Bear takes a dark form among the oak trees in Dachigam National Park, a maharajah private hunting reserve that has turned a wilderness reserve 5,000 feet above sea level outside Srinagar, Kashmir. It was autumn 2018. I landed in Srinagar that afternoon and am now standing in the deep forest with Kashmiri chef Prateek Sadhu, who has come to feed sorrel, pine, and dandelion. dandelion for his Masque restaurant in Mumbai. Officially, the sanctuary – home to snow leopards and possibly the last hundred of the world’s leopards (Kashmir stags) – closes at nightfall. But over two years of feeding, Sadhu has earned the respect of the rangers, and one of them spotted the bears and led us towards them for a closer look, warning us to stay. together. When a branch cracked under his feet, he brought a finger to his lips. Later, I learned that the Himalayan black bear is one of the most ferocious in its genus, prone to gratuitous attacks and fond of grabbing people’s heads. But now, we watch them quietly in the weak rain, more curious than frightened, confident that we are hidden and safe.
And we were. The bears, a mother and two cubs, left, and we headed back to the dirt road and the jeep was open, swaying and swaying until we reached higher ground. Now the valley was wide open before our eyes, green with no trace of life, mountains like bare knuckles lined up behind us, and long wet grasses rolling beneath our feet. Kneeling among them, Sadhu gently plucked the stalks of dandelions with their pointed leaves. Called haandh by the locals, they are young and tender and, when alive, taste like spring water pouring from a wooden ladle, with a slight bitter taste as a result. At the Masque, they will be anointed with mustard oil and masala carcasses, a mixture of fervent Kashmiri peppers and spices bought in hard red cakes from a shop in Shehr-e-Khaas, the old city of Srinagar, then pulverized, baked with lime and finally brushed over fish or lamb, less sauce than veil. Before all this, the greens will have to be blanched – four times – so that they no longer remember the bitter taste.
The forage chef has been a romantic, even heroic figure, for nearly two decades, since the development of the modern archetype, Rene Redzepi by Noma in Copenhagen. Sadhu interned at Noma for a month when he was 24 years old, in the fall of 2010, five restaurants topped the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world. He sees how Redzepi has put Nordic ingredients and cuisine on the map – and is determined to do the same for his native Kashmir. But Sadhu has a bigger burden: His territory is uncertain. Where Redzepi’s Denmark is consistently ranked as one of the most harmonious and agreeable countries on earth, Kashmir is a region of conflict, a tipping point between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of troops are massed on either side of the Line of Control, a de facto border not recognized by law and subject to frequent commercial fire. The nations have fought three all-out wars in the region; Tens of thousands of lives have been lost.
