Recipe for Kashmiri Gucchi Pulao

At Goya, celebrating home cooks and recipes have always been at the heart of our work. Through our series, #1000Kitchens, we document recipes from kitchens across the country, building a living library of heirloom recipes that have been in the family for 3 generations or more. In this edition, Tansha Vohra talks to chef Vanika Chaudhury about Kashmiri food, and the recipe for gucchi pulao, a legacy recipe made with morel mushrooms.

This season’s stories are produced in partnership with the Samagata Foundation—a non-profit that champions meaningful projects.

In the quiet hum of Vanika’s kitchen, the scent of ghee warming in a brass pot fills the air. She moves with an instinctive grace, a shawl wrapped tightly around her neck, as her mother looks over her shoulder while her son hands her one crucial ingredient after another. A collection of glass jars with red lids, like the ones that grace dusty shelves in sweet shops, declare themselves at first glance — quince vinegar, lachu vinegar and syam stems fermenting with wooly cat mint sitting patiently waiting for time, the essential ingredient, to emerge as a flavour in itself. Is this what winter in Kashmir sometimes tastes like? Today, Vanika is making gucchi pulao — a dish that carries the weight of memory, migration, and the changing landscapes of what home means to her.

Gucchi, the elusive morel mushroom, is the star of this dish. It is foraged in the high-altitude regions of Jammu and Kashmir, appearing only when spring’s first thunderstorms awaken them from the earth. The Gujjar women, indigenous nomadic foragers, are the first to find these treasures, venturing into the forests after a night of thunder and rain. Though they rarely consume the mushrooms themselves, they carefully gather them, their knowledge of the land and its bounty passed down through generations. The fresh gucchi mushrooms must be eaten within two days, but drying them ensures their preservation for the year ahead.

For Vanika, gucchi pulao is more than just food — it is a tangible connection to her family’s history, deeply shaped by the women in her family. “My mother learned it from her mother, and growing up in Srinagar, I have memories of watching them both make it,” she recalls. “I would see my nani sun-drying the mushrooms in the garden, spreading them out in the crisp spring air, letting time and nature do their work.” Her father’s family migrated to Kashmir from Pakistan during Partition, bringing their own traditions. Her mother, from Kashmir, preserved the culinary heritage of her homeland, and it was in her mother’s kitchen that Vanika developed her strongest connection to food. The recipe, passed down through at least three generations, is a vessel of cultural preservation, much like the jars of pickles that line the window sills of her home — carefully nurtured from her grandmother’s kitchen in Kashmir to her mother’s hands in Jammu, and now, to her own.

The preparation is a patient, deliberate process. First, the dried gucchi must be cleaned thoroughly, as they are often caked with soil from their wild origins. “You trim the ends, wash them multiple times, then soak them in hot water,” Vanika explains. This soaking water transforms into a deeply umami-rich broth, never discarded, but used as a base for cooking the rice. She remembers her mother reserving even the mushroom trimmings, using them to make broths — an example of a sustainability mindset deeply ingrained in Kashmiri households long before it became a global trend. The rice is just as significant as the mushrooms. Vanika’s grandmother often used mushk budji, a short-grain, aromatic variety that once dominated Kashmiri kitchens but the grain is rarely found today, and when it is, it's reserved for weddings and special occasions.

As the pot heats, Vanika adds ghee, watching as it melts and shimmers. Whole spices follow — black cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaf, shahi zeera — each one toasting briefly in the hot fat, releasing its heady aroma. Then, the gucchi mushrooms go in, absorbing the flavors of the spices. “Roasting the mushrooms in ghee enhances their depth,” she explains, stirring gently. “You have to let them breathe in the spices before adding the rice.” The soaked rice joins the mix, each grain toasting slightly before the reserved mushroom broth is poured in, along with a delicate infusion of saffron steeped in warm water. The lid goes on, and the pulao simmers, absorbing the rich flavors of the broth, spices, and mushrooms.

In her childhood home, gucchi pulao was on the weekly repertoire and it has always been deeply associated with comfort. “I don’t need an occasion to make it,” she says. “I’ve been away from home for so long, and this is my way of bringing it back.” It was the first dish she craved upon finding out she was pregnant—the only thing she wanted to eat in that overwhelming moment of excitement and uncertainty. Later, it became the first taste of mushrooms her son ever experienced, marking another generational link in the dish’s long journey. The dish was also featured on the menu at Noon — one of Vanika’s two restaurants that heralded the farm-to-table ethos in Mumbai's urbanscape. Noon reimagined flavour through the lens of heritage, delving into ancient preservation techniques, indigenous ferments, and forgotten grains, making it a living archive of India's diverse culinary heritage. Beyond her restaurants, she has worked closely with foragers, farmers, and culinary custodians, integrating their knowledge into her menus to keep traditional foodways relevant within contemporary dining.

When the pulao is ready, Vanika serves it with muj chetin — radish blended with mustard oil — alongside haak saag, the deep green leaves of Kashmir grown on their terrace by her father, nadru ka achar or pickled lotus stems and mutsch — a Kashmiri meatball dish. “These accompaniments complete the meal,” she says. “The mustard in the chutney cuts through the richness, the greens balance the dish, and the lotus stem adds an unexpected bite.”

Every element of the plate is tied to memory and tradition. The muj chetin, she recalls, was something her family ate almost daily in winter. “Our food has always been guided by seasons,” she explains. “There were things we ate in winter, things we avoided in summer — it was all based on what was best for the body.” Even the spices in the pulao shift with the seasons; cloves, considered too “heaty” for summer, are only added in winter months.

The meal is more than nourishment — it is a living archive of her family’s past. “I think of my mother’s hands making this, my grandmother’s kitchen in Kashmir, the smell of ghee and saffron filling the air,” Vanika reflects. “This dish carries the essence of home, even when home is far away.”

Vanika’s Gucchi Pulao is a recipe of resilience, migration, and belonging, held together by the hands that have made it for generations. Each bite is a reminder of where she comes from; a taste of the past carried forward into the future, one grain of rice at a time.

VANIKA CHAUDHURY’S RECIPE FOR GUCCHI PULAO

Serves 3

Ingredients

½ cup aged basmati rice or Mushk budji rice
60 g gucchi/wild morels
2 onions, sliced
A few strands of saffron
1 bay leaf
½ tsp shah zeera
2 cardamom pods, crushed
2 inch cinnamon stick
1 black cardamom
4 tbsp of ghee
4 cloves
Salt to taste
5 cups of water

Method

Wash the gucchi and soak it in five cups of water for 30 minutes. Wash the aged basmati rice & soak it in water for 60 minutes. Soak the saffron in a tbsp of hot water for 30 minutes.
In a medium bowl, boil the gucchi in the soaked water. Bring it to a full boil, simmer the heat and let it cook for 30 minutes. Strain the gucchi through a muslin cloth, reserving the gucchi broth. This is the precious umami broth that adds all the flavour and aroma to the pulao. Wash the soaked rice thoroughly.
Add ghee to a medium clay pot or copper/brass pot.
Once the ghee is hot, add shah zeera and let it crackle for a few minutes.
Now add the rest of the spices — bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom, black cardamom, cloves and onions. Saute the onions for 8 to 10 minutes or until the onions become dark brown, while stirring frequently.
Add the gucchi and sauté for 8-10 minutes.
Now add the soaked rice, giving it a gentle stir, for another 3-4 minutes.
Add 1.5 cups of the reserved gucchi broth, saffron water, and salt. Let it come to a full boil. Cover the clay pot and cook the pulao on a low heat until all the water is absorbed (this would take 15 minutes for aged basmati and 20 minutes for mushk budji rice).
Remove the pot from heat and let it rest for 10 minutes. Fluff it gently with a fork.

Note — Use of spices also needs to change with seasons and her mom generally skips the cloves when she is making gucchi pulao in the summer.

Words by Tansha Vohra. Images by Terrence Manne. Illustration by Ananya Parekh.
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