It all began with a shelf. At Matamaal, a Delhi-based restaurant giving the capital a taste of Kashmiri Pandit cuisine, Hans Sadhu remembers one rack — “It used to be reserved for all our spices regularly brought over from Kashmir. It garnered a lot of attention, and diners would ask about it all the time,” says Hans, whose mother, chef Nalini Sadhu, founded and helms the restaurant.
The star of that shelf was — and continues to be — the vaer tiki masala, a dried cake of mixed spices shaped like a large doughnut. “Each family has its own slight variation of the spice mix, but the broad recipe includes mustard oil, coriander, Kashmiri chillies and whole spices. It is usually added right at the end: once a dish has been fully prepared, we break a slight pinch of spice off the cake, sprinkle it on top of the dish and cover it for a few minutes. It elevates the taste completely,” explains Hans.
