A Spice Mixture Laced with Cultural Meaning
Text by Safina Nabi
Dried vaer cakes ready to be stored for the winter
As an eight-year-old, I woke up one chilly January morning in Kashmir with a blocked nose and chest congestion that made it difficult to breathe. The previous day, I had spent all my time playing in the snow. Despite my mother’s warning that I would catch a cold, I continued making sheene zanan (or a snow-woman).
When I started sneezing the next day, my mother prepared a lunch spread laced with vaer, a quintessentially Kashmiri blend of herbs and spices, as an antidote. She served me hot rice and an egg curry spiced only with vaer. I was not allowed to eat anything else. But by that evening, my symptoms had considerably improved.
She served me the same thing for dinner as well, and by the next morning, I had completely recovered. From then on, anytime my friends or cousins would catch a cold in the winter, I would always recommend egg curry made with vaer as a miracle cure.
Freshly prepared vaer cakes before they have been dried
Vaer is a traditional mix of herbs and spices prepared using a method rooted in the cultural ethos of Kashmir. Kashmiri women pour a lot of energy and love into preparing it. After the ingredients are placed in a kanz-mohul (or large mortar and pestle), generally in the courtyard of the house, they bring the spices together with the utmost care.
Vaer is a composite of several spices. This includes Kashmiri red chillies (marchewangan in Kashmiri), garlic (rehun), shallots (praan), coriander seeds (bandana), salt (noon), cockscomb (moaval), black cardamom (bead ael), green cardamom (sabiz ael), cumin (zuer) and fennel seeds (baidaan), ginger powder (aderak), cloves (roung), cinnamon (dalcheen), black pepper (maerech) and saffron (kong). These spices are first sun-dried individually and then pounded together in a mortar and pestle. Mustard oil is used as a binding agent to form a paste.
Once the mixture is prepared, the women make small balls out of it, which are then flattened and sun-dried once again. As these cakes dry, they start releasing a unique aroma and acquire a cherry red hue. They are then preserved to be used during the harsh winter. Vaer is spicy, and just a small piece can enhance or sharpen the taste of a dish.
Traditionally, women in Kashmir started preparing for the long winter months in autumn (or the months of September and October). In earlier times, making vaer was a common activity for most households in Kashmir.
However, due to modernisation, this tradition has gradually declined. Making vaer is a time-consuming process. It takes several days, and calls for a combined community effort, particularly from the women of the community. This has made the custom difficult to sustain.
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When I moved from Kashmir to Delhi after my higher education, I would always carry vaer back with me. However, after moving back home permanently in 2018, I have rarely witnessed urban women making it. Even my mother has stopped making it in bulk. She just makes a few cakes for her personal use.
It was during the time when I was living away from home that I began to miss the food I grew up with. I missed the fresh loaves of Kashmiri bread, the street food, and traditional lentil recipes. I was also curious about why vaer was vanishing from our kitchens. These questions pushed me to research and meet some older Kashmiris.
In that quest, I visited the old city of Srinagar commonly known as downtown, and met 86-year-old Toota Begum. She lives in the Jama Masjid area, and still makes vaer with the same enthusiasm and finesse. She receives help from her granddaughters, who are also inclined towards preserving traditional recipes.
“[Vaer has] all kinds of spices and herbs with medicinal value,” said Begum. “I remember it would be used for colds and chest diseases during the winter. That is the basic use of [the spice] that we learned from our ancestors.”
Given the lack of access to medical facilities, especially during the winter, vaer was a valued home remedy.
“We had no English medicine available,” recalled Begum. “The winters used to be harsh and facilities like electricity and transport would barely be available. The only national highway connecting us to the rest of the country would remain buried under snow for days. So this was our go-to medicine.”
Kashmiri style home-cooked chicken with vaer. Photo courtesy: Ghar Bhatte Tiffin
Kashmiris had a unique way to store essentials for winters. They cut vegetables like tomatoes, gourds, collard greens and aubergines and sun-dried them during the summer months. Hence, making and storing vaer may have been a natural extension of this tradition.
“Those days, we consumed a lot of fish as well,” said Begum. “It was available abundantly, and could be cooked with lotus stem (called nadur), turnips (mujie) and collard greens (haakh). Vaer was one of the major ingredients that would be required to cook this meal.”
Begum recollects that the fish and vegetables would be cooked in a large deag or copper utensil, and consumed over the next four or five days.
