir export, these mushrooms are a treasure for collectors and a taste for consumers. Collectors take months in harvesting these mushrooms and many weeks to sun-drying them before selling them.
Collectors offer interesting ideas about their hunts. These mushrooms grow in clumps on partly rotten tree trunks, topsoil, and leaves. “Some people say, these could be found anywhere near a spot that had seen a forest fire in the last season,” one collector claimed. “But the crisis is that they may not grow at the same place next season.” Another belief is that these mushrooms sprout after lightning strikes the ground. Usually, they start appearing in late March and can be collected up to May.
It looks distinct from the entire mushroom varieties. Its cap is faded brownish cream, yellow to tan, or faded brown to greyish brown. The edges of the ridges are usually lighter than the pits, and quite oval in outline, now and again bluntly cone-shaped with a rounded pinnacle or greater elongate. Caps are hollow and connected to the stem at the lower edge. The meat is fragile. The stem is white to pale yellow or pale yellow, hollow and straight, or with a bulbous or club-shaped base.
“I live near the forest. When I was 15, I used to go on a mushrooms hunt,” Mohammad Waseem, a resident of Rayil in Ganderbal’s Gund belt, said. “I used to go for fun but sometimes it would fetch me some morels. The season for harvesting these mushrooms starts after the snow lines start disappearing.”
The morel pickers are supposed to be experts in their field. Nature grows lot of false morels as well and some of them are poisonous. The fake morels are almost akin to the prized mushroom but slightly differ in their caps which are rounder in false ones. Of over 14000 mushroom species only less than 3000 are edible.
Morels grow in higher reaches. “When we reach higher forests we face difficulties in finding these mushrooms as they are scattered over the forest land,” Zareefa, who goes on morel harvesting every year in Ganderbal hills, said. “At home, we put these mushrooms like beads in a thread and put the ‘garland” to sundry. They need proper care otherwise fungus can hit the garlands of mushrooms and make them black.”

Zareefa said she has heard that these mushrooms are very costly but we do not get much from it. “Earlier, we used to get Rs 10,000 for one kilogram but now we barely get half of it,” Zareefa regretted, insisting that the dealers give too hoots to the struggle we put in to collect these rare plants. She has been collecting the morels for the last three years between April and June. “Families used to manage their living by selling these mushrooms but now it is too difficult because we do not get much from it.”
A Major Export
Harvesters apart, the morels are a key export. Though a small part of the yearly collection goes to the upmarket hotel chains, the bulk goes offshore. A conservative estimate puts the average yearly morel production at around 25 tons.
“We supply morels to Germany, France, Switzerland, and China,” one Srinagar-based exporter, who talked on the condition of anonymity, said. “Routinely, we export around none tons a year. It mostly goes to different food industries.” He puts the cost for A-grade morel per kilogram at Rs 20,000 but insiders in the sector said it is way beyond it.
The exporter said the quantum of harvest in a year is linked to the weather conditions. Adverse weather hampers the harvest by Gujjars and Bakerwals, who are major contributors to the collection.
Admitting that there were problems in demand, another exporter Mohammad Affan said the global recession seriously compromised the rates. “These mushrooms are being sold either at supermarkets or are in demand from upmarket hotel chains,” Affan said. “Because of Covid19, tourism and travel were seriously impacted and the demand fell to an all-time low. The global slowdown has witnessed a 20 per cent fall in overseas demand and right now we see only 70 to 80 per cent sales.”
Asked about the disinterest that mushroom collectors are exhibiting because of low returns, another exporter said the morels are being marketed through a complicated long chain. “It is not that we purchase from gatherers and then we sell in retail. The fact is that we sell to major business companies who sell to the retailers,” the exporter said. “It has a lot to do with the size and quality of the mushroom, and age plays a key role.” He said the per kilogram costs start from Rs 10,000 and it goes up to Rs 24000 depending upon these factors – the same season morel costs more than the one that was harvested last season. “Smaller qualities cost huge. Even in Kashmir, a 100-gram packet would cost you Rs 3000.”
Morel exports said they are taking all the mandatory precautions in making the purchases. It is a zero-GST commodity but these exporters have to ensure they buy the mushroom from collectors who are certified by the forest department. “They must have the license,” one exporter said. “It is a laborious process to establish that the mushroom falls in the zero tariff category in GST. We do this for the farmers because they have only small quantities.”
The morel mushroom collectors are scattered across Kashmir. Mostly in the foothills, they are in Kupwara, Budgam, Ganderbal and Pahalgam and other parts of south and north Kashmir. “While they are collected early spring, the morels are in demand mostly during winters between September and March.”
Masood Wafai, a mechanical engineer turned mushroom entrepreneur said the morels in Kashmir are surrounded by myths. “That morels sprout with lightning and thunder hitting the ground in higher reaches is baseless,” Wafai, who recently attended a high-end interaction with academics, said. “These mushrooms require a particular temperature and environment to grow. The more black the soil, the more the fungus would be around. The Directorate of mushroom research, which has been working on these morels for the last three years have succeeded in growing these mushrooms in laboratory conditions but they have not succeeded in the way they wanted. It is being said that China has already produced it successfully but they are not letting their secret out.”
The Nutrient Worth
Even though the morels share a lot of their properties and nutrient structure with other mushrooms, the Gucchi fungus is still costly. “The demand for these mushrooms is high because they are rich in nutrients and they shed almost 80 per cent of their water when dried and with water, they resume a much bigger size.”
Beenish Zohra, a dietician, said Kashmir calls it Kan Gitch because they look like human ears. Known as Morchella esculenta to science this most sought-after macro-fungi has medicinal properties and is considered a dietary antioxidant. “The scientific research carried out on morels demonstrates that their anti-oxidative have immune-stimulatory and anti-inflammatory bioactivities besides being anti-tumour properties,” Zohra said. “The morel contains high amounts of potassium, vitamins, and copper, which all contribute to a healthy nervous system and cardiovascular health. Besides, they carry the highest amount of vitamin D among edible mushrooms, in addition to vitamin B1m which is thiamine that breaks down the body’s sugar content.”
People suffering from Arthritis, have thyroid or liver issues or wish to resist fatigue are being suggested to use morels as part of the food. “By nature, these mushrooms are antiviral, lower the blood sugar, reduce the signs of ageing, and improve immunity,” Zohra added. “The healing capacities of the mushroom make it vital in traditional medicine baskets.”
Zohra said that people who have mushroom allergy must avoid morels. Before they are cooked, they need to be cleaned properly because in certain cases insects remain trapped in their flesh. Over-consumption can lead to severe abdominal issues and can lead to abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting.
Climate Change
Morels do not grow in Jammu and Kashmir alone. In fact, the entire Himalayan range is home to precious mushrooms. Off late, however, there are reports that the availability of the mushroom has gone down and the research carried out by the Solan-based Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) Directorate of Mushroom Research suggests that the increase in temperature is the key reason. Climate change, the research suggests is making this mushroom a victim.
At the same time, the experts suggest that the morel pickers must not uproot the mushroom totally. Instead, they must cut it from the stem. Besides, they suggest that if the pickers encounter a bunch at a spot, they must leave at least one mushroom untouched.

[ad_2]
#Kashmir #Morels
( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

March 2, 2023