From Turkistan to your table… in Ladakh
Editor’s note: In this excerpt from ‘Forgotten Foods, Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia’, writer Fida Hussain takes us through the history of Yarkandi polla—the haute cuisine pulao that journeyed from Turkistan to Leh. The best bit: the recipe is included. Excerpted with permission from Pan Macmillan India.
The alleys of Leh’s old town echo Ladakh’s longstanding cultural heritage. The bakers’ street, also known as Chutey Rantag (rantag means ‘mill’), even today contains the small bakery shops run by Kashmiri and Balti bakers. Bazari Tagi, which translates literally as ‘bread from the bazaar’, is popular among Muslim families to this day, especially during Ramzan.
A lot of Central Asian traders travelled across the Karakoram mountains. Many of them brought with them their local dishes, which stayed back and were passed from one generation to another. The Ladakhi tradition of baking, which is unknown to the rest of the Indian subcontinent, was inherited, probably from the neighbouring regions of Central Asia. There we see a variety of baked dishes which closely resemble what we have here in Ladakh.
Samso, known in Uzbekistan as samsa, is a baked bun stuffed with meat found in Chutey Rantag’s bakeries. The Indian snack samosa is closely related to samso. The main difference between the two is that the samosa is usually stuffed with potatoes instead of meat, plus it is deep-fried instead of baked.
Another important local dish which is still quite unknown to the non-locals of Ladakh is the Yarkandi pulao (Yarkandi polla in the local tongue). Pulao is a Central Asian dish, which journeyed all the way to Ladakh from Yarkand in Eastern Turkistan (presently part of China’s Xinjiang region). The Yarkandi polla reflects the cultural heritage of Ladakh as a confluence of cultures. The dish is a remnant of close ties between Ladakh and Central Asia.
The polla is considered haute cuisine. Its main ingredient is rice, which was unknown to the arid region of Ladakh until about seven decades ago. The Yarkandi polla’s rice is cooked with huge chunks of mutton or goat meat, further enhanced by carrots, black raisins, nuts and animal fats. The meat and fat (clarified butter) are the other ‘rich’ ingredients apart from rice. The meat was always on the bone and came from the animal’s leg and rib joints (raan and cham). The use of nuts as garnish is similar to Central Asian pulaos. The Yarkandi traders in Ladakh mainly used almonds, sweet apricot kernels and small black raisins, with the latter being picked on the way from Afghanistan before finally reaching Ladakh.
This is the only dish in Ladakhi cuisine that employs a few whole spices, distantly resembling the garam masala or ground whole spices that are popular in the subcontinent’s pulaos or biryanis. It lends a subtle yet refined flavour and aroma to the rice without the feel of the spices in every bite. Otherwise, traditional Ladakhi cuisine doesn’t use any masalas like turmeric or red chilli powder, which are synonymous with ‘Indian’ food. Yarkandi pollo is most akin to the Afghani or Kabuli pulao, but it is not as sweet for Afghans sometimes garnish their pulao with caramel. Fellow Indians might find a striking resemblance to the Parsi pollo (as it is Persian in origin). Although we now call it ‘pulao’ or an anglicised ‘pilaf’, across Central Asia the word is pronounced ‘pollo’ or ‘polla’, which is also how elderly Parsis would pronounce it.
In the present day, this pulao is only sometimes cooked in the kitchens of a handful of Muslim families around Leh. Since my aunt Ama Haji was brought up in Leh seeing the prominent Muslim families cooking the dish, she was quite familiar with it. On the day of Eid, all of us siblings would fondly go to her place to eat Yarkandi pulao for lunch with great enjoyment.
Traditionally the Yarkandi pulao was slow-cooked in a heavy stone pot called a doltok in Ladakhi. The substantial weight of the stone lids of these pots did not necessitate the use of wet dough for sealing when cooking the pulao. The Yarkandi polla made the traditional way was said to be symbolic of the big hearts (read: deep pockets) of the hosts for their guests. This bounty was proven by the amount of fat/ghee dripping down one’s elbows while eating. The recipe here uses just enough ghee and does not overdo it as did my ancestors.
Ingredients
For the meat:
750g mutton (from the leg and rib joints) cut into 6 pieces (this is a medium size, but in earlier times the size of each piece would be almost double)
2 black cardamoms (bari elaichi)
1 tsp whole fennel seeds (saunf sabut)
¼ onion, chopped 1 tsp salt
For the rice:
630g carrots, finely julienned to about 1.5 inch long (not grated)
2–3 tbsp ghee
1 tsp cumin (shahi zeera)
2.5 level cups long-grain basmati rice
For the garnish:
2 whole onions, sliced and deep-fried
a handful of small black raisins
a handful of almonds and sweet apricot kernel mix
1 tsp ghee for frying the nuts
refined oil for deep-frying the onions
Method
- Cook the meat with the chopped onion, black cardamom, fennel seeds and salt with enough water in a pressure cooker until the meat is tender. At lower altitudes than Ladakh, where cooking time is faster, the meat can be slow-cooked by boiling in a pan with the whole spices.
- In another bigger pressure cooker, heat the ghee and add all the julienned carrots. Sauté this on a medium to low flame until the carrots are relatively reduced in quantity and look well cooked.
- While the meat and the carrots are cooking, prepare the garnish by heating 1 tsp ghee in a kadhai (deep pan or wok) and gently toast the almonds and sweet apricot kernels.
- When the nuts are toasted, remove them and add refined oil to the pan. Deep-fry the onion slivers until they are just browned and remove with a slotted spoon.
- Once the meat is cooked, put the pieces on a plate and sieve the broth to get a clear stock without any whole spices or onion pieces. Measure the required amount of this broth (I use the same cup with which I measure the rice).
- Shallow-fry the mutton pieces in ghee on a low flame (covered as the oil pops) until the pieces are browned on all sides.
- To the cooked carrot slivers add 2.5 levelled cups of rice that has been washed well, the fried meat, 1 tsp of shahi zeera and the mutton broth. I also add the ghee the meat was fried in, but this is optional if you don’t want your rice oily.
- Once done, fluff the pulao (I usually use a pair of chopsticks) and layer it with dried fruits and fried onions, and serve.
