Hareesa: A high-calorie meal packed with nutrients.

ISLAMABAD -- Kashmir has unique cuisine and offers a variety of dishes for different seasons of the year. Prepared and relished in winters as a popular dish, hareesa is a complete high-calorie meal packed with nutrients. This dish is normally cooked in winter during the months of December to March.

Delicious as well as nutritious, hareesa is prepared using fine-quality mutton or beef and some rice, barley or whole wheat mixed with spices. It is then cooked all night and is ready only the next morning. It is also a breakfast dish. The preparation of mutton for hareesa starts a morning before. Some say it is an acquired taste while others find its porridge like consistency quite comforting. Some prefer it on its own, eaten with a spoon; others devour it with soft and warm naan to make a very filling wholesome meal. The overnight cooking of hareesa is quite an event, generally taken up as an all-night activity by the expert chefs in one or several copper pots. The paste-like consistency of hareesa requires vigorous stirring so that it can crush the rice, barley or whole wheat grains with the meat to combine and achieve a smooth consistency. Chefs take turns at the stirring to grind and mash the grains through the night and perhaps all day as well on low heat. The slow cooking and stirring has its own rewards when plateful of delicious and steaming hot hareesa is doled out for serving. Mr Ghufran Javed, in his forties, sells hareesa at a restaurant at Committee Chowk along Murree Road in Rawalpindi and has been in this trade for the past 15 years. He learnt to make this dish from one of his ustaads running a famous hareesa eatery in Lahore.

'I have been independently preparing and selling hareesa in Rawalpindi for the last ten years now and have earned a sizeable clientele of this Kashmiri dish. The expertise and the adequate quality and quantity of mutton, rice and spices matter,' said Mr Ghufran Javed. Mr Ghufran Javed said that each kilogram of mutton requires 200 grams (20 per cent) of rice, barley or whole wheat. The rice, barley or whole wheat is crushed to make it soft and palatable after being soaked overnight with the meat. When the meat is tender, salt is added, and the entire mixture is mashed to pulp. When ready, the mixture is poured into a serving pot and sprinkled with cinnamon. Most of the customers relish hareesa accompanied with a piece of kebab and tandoori naan or roomali roti.

'The meat preparation starts early in...

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