Cuisine of the Lepchas in Dzongu

A Lepcha meal- okra stir fry, greens peas cooked with their pods, onion leaves cooked with their flowers and fermented spinach soup called gundruk. 

While in Lingthem village in Dzongu where I travelled to meet the Shamans, I had the opportunity to sample a variety of dishes unique to Lepcha culture. Lepcha food is characterised by the use of fermented items like vegetables, fruit and cheese. Lepchas are mainly meat eaters but since I am a vegetarian I could sample only a limited number of Lepcha dishes. It’s simple and full of flavor and devoid of spices that mainland India uses.

Fermented soft cheese called churpi.

The Lepchas were formerly hunters and gatherers, sustaining mainly on forest produce and cultivating just a few vegetables. They followed a ‘Slash and burn’ method of agriculture which means that whenever a tribe moved from one place to another in the forest, they would burn down a patch that they needed for agriculture and settle there and practice farming for a period of about three years. Then they would move again, thus allowing that part of the forest to rejuvenate. It was only in the 1900’s that they started owning land and practising long term agriculture. And it was not until a few decades ago that the Lepchas who were isolated started trading with people from outside. I asked my host if they never traded with people outside, how did they get salt for cooking? He said that the hunters-gatherers would follow the musk deer which would go and lick salt deposits beneath rocks in certain spots and get their salt from the same place. This is ‘living with Nature’ in the truest sense!

You may like my post on 'Secret Life of the Shamans in Dzongu'.

Freshly harvested potatoes.

Fresh green peas. 

Onion flowers which is a delicacy.

Fresh ginger.

At my Lingthem homestay, food was fresh from the farm to the table. The host grew several vegetables such as spinach, potatoes, cabbage, nettle fern, etc. Most days I accompanied her to the farm and we sowed ginger, made the bed for potatoes, harvested potatoes, plucked nettle fern, and cleared the weed around cardamom plants.
Cardamom cultivation was introduced in Dzongu in the early 1930's and towards the end of the century, Sikkim turned out to be a major exporter of cardamom. 

You may like my blog post on Himachali/Pahadi cuisine.

That's me clearing weeds around the cardamom plant. 

Fresh cardamom buds which will mature into pods.

In the traditional Lepcha kitchen, the stove is a stone tripod and wood is used as fuel. In the three homes I visited I saw corn cobs hanging over the hearth and meat tied in cloth, hung to be dried. 

Traditional Lepcha kitchen.

Corn cobs hanging above the hearth.

These are some of the dishes I ate.

The evening I arrived I was treated to ‘masyum ko dal’ (ricebean dal), nettle fern with churpi, and potato stir fry. All the dishes were full of flavor and light on the stomach.

‘Masyum ko dal’ (ricebean dal), nettle fern with churpi, and potato stir fry.

My first breakfast was buckwheat pancakes called ‘Khuri’ which are stuffed with either meat of vegetables. Mine was stuffed with potatoes and cabbage served with soft ‘churpi’ (yak cheese) mixed with ‘lopsi’ (hog plum) pickle made with ‘dalle’ (one of the hottest chillies).

Buckwheat pancakes called ‘Khuri’ stuffed with potatoes and cabbage served with soft ‘churpi’ mixed with ‘lopsi’ pickle.

Lopsi or hog plum pickle.

Pickled chillies called dalle.

The next meal for lunch was stir fried green peas along with their pods, onion stir fried with the leaves and flowers, okra subji, fermented spinach soup called ‘gundruk’ and hot rice.  

Stir fried green peas along with their skin, onion stir fried with the leaves and flowers, okra subji, fermented spinach soup called ‘gundruk’ and hot rice.

 You may also like my blog post of Kumaoni cuisine. 

Fermented and dried spinach called 'gundruk'.

An item in the next meal was really unique. Nettle fern cooked with ‘churpi’, cauliflower subji, ‘lopsi’ pickle and masoor dal with rice. The nettle fern and churpi combination was a winner.

Nettle fern.

Nettle fern cooked with ‘churpi’, cauliflower subji, ‘lopsi’ pickle and masoor dal with rice.

