Making kahwa the Kashmiri way
A recipe from our kitchen, for four cups.
Three weeks in Pampore
What happens in the saffron fields between late October and mid-November.
The saffron crocus spends most of the year as a bulb underground. In late October, after the first cold nights, the fields around Pampore turn purple almost overnight. The flowering lasts about three weeks, and every day of it matters.
Families pick at dawn, before the sun opens the flowers fully, filling wicker baskets by hand. A good picker gathers a few thousand flowers in a morning. It takes around 1,60,000 flowers to make a kilo of dried saffron.
By midday the flowers are spread out on cloth in the courtyard, and the whole family sits around them separating the three red threads from each flower. The petals go to the cattle. The threads are dried slowly in the shade or over a gentle heat, and they lose about four-fifths of their weight.
We visit our 26 farms during these weeks, weigh and pay on the spot, and send a sample of each lot to the lab. By the first week of December the new season is packed in Srinagar and on its way to you.
