It is a type of Garam masala mix, only slightly different in that it has black cumin instead of standard cumin and it also has fennel seeds. I would use it in Kashmiri/Indian dishes just like I use my type GM in most of my dishes.

Mamta. Do you bother using white cumin seeds when you make garam masala or do you leave them out?

Hello Sid

No, I don't normally put cumin or coriander seeds in my GM. These are usually in the dish anyway, so there is not need. They just dilute the flavour of the GM. As they are much cheaper than other GM ingredients, often they are used to bulk it up. I add cumin or coriander to a dish separately if I want to.

Thanks for the reply. I understand where you are coming from there! So, if you make the Kashmiri garam masala you would add the black cumin seeds to that because of their flavour, correct?

Thanks.

crushed black cumin seed is often used as a 'sprinkle' in J&K, whereas the gm is usually made from cassia, cloves, nutmeg/mace and black cardamom, and it is used to provide a deep rich flavour to dishes, added when at the oil stage.

Cassia is known as 'dal chini', meaning wood from China. Although this only means 'from outside of India', even today China is a major producer of cassia and black cardamom. In fact, the black cardamoms I buy from Chinese shops in London seem to be much softer than Indian ones, its not impossible to peel them by hand.

For someone that does a lot of Indian cooking, is it worth making normal garam masala and Kashmiri masala?

Make a small portion of each and see if you like one more than the other. Then you will know what to do in the future.

Indians usually mean cassia when they say cinnamon. This includes me! Cassia is cheaper and quite nice in flavour.

when in Rome..........

A Kashmiri dish (say rogan josh) would use Kashmiri gm, etc.

I believe gm is just a mix of very fragrant spices used by cooks to add that deep satisfying flavour, but it has to be extracted into oil to do a good job. Other spices are added to the dish at the appropriate times.

Garam masala is used in the Indian sub-continent much like other cuisines with their special spice mixes, like Ras el Hanout in Morocco, Baharat in the Levant, berbere in Ethiopia, Duka in Egypt, and not forgetting Chinese five spice (which can have many variants!)

So at what stage during the cooking process would you add powdered garam masala? Would you add it at the beginning before you add the onions, with the onions or at the end?

As a rule, I add whole GM ingredients to the hot oil, at the beginning, and powdered GM at the end, after the cooking is done. Then I close the lid and let the flavours infuse. This is how everyone in India that I know does. Lapis will be able to tell you the sientific reason for this, as I am sure she has a done few times in the past.

Mamta

Are those Kashmiri masala cakes same as powdered masala? I bought some from Himachal (India)when i visited there last.