Kashmir Ka Zaiqa: Rista || Kashmiri Rista || Kashmiri wazwaan || how to make rista at home

Rista is one of the main dishes from wazwaan (Kashmiri wedding feast). The boneless mutton and generous amount of fat is pounded with mortar and pestle for hours until you achieve a smooth paste like consistency and then its shaped into balls and cooked in a thin red color gravy. The meatball texture after cooked is almost like a sausage and that is what makes it different from koftas.

Being far from home I have missed Kashmiri wazwaan the most and to make this dish in our modern kitchens has been a challenging task. After several attempts, trial and errors I could come up with a successful recipe which tastes just like wazwaan rista and hence wanted to share the recipe with my followers as well.

To remind my readers, I live in abroad so the ingredients which are local to Kashmir have been replaced with easily available ones.

Mawal extract replaced with Food color\saffron

Pran replaced with fried onion paste.

So lets start with the recipe. We need a very good quality mutton which is pink, doesn’t have veins and its fresh. The main binding agent is fat here. So we require a generous amount of good quality fat as well. The ratio of meat and fat must be 90:10

Ingredients:

For the rista :

400 grams boneless mutton

100 grams fat

1 tbsp black cardamom seeds

Salt to taste

1 Tsp Cumin seeds

1 Tsp fennel seeds

1 egg white

Making the rista :

1. In a heavy duty food processor or in a mixer jar, add the above ingredients in batches and grind to a smooth paste. The paste should be smooth and pale in color.

2. Take the grinded meat and fat in a bowl and remove any veins or tendons and discard it. Now make a smooth dough and keep it in the refrigerator for 20 Minutes.

3. Take out meatballs mixture from refrigerator and add one egg white. Mix evenly until the egg is blended.

3. Fill a big vessel or huge bowl with room temperature water deep enough to drop in all rista/meatballs. And in a separate small bowl, keep water.

4. Now pick a ball size meat mixture in your hand. Start shaping it as a ball. once you form a ball, dip your one hand in water and place it on the meatball smoothen out the meatball and slowly place the meatball in the vessel which is filled with water.

Continue the same step until you have made all the meatballs. This step is very mandatory. It helps to hold up the shape of ristas while cooking. Let the meatballs sit in it until we get to the preparation of gravy.

For the Rista Gravy

One big onion, chopped finely

6 To 7cloves garlic

1 cinnamon stick

4 black cardamom

4 green cardamom

3 cloves

2 tbsp Kashmiri red chilly powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp fennel seed powder

Saffron soaked in water /1 or 2 drops of red food color

2 Tbsp ghee

Salt to taste

Method:

1. In a pan pour ghee and once its hot add chopped onion and fry until golden. Cool it down and grind to a smooth paste.

2. In a cooking pot, add 1 litre water.

3. Add garlic, whole spices and spice powders let it come to a boil.

4. After boiling for 10 to 15 minutes,add the raw prepared meatballs one by one with your hand.. Mix gently and close the lid

5. Cook the meatballs for 30 Minutes. After 30 minutes open the lid. Discard all the visible spices.

6. Add the fried onion paste,salt,ghee and saffron water.

7. Stir well, cover and cook on high flame until the gravy is reduced and ristas are cooked.(rista should float up and look slightly doubled in size).

8. Serve rista with hot, steamy rice. Enjoy