Now, who hasn’t heard of thukpa. This one that I ate and slurped away was a medley of noodles, vegetables and onions garnished with coriander leaves. Simple, so flavorful and filling.

Thukpa.

Another Thukpa I had on this trip was in Gangtok in a restaurant called Nimtho on the MG road. The portion size was quite huge and I struggled to finish it. I quite loved the different flavours. 

Thukpa at Nimtho

One of the meals was fusion food- potato pancakes taught to the host by a German guest and nettle fern and stinging nettle soup with buckwheat dumplings.

Potato pancakes and nettle fern and stinging nettle soup with buckwheat dumplings.

Stinging nettle called bichhoo in Hindi. Contact of the skin with the leaves causes irritation so we plucked these with tongs. 

Another fermented dish was ‘kinema’ which is fermented soyabeans. My host asked me to smell it first since it’s an acquired taste and smell, she warned. It was strong and pungent but I said I would like to taste. I actually loved it despite the strong aroma. This I had with spinach saag, dal and rice.

Kinema, spinach saag and daal. 

One cannot return from Sikkim without having tasted the ubiquitous momo. My host taught me how to shape the momos into different patterns. Each pattern is for a different stuffing in the momo. For example, a circular shape would mean it’s filled with meat, an elongated shape is filled with fish, so on and so forth. It was pretty interesting to shape the dough into various shapes and I learnt well, my host said. We had it with tomato dip made with a little bit of lopsi pickle.

You may like my blog post on the Wild Vegetables festival. 

Momos ready to be steamed. 

Momos ready to be devoured. 

One day I went for a long walk with he host, Premit Lepcha, and we found a tree laden with these fruit. She asked a man working nearby to pluck the fruit for us and he brought a long stick to shake the fruit off the trees. He also got some salt from a neighbouring home. The fruit was sour-sweet but it was delightful eating it fresh. 

Premit was a genius in the kitchen and thanks to her enthusiasm I could sample such a variety. 

The Lepcha homestay from the farm. 

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Kumaoni Cuisine- A Gastronomical Delight!

When I landed in Sarmoli in April this year to celebrate my birthday with birds, I had no idea of the gastronomical journey that awaited me. While I knew that, as in most villages, the food would be fresh from the farm to the kitchen, I did not expect Kumaoni food to be so distinct and unique. Why? Because I had never heard of Kumaoni food before. And I wonder why?

Bhaang ki chutney- chutney made with cannabis seeds.

I stayed with two different hosts during my 10 day stay there. While with the first host, I tried a few unique things like bhaang ki chutney, and Bhaang ke pakode, it was my second host who completely blew my mind with the varieties she whipped up for every meal.

Kumaoni food is best described as simple, earthy, rustic and robust. The meals are essentially simple but bursting with flavours and full of nutrients. It is characterized by the use of herbs that are unique to the place, such as Timur, Jimboo, Gandhrayani, etc. In the kitchen of my second home-stay, all meals were prepared only on the traditional 'chulha' or hearth and not on cooking gas. So, by default everything was slow cooked and the chulha imparts a distinct taste to the food while enhancing its taste several notches higher.

All the dishes were served on Kansa plates and bowls. Traditionally in India, Kansa (an alloy of copper and tin) was used for eating because as per Ayurveda, the alkalising properties of the metal are very beneficial for one's body. That, and the love and enthusiasm with which Bhanu, my hostess, cooked each and every meal, satiated my body and soul. 

My hostess cooking on the 'chulha'.

The cute kitchen from the outside.

                            You may also like my post on Himachali Cuisine.

Jimboo leaves being sun dried.

Bhaang seeds/ Cannabis seeds.

My second host, Saraswati Thakuni’s sweet grand-daughter named Bhanu was the magician in the kitchen. With a commendable passion and pride in Kumaoni food, she put up a splendid display and gave me a taste of most things that Kumaon is known for!

Giant radishes in the farm.

You may like my blog post on Cuisine of the Lepchas.

Cabbage fields.

Here’s what I ate. Be warned you’ll be extremely hungry by the time you finish reading this post!

My first meal was plain parathas, delectable rajma and Bhaang ki chutney. And the wheat, rajma and bhaang, everything is from their own farm. Need I say how I savored every morsel of it.