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One of the major reasons women made vaer collectively was the amount of chillies involved. The chillies would be homegrown and require cleaning before use, which would invariably unleash a torrent of sneezing. So women would take turns to clean them to maintain hygiene and also share the burden of the work.
Noted Kashmiri historian and poet Zareef Ahmed Zareef recalled his sensory memories from when his mother made vaer at home.
Traditionally, several families came together to prepare vaer. Photo courtesy: Ghar Bhatte Tiffin
“All the households would prepare vaer with great fervour and spread it on wooden planks in the attics,” he said. “The aroma would travel through the entire house.”
Zareef remembers that saffron grass (or the leafy part of the saffron crocus) would also be used in vaer when he was growing up. Apart from lending colour and aroma, saffron also keeps the body warm. But with saffron cultivation declining in the Kashmir valley, most Kashmiris may not know about this expensive addition to vaer.
“Women, men and children from the entire mohalla (or neighbourhood) would come together in one place to prepare vaer collectively,” Zareef reminisced. “It was like a festival by itself, because it was a sign that winter was approaching.
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Kashmir’s multi-ethnic demography, where Muslims and Hindu Pandits lived together in harmony, underwent a sea change in the late 1980s. In January 1990, political turmoil and communal unrest caused a mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley.
The culture and cuisine of the Kashmiri Pandits was unique. While they did eat meat, Pandits usually did not use eggs, chicken, garlic, onions or tomatoes in their cooking. They also introduced ingredients such as yoghurt and asafoetida to Kashmiri cuisine.
The Kashmiri Pandits are believed to have started the tradition of making vaer. It may have been created accidentally, but the Pandits took pride in making it and using it.
Fish cooked with turnip, collard greens and tomatoes. One of the main ingredients in this dish is vaer. Photo courtesy: Ghar Bhatte Tiffin
According to Mohammad Yaseen Reshi, a chef and instructor at the Institute of Hotel Management in Srinagar, vaer was not just a way to preserve spices but also an effort to find practical solutions for the winters.
“This was not only easy to store but [also convenient] as in the winter, women would have lesser time to do household chores due to the long nights and short days,” he said.
Experts and community elders say that it is tricky to make vaer at home because its quality depends on the constitution of spices and the way they are ground. They have to be carefully blended so that the aroma and flavour of one spice does not overpower that of the others.
“It was always considered important to consult elders about the [right] time to mix the mustard oil, because that would not only define the consistency but also would determine the time it would take to dry,” said Reshi.
Besides, according to Reshi, the act of making vaer also functioned as a kind of social glue. “Vaer is to Kashmir what the sanjha chulha (or community oven) is to Punjab,” he said, referring to the tradition of cooking rotis and other flatbreads in a shared community oven. “It was an activity that tied the women and community together. It was not only food; it was a tradition and was associated with emotions.”
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In the modern day, commercial manufacturing has considerably altered the characteristics of vaer. When spices are ground on stone, it is easier to achieve the optimum temperature required to maintain their integrity. However, when a mortar and pestle is replaced by grinders, the high temperatures generated could hasten the process of degeneration.
Food writer, author and columnist Marryam H. Reshii explained that despite their convenience, blenders have changed the basic form of vaer.
“Limestone [used to make the mortar and pestle] is a natural mineral and does not heat [up] while stainless steel is not [natural]. Stone and wood will make the paste coarse or fine, according to one’s preference. But mixer-grinders get heated and make vaer too smooth and slippery. Hence, it’s not possible to make a cake or patty with the paste.”
Commercial manufacturing also has introduced new elements to the process of making vaer. For instance, it is now impossible to make large quantities of vaer without preservatives, as companies can rarely afford to let it dry naturally. Other components are also swapped for profit, such as refined oil instead of mustard oil.
However, Reshii maintains that vaer made in a muhul kanz has no parallel.
“I get disturbed when I see kanz turned upside down [or in disuse] in public parks like Chinar Bagh in Kashmir,” she said. “Why would anyone want to lose touch with their heritage?”
Despite this tussle between tradition and modernity, vaer has a permanent place in the imagination of those who grew up eating it. Begum recollected the vivid memories she still has of her mother making vaer at home.
“My mother would use raw herbs and spices that we would grow at home,” she said. “I can still [recall] the smell and the taste of those dishes, and it makes me completely nostalgic.”
