Khaskhas (Gasagase) White Poppy Seeds

SOAKING (do not skip this)

WARM WATER, twenty minutes minimum. An hour is better.

Poppy seeds are tiny, hard and almost frictionless. Dry, they rattle around the mixer forever and never break. This is the commonest reason khus khus "does nothing".

Drain most of the water before grinding.

GRINDING

SMALL JAR, VERY LITTLE WATER. You want a thick paste, not a slurry.

Be patient and scrape down the sides.

If your mixer struggles, add a few cashews or a spoon of grated coconut. They give the blades something to work against, and both belong in the dish anyway.

ROASTING FIRST (the step nobody does)

DRY pan, no oil, medium heat, THIRTY SECONDS, moving constantly.

Stop the moment it smells of something. They burn in seconds and burnt poppy seed is bitter and unusable.

This is where the nuttiness comes from. It is not in the raw seed. You make it.

Then soak and grind as above.

KORMA AND GRAVIES

Khus khus paste goes in TOWARDS THE END, after the masala is cooked out.

It thickens as it heats. Do not add it early and then reduce, or it will catch.

Classic partners: cashew, coconut, fennel, cardamom.

GASAGASE PAYASA (the Karnataka one)

Dry roast the gasagase, then soak.

Grind with grated coconut and a spoon of soaked rice.

Simmer in milk until it thickens, then add jaggery off the boil so it does not split.

Cardamom, and a little ghee-fried cashew on top.

ALSO

Chettinad gravies, Hyderabadi korma, Bengali aloo posto and posto bora. Bengal uses more of this than anywhere else in India.

Ground into masala pastes for biryani.

STORAGE – AND THIS MATTERS MORE THAN THE PAGE SUGGESTS

AIRTIGHT, IN THE FRIDGE. Not "refrigeration helps". Refrigerate it.

POPPY SEED IS ROUGHLY 45% OIL. That is why it thickens a gravy and it is also why it goes rancid, and 50g will sit in your cupboard for months getting slowly worse.

The FREEZER is better still for anything past a couple of months.

SMELL IT. Rancid poppy seed smells sharp and faintly of old paint and tastes bitter. Nothing fixes it.

Grind only what you need. Ground khus khus paste does not keep.

We will tell you not to travel with it. Khus khus is prohibited in Singapore and controlled in the UAE, and people have been detained at airports over a bag of groceries from home. No other khus khus page in India will tell you this.

White Indian seed, not the blue European one. Cream coloured, milder, and grown to be ground into a paste. The blue seeds on a bagel are a different product and they will give you grey gravy.

We will tell you to soak it. Dry poppy seeds do not grind - they are too small and too hard and they simply rattle around the mixer. Twenty minutes in warm water is the difference between a silky korma and a gritty one.

And to refrigerate it. It is 45% oil. That is what thickens your gravy and it is also what goes rancid in your cupboard.

This is the one thing in our shop we cannot grow.

Poppy is not an ordinary crop. It is Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, and growing it in India is not a farming decision - it is a licensing one. Cultivation is permitted only in specified districts of MADHYA PRADESH, RAJASTHAN and UTTAR PRADESH, under licence from the Central Bureau of Narcotics, with the acreage recorded and the crop accounted for. KARNATAKA HAS NO LICENSED POPPY CULTIVATION AT ALL.

So no farmer of ours grows this, and no farmer of ours can. Everything else in this shop we can trace to a field we know. This one comes from licensed growers elsewhere, or from abroad, and we would rather say that plainly than let the name on the packet imply otherwise.

Judging it: CREAM TO PALE IVORY, not grey and not yellowing. Dry and free-running, never clumped - clumps mean moisture and moisture on a 45% oil seed means it is on its way out. And it should smell of almost nothing. If a bag of raw poppy seed smells sharp or paint-like, that is the oil having already turned.