Rajma and parathas.

Rotis, malka daal and saag.

Most of the days I was there, there were heavy hailstorms and thunder. My room had a metal sheet over the tiled roof, and the sound of the hail stones hitting the roof was so amplified that at one point I thought that monsters were trying to rip down the room to get me. But I’m safe and sound writing this a few months later! Blame it on my wild imagination! One such evening after I returned from my illustration assignment, my host prepared some comforting soup called ‘Jia’. It’s a soup made with roasted rice, salt and a herb called ‘thuner’. This soup was served with some jaggery.

Mundve ki roti, masoor dal and gobi subzi.

A fritter called Chunni.

One breakfast was lavish with Mundve ka halva, a Kumaoni noodles called ‘Kokla’ and jimboo parathas. Mundve is a millet widely eaten in Uttarakhand and is similar to finger millet (ragi, nachni) in colour and taste. Jimboo is a herb that is eaten fresh mixed with parathas or dried and used in gravies and lentils. I loved the Kokla so much that Bhanu made that on the morning I was leaving and packed some for me to eat on the way back.

Thoya rice. 

Thoya seeds- a bit like cumin seeds but much stronger in flavour.

Mundve ka halva, jimboo parathas and Kumaoni noodles called Kokla.

With tea, one time I was served a fritter called ‘chunni’ made with wheat flour, sugar and rice flour.

Another herb that is liberally used is Thoya. It looks like cumin seeds much has a much stronger flavor. Bhanu made some thoya fried rice with it for dinner one day.

Bhutt (black soya bean) being cooked.

Close up of bhutt.

Mundve ki roti, bhutt daal and muthiyas.

There is another pulse called ‘bhutt’ (black soya bean)which Sarmoli has stopped growing but which they procure from another village. Bhanu had got some to cook for me. It’s very high in nutrition and I was told that her grandmother’s generation and before that, women had a meal of this bhutt dal and worked in the farm and fields the whole day and remained strong even in their old age.

Jiya soup with jaggery.

The herb called gandhraini.

Thuner, a bark of a tree also used as a culinary herb.

Atte ka halva.

One day I offered to cook a Gujarati dish called Muthiya. It’s made of wheat flour, bottle gourd and some chickpea flour. 

Dried bitter gourds.

Clockwise from left- Dubka, dried bitter gourd subzi, Phonn and roti.

I did a whole day trek-cum-bird watching trip to the upper reaches of the forest and my host had packed some out-of-the-world delicious gobi parathas and rajma. Gosh! I have never tasted gobi parathas as scrumptious as this.

Rajma and gobi parathas.

Khajura.

My trek guide had carried a typical Kumaoni snack called Khajura with him made by the local women. It’s similar to shakkar para but coarser.

Timur, a spice like black pepper.

This is the timur tree, full of thorns. Wonder how they pick the timur from this?

The hosts has organized a pooja one day so for Prasad they made Atte ke halva, made with wheat flour, sugar, ghee and milk.

A pancake called Puli.

This is a fragrant root which is fed to the cattle. It was so fragrant, was tempted to take a bite! 

In Kumaon, they grow a bitter gourd which is actually sweet. They call it meetha karela. They dry it and use it round the year.

Bhanu, my sweet host cooking spinach. 

Rotis, spinach saag, Dubka. 

Another fried rice called Bhumla with spinach saag and Dubka.

Another very traditional dinner was a dish called Phonn which is made with buttermilk, mundva flour, rice, timur, bhaang seeds and a tadka of jimboo. This was served with Dubka, a dish made with butt daal, and a herb called gandhrayani.

Giant sized lemon trees. The Kumaonis pickle these lemons.

See how big it is?

For breakfast another day I was served a sweet pancake called ‘puli’ made with wheat flour, sugar and milk. This was served with curd.

                               You may like my post on the Rhododendron Trail.

I did a sketch of the rhododendron flowers.

A local woman Bina, making the rhododendron juice.

Five days was a short time indeed to experience Bhanu's hospitality. I have promised to go back and soak up more of the mountains, cuisine and peace. 

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