Tasiya Tariq, First Srinagar Female received YouTube Silver play button 

Mahek Yaseen | Ground Report | "Back in 2018 , Tasiya Tariq, a young woman from kashmir, wanted to make Wazwan pulao (fried basmati garnished with dried fruits) at home and thought I'd look up the recipe online but unfortunately it was nowhere to be found.

"There have been a bundle  of videos and articles on Kashmiri Pulao recipes, but none of them taught the accurate recipe of Kashmiri pulao , I really felt bad after seeing how Kashmiri dishes were being taught by people who had absolutely no knowledge of our food,” Tasiya recalled speaking to Ground Report.

"She also  saw  there was no Kashmiri YouTube channel dedicated to Kashmiri cuisine . So she asked her family waza  for the recipe and made it, also thinking about sharing it with others online, that's how Tasiya's YouTube journey was started." Said Tasiya .

She further said : " I first shared the idea with my husband ,Tariq Ahmad and he fully supported me even though my In-laws were also very supportive even though I learned basic recipes from my mother, then mostly from my sister-in-law and mother-in-law who helped me on this journey."

When Ground Report asked her,  why did you choose the name "Kashmiri Food Fusion" for the YouTube channel, she said "The name was chosen by me and my husband, kashmir  food is a pretty obvious name but we decided to keep the fusion with it as we thought that maybe one day we'll share some non-Kashmir recipes and by naming our channel as kashmir food  , our content may be limited. So we called it Kashmir Food Fusion as we could share diverse food recipes from all over the world.

While asking Tasiya what was your main motive behind this channel she said that The main motivation was to keep our Kashmir culture alive ,I didn't find any Kashmiri YouTube channel for food online and I was surprised , she also said the non-Kashmiri chef's , other channels featured non-authentic Kashmiri recipes and called them Kashmiri, so that was a big no for me because they did something else in the name of kashmiri cusine."

While asking her was this journey difficult for you , Tasiya said "I think when your family is supportive and being active on social media and knowledge of YouTube etc helps and starting a YouTube channel is not difficult." 

"Honestly , I didn't even make this channel for fame but as a teaching and learning forum for all of us. I think when we work with dedication, glory comes." she added

She went on to say that it feels good Alhamdulillah. When people praise me, it just shows that they appreciate the hard work I put into creating and sharing these recipes and videos with them. It makes me feel like I should keep doing what I do because my work has really helped so many people.

" During the lockdown people were trying to enhance  their cooking style." Says Tasiya .During Lockdown the purchase for the channel across Instagram and YouTube grew four folds .She started receiving hundreds of the messages on daily basis, " And that's what kept me going  during lockdown " she states.

She also said " The experience of working on YouTube has been great so far. It gives me the opportunity to connect with so many people around the world."

Today, Kashmiri food fusion has 241 K subscribers on Youtube and  45.3 k followers on Instagram , also she is the first female from kashmir who received the Silver play button from YouTube.

Now Tasiya is planning to write her own books about different cuisines particularly about Wazwan and she also want to come up with an android app where people can look for authentic kashmiri recipes .

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