I first came across morels in Kashmir when my parents were stationed there. Having grown up eating a variety of wild mushrooms in Coorg, this was an entirely new and exciting find. With their deeply wrinkled and pointed caps they looked to me more like some sea sponges, or coral plucked from a reef, than any mushroom I’d ever seen.
We were fortunate to have the most wonderful Kashmiri cook through whom I was first introduced to the marvels of Kashmiri cuisine. He cooked these gucchi, as they’re known there, into a delicately seasoned pulao, full of meaty chunks of the mushroom. He used dried morels, mutton stock, and rice seasoned with the black cumin commonly used in Kashmiri cooking. Also known as kala zeera* or shah jeera, it lends a subtle peppery, smoky quality to foods and is quite the perfect complement to mushrooms.
Morels can be a pretty expensive indulgence, even when they are in season here in Vancouver, but many varieties of excellent mushrooms are available throughout the year. And if you dry them, even the most seemingly dull mushrooms acquire exciting new depths of flavour. With the wonderful wild mushrooms the Coorg monsoon throws up, perhaps this is just the time for some mushroom pulao